Colin from Accounts: what kind of dog is Colin? It takes two of them to play him
Colin from Colin from Accounts looks like a scruffy stray, which is what the show's creators believed they'd cast — the truth surprised even them. The breed, the two dogs who share the role and how the work is divided between them, the wheelchair question, and where both dogs are in the final season.
The accident-prone scruff at the centre of Colin from Accounts looks like something from the rescue bin, which is exactly what co-creators Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall assumed they'd cast. They were wrong twice over: Colin is a pedigree border terrier, and he's played by two of them.
So what breed is he?
A border terrier — a small, wiry working breed from the England–Scotland border country. Dyer and Brammall had no idea until after the show premiered on Binge on 1 December 2022 and the breed's fanbase came calling. As Brammall put it to NationalWorld in 2023:
"He's just a little scruffer to us."
Dyer admitted in the same interview that they'd believed they were casting a scruffy mutt, only for border terrier owners to claim Colin as one of their own. The recognition went far: when The Guardian reviewed the show in 2023 without mentioning the dog, a border terrier owner wrote in to complain that the paper had ignored the star.
The two dogs behind the role
Colin is a job-share between Zak and Buster, both trained by Australian animal trainer Kirsten Fedderson, whose CV also includes ravens and a tapir. The division of labour, per the creators:
- Zak — the workhorse. He carries nearly every acting scene, and Dyer said in a November 2025 interview that "Zak is 100% Colin", with his colleague used sparingly.
- Buster — the looks. Judged the better-looking dog by Dyer, he's the Colin on the poster and the one in the show's opening — nosing the gate ajar and trotting down the street — plus standby cover on set.
Both dogs worked on the third season.
About that wheelchair
Colin spends much of the series with a spinal injury and a set of wheels, courtesy of Gordon (Brammall) hitting him with his car after Ashley (Dyer) flashes him mid-pedestrian-crossing. That's acting, all of it: neither Zak nor Buster is disabled, and no dog was hurt making the series. The vet bill from that accident is the entire premise — two strangers financially shackled to one injured terrier.
Where the dogs are now
Season 3 — the final one — began on Binge on 27 July 2026, with the series finale airing today, 7 September 2026; the full season lands on Paramount+ in the US on 10 September. The show bows out with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes record across its first two seasons, a 2024 Gotham Award, and a 2025 BAFTA nomination.
For the record: to launch the series in 2022, Melbourne brewer Hop Nation produced Colin's Pale Ale — a free, non-alcoholic beer for dogs that was, in practice, beef bone broth with hoppy afternotes. Zak and Buster earned it.
Earlier we wrote: Jack Whitehall joins Halle Berry, Zoe Kravitz and Colin Firth in Otherwise Engaged, shooting in New York from March 2027