Same director insisted on two wolfhounds and a hawk in the first scene of King Lear.
o.O. I would like to suggest that these directors learn about the magic of this awesome little thing called "suspension of disbelief".
(animals on stage storytime!)
For one production of Annie, not only did we have Sandy (who was a big flat-coated retriever and AWESOME), but we had two other dogs for street scenes. Wrangling 3 dogs and 15 pre-teen orphans was a bitch - no pun intended. Then we used one of those dogs for Wizard of Oz (a Sheltie), but he had been traumatized enough by Annie that he would run away from the Munchkins, which led to the phrase "Toto has left the building" being uttered over the headsets on more than one occasion.