You might imagine that Mikey Madison is far too serious an actor to entertain Dogue, Vogue’s summer package that makes cover stars out of our favorite celebri-dogs. Nobody would blame you—the woman has an Academy Award, for God’s sake. But oh, how wrong you would be! (Case in point, the email from her publicist upon receiving the pitch: “MOST EXCITING NEWS!!! We’ve been talking about this goal for the last year.”)

Madison is the proud mother of three Chihuahuas: Peaches, an 11-month-old long-haired Chihuahua; Birdie, also 11 months, a short-haired Chihuahua; and Jam, a 2-year-old Chihuahua mix, whom she rescued from Shay’s Strays Animal Rescue. “They’re not [biological siblings], but they’re my adopted children,” Madison clarifies on a phone call from Los Angeles. “So they’re siblings.” The trio is a well-balanced bunch. While Madison describes the docile Peaches and Birdie as “basically rodents,” rambunctious Jam is “borderline human.”

In Madison’s Los Angeles backyard on a recent gray morning, Jam tears into a stray conifer, scattering seeds in his wake. (Birdie surveys the wreckage and gingerly picks up a small seed for herself.) “If you opened up his belly, it would be just pine cones inside,” Madison says of Jam. While the actor is no stranger to cover shoots, it’s the dogs’ turn to shoot their Dogue cover. “I am a very proud stage mom,” she says.

Photographed by Tracy Nguyen

Madison gamely got her hands dirty in the name of the shot, wrangling the dogs for a group photo, hoisting them into the air like baby Simba, and costuming them in tiny hats. On that note: She came extremely well stocked in the wardrobe department. She dressed Peaches in a pink cowboy hat and Birdie in a green cap with a crochet toadstool protruding out of her noggin, and she wrestled her “problem child” Jam into a red knit strawberry cap with ear holes. Let’s be honest: Wearing a silly little hat might feel emasculating. Madison tries to quell this feeling in Jam: “I’m an alpha,” she chirps in a high-pitched voice to the Chihuahua folded up in her arms.