Suzanne Harrington: I tried out Dog TV with my two mutts - here's what happened
Suzanne Harrington: columnist's dogs reportedly not partial to television
Although every day in our house is bring-your-dog-to-work day – I’ve been WFH since the Bronze Age – I have never before enlisted the help of our dogs with any actual work. Until now, when the editor suggests I get them to road test Dog TV.
Listen, I tell them, today I need your feedback. But they haven’t heard the words ‘walk’ or ‘biscuit’, so they ignore me.
Dog TV is a subscription channel not for humans who like dogs, but for actual dogs. Based on “scientific studies”, it’s divided into three categories – “stimulation”, “relaxation” and “exposure” – resulting, it says, in “millions of happy dogs worldwide” who are “calm relaxed and happy throughout the day.”
You have not misread any of this – it’s actual telly for dogs, to be put on when you go out and leave them home alone. (We’ll come back to the last part of that sentence).
Its creators are promoting it as the answer to dog separation anxiety and loneliness, given how we all got a dog during the plague, but many of us have since gone back to work outside the home.
Never mind, just pop Fido in front of the telly while you’re out, ignoring the fact that they’re pack animals who go out of their minds with anxiety and loneliness when left alone for any length of time. Especially dogs who don’t live with other dogs.
Anyway. Back to the experiment. The guinea pigs – our German Shepherds, Ruby aged 12, and Dex aged 12 months - are not generally keen TV watchers. They especially hate football because the humans roaring and leaping off the sofa freak them out.
But mostly they don’t watch telly BECAUSE THEY’RE DOGS.
A dog’s primary sense isn’t vision, it’s smell; unless Dog TV can do scratch’n’sniff steak-scented Odorama, the telly is just a square object that makes noises.
Ruby and Dex are partial to a bit of classical music on the radio on firework night to calm them down, but other than that their audio-visual preferences are all outdoors, running around sniffing things and playing off the lead.
BECAUSE THEY’RE DOGS.
But hey. Don’t take my word for it. I put Dog TV on for them. A clip of a bloke surfing with a small dog on the front of a surfboard in a life jacket. This has the effect of making me anxious – does that dog actually want to be on a surfboard? – as the real-life dogs lie on the rug, not even looking up.
I leave the room, and see what they do with just Dog TV for company. Within minutes, they do what they always do when left alone – the old one dozes off and the young one starts demolishing the soft furnishings. At no point do they take any notice whatsoever of the telly.
So here’s some feedback, straight from the doggo’s mouth: if you have to leave your dogs alone for more than a very short time, don’t get them a TV channel, get them a dog walker.
BECAUSE THEY’RE DOGS.
