Posted on 08/09/2013 7:28:53 PM PDT by NYer
UNDATED (CNN) - Feel guilty when you leave your dog home alone? Well, now canines nationwide have their own TV channel to keep them company.
After a successful test marketing, "Dog TV" launched this month nationwide.
It's happening through Direct TV and its target demographic is our furry friends.
The creators say they did three years of research on dog behavior, watching video from surveillance cameras set up in 38 apartments to see what dogs do when they're alone and how they react to TV.
DOGTV - Official Site
Introducing Dog TV: the First Cable Television Network Just for Dogs
Happy to oblige! My youngest son wants a bearded lizard for a pet (as if his multiple fish tanks aren’t enough!) He showed me that video earlier this evening. Laughed my butt off when I saw it.
I lost one of my Irish Wolfhounds to bone cancer last September 21. It was HORRIBLE.
I can’t imagine losing 3 to that hellish disease.
God bless you.
Puppy uppers!
Still more nuanced than MSNBC
Cats are disappointed because the TV is no longer a big warm box upon which they can snugly sleep. It’s a thin panel now.
Sorry to hear that, we lost our lab mix to Addison’s this year!
My Akita has watched TV since he was a baby. He follows the action with his eyes and his head. If he sees an animal, he walks up to the screen and is alert. He will go behind the TV looking for the animal.
When I use the mute, he turns and looks directly at me as though he knows I made the sound stop and he will keep staring at me until I turn it back on, at which point, he goes back to watching.
I have had dogs for well over 40 years and this is the first one that seemed to actually follow the action. He prefers shows with exciting music and SFX. But he has also sat and watched Jesse Stone movies. He is just an unusual guy.
When Sumo was a puppy, he was fascinated with his reflection in my black fridge. He would spend hours laying in front of it, watching “the other puppy.” When we opened the door, he would look inside, ignoring the food. There isn’t room to go around the fridge, but he would stick his nose as far as possible along either side, trying to scent *the puppy*. Watching this was better than most television, for us!
Now, he will go into the bathroom with us and get his paws up on the counter to look at himself in the mirror when we are brushing our teeth. He smiles at himself. He looks at us, then our reflections, so he makes that connection. Not sure if he knows he is seeing himself, though. He will also wait for his turn to drink from the faucet.
I saw some new research last week. Dogs see yellows, greens and blues. They don’t perceive the red hues.
At first, I thought Sumo was just responding in general to sound and movement, but he will follow people across the screen and back again and respond to animals as I said in the earlier post. It isn’t just a fleeting thing, either. He will watch entire movies with us. We’ve had him since he was 8 weeks old and he will be a year in 2 weeks. I think that for him, TV is just normal pack behavior.
I am on a list run by his breeder and there are a lot of pics of other dogs from his line sitting with their people and watching TV.
We don’t have satellite TV, just DVDs and streamed shows. It would be interesting if they made DVDs for dogs, to see his responses. Think I’ll go look.
>>I dont know if its possible for dogs to actually sit and watch television. When my two poochies hear a dog bark on TV they run to the window and start barking up a storm. They have no clue where the bark is coming from
Mine too.
Cool!
what channel did they dump to make space for this?
They Preemptively dumped the Blaze....
Wait they never got the Blaze, I guess having a dog channel for actual dogs and smelly hippies to watch is more important than actual news...
Sure seems like it!
Sorry to hear that. It’s so sad when they leave us.
Thank you kindly for your thoughts. Apparently sight hounds are very suceptible to bone cancer. That said, those smitten by their incredible charm can only keep on keep on rescuing :-)
Tried it with my dogs. They stayed sleeping, while I felt like being walked around the city on a leash.
My dogs sort of watch it; but the music is great and I have noticed a real calming influence on them. I don’t like the sometimes hippy bright colors they use blob drops; but the relaxation music is good even for me. Dogs don’t always have to watch something to be influenced.
Also, the girl that keeps throwing the frisbee in the water is irritating. Even a dog gets tired of that after so many times.
LOL
Now the NSA is subverting our dogs! Can gerbils be far behind?
My dog likes to watch walking elephants.
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