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 think the research you saw is baloney. My Jack Russel, before he went blind, would only fetch his red ball. He had 3 balls all exactly alike, those little ones with feet you get at the pet store. He would only fetch the red one.