What Is Your Pet’s Favorite TV Show?
What is your pet’s favorite TV show? Yes, they have favorite TV shows.
So, we talked about this on the morning show today. There’s research out there about what your pet likes to watch on TV.
Let me start with a spoiler, they don’t binge, they don’t like sports, and they don’t like rom coms.
Not A Big Surprise
This may not come as a surprise to you but they like good ole nature documentaries. An old episode of Lassie, or if they’re in the mood for cartoons, Scooby-Doo. Yes, animals like watching other animals on TV.
All of this comes from a project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine. The school surveyed dog owners from around the world to find out what their dogs enjoyed watching.
There were 1,200 responses, and the researchers concluded that:
- Video content featuring animals was the most popular among dogs.
- Other dogs were by far the most engaging subjects to watch.
- Humans weren’t that interesting, ranking 9th out of 17 categories.
- Age and vision were related to how much a dog interacted with the screen.
- Sporting and herding dogs were more likely than other breeds to watch TV.
- Movement on screens was a strong draw for a dog’s attention.
What One Of Our Cats Likes To Watch
All of this brings me to something that happened to us last weekend. Now we don’t have a dog. We do have two cats. Jonesy, we got as a kitten and he’s now 13 years old. And then there’s Hobbes.
Hobbes was a bit of a stray, having been kicked out by his previous owner and had been living on the street for a couple of years. We decided to take him in at the end of 2022 and learned that he’s 4 years old. Jonesy never really bothered anything on TV, although yes, I’ve seen the videos of cats chasing the fish on a screensaver but that’s never been Jonesy. But over the weekend, I happened to be flipping around and I landed on the Animal Planet and a show called “Too Cute”. The show follows litters of puppies and kittens from birth until they find their forever homes. So I’m watching it, when I notice that Hobbes is lying on the floor staring at the TV engaged by the segment on the litter of kittens. He won’t budge. His eyes won’t move. I’d never seen it before. But there he was, apparently watching.
Trust me when I say, I’ll be firing up “Too Cute” again for Hobbes soon.
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