Does your pet watch TV?

LauraMax

LauraMax

Cathlete
My puggle does! And she barks her head off whenever an animal is on the screen (usually causing me to jump right out of my skin). Kittens, cats, dogs, bears, butterflies, you name it, that puggle is howling at it.

But what I don't get is WHY--I thought dogs weren't very visual? In fact, I've heard (don't know if it's true) that they can only see about 10-15 feet in front of them & are colorblind. So how does my dog know there's another dog on the TV from 12 feet away if she can't smell it?

Animals are so weird. Fun, sweet, adoring, lovable, but weird. :)
 
I am not sure that the conventional wisedom that dogs are color blind is really true. I have my doubts about that now.

One of my dogs is a tv junkie and whenever I watch the Dog Whisperer he gets bent out of shape, jumping out of the chair and barking at the misbehaving dog and even if I turn the tv to mute.

I am just wondering how those scientist really would know what the dog, cat or guinea pig actually sees. *shrugs shoulders*

I don't know about dogs not seeing more than 10 to 15 ft., I have heard that too but my pup Shiloh would prove it wrong. He used to go ballistic everytime there was a big dog in a radius of 5 miles, he wouldn't do anything about a small dog. But we are making progress we now down to 500 yards and only a few barks :p
 
mine too!!!

my 2-yr old aussie will do the same thing... she can be totally across the room doing something else, and a commercial with any animal comes on and next thing I know it she has her nose pressed against our TV! sniffing and woofin'! especially at horses and cows... maybe her instincts to chase are activated by this somehow... she goes bonkers and DH and I just sit and laugh! we are easily entertained i guess! :rolleyes:

She DOES love Caesar and the Dog Whisperer as well!
 
I have two mini-schnauzers, and one of them always runs, barking, at the TV whenever there are bears on. Over the years, I've noticed that she doesn't respond at all when it's just video of bears, but if they include bear NOISES (snuffling, roaring, that kind of thing), she goes nuts. There's one Animal Planet special that features a bear trying to break in to a beaver dam, and it seems to affect her the most. She does NOT want that bear to get into the beaver dam!

My other dog routinely perks up when she hears dogs barking on TV, sees sheepherding competitions, or hears wolves or coyotes howling. Her ears prick right up and she is totally focused until the next commercial.

My final anecdote is about my cat, Queequeg, who used to sit on my lap whenever I watched "Xena: Warrior Princess", but never at any other time.
 
My kittens watch tv and computer screens all the time. They will both jump up and paw at stuff on the tv as well. It is when they start licking the screen that I make them get down:p.

Carrie
 
2 of my westies watch tv dailey my other westie doesn't really care. One is worse than the other but they both bark when they see animals come on the tv whether it be an elephant, gorilla, bunny, dog etc. I don't understand how they know an elephant or a gorilla is an animal since they have never seen one. Sometimes they run right up to the tv like they are going to go through it just to get to the animal. My one westie just lies on the floor right in front of the tv with her legs stretched out in the back and just watches tv and you can see her little ears going back and forth. She is obsessed with the tv and can I also say with the computer. She likes me to pick her up so she can look at the pictures on the computer. She cries if she can't see what's going on on the computer. It's crazy but so funny.
 
Don't they make videos of some kind to entertain "latchkey pets"?

When I watched "Dogtown" the other night, one of the shelter workers used a CD of "dog laughter" to relax one of the dogs rescued from Michael Vick...it seemed to work, although I admit I feel naive and credulous typing that.:eek:

Lisa
 
dbelden1 said:
She DOES love Caesar and the Dog Whisperer as well!
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Must be an Aussie thing :D

Come to think of, my Aussies are going to herding classes and a lot of times they are quite far out and still watch for and react to hand signals. If they don't I think it has more to do with "selective seeing" as sometimes they suffer from "selective hearing" as well :D:D

Tami, I initially was reading that you have caught your dogs turning the tv on, and was ROTFL and thinking how can I teach my dogs to do that until I saw it was tuning in.
 
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My girl doesn't pay attention to the tv, but my boy has chased a golf ball across the tv screen more than a few times!
He likes golf and animal planet. I swear, he's such a guy. All he needs is a pair of pants to rest his paw in:D
 
LauraMax said:
But what I don't get is WHY--I thought dogs weren't very visual? In fact, I've heard (don't know if it's true) that they can only see about 10-15 feet in front of them & are colorblind.
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Hmmm...I have my doubts on that distance. Rascal can spot Chance in the yard at at least 100 yds away. Also, there are so many sight hounds that are traditionally used to hunt prey at a distance.

Rascal doesn't pay much attention to the picture, but he occasionally gets pretty tuned in to the sound on TV, especially when Dog Whisperer or Dogtown is on. It's pretty funny.
 
Vlad is not much of a TV watcher, only on occasion. He does respond to animal noises and odd noises from the TV, though. He will run up and stick his nose in the speakers and sniff. He did however, like the Budwieser commerical than ran with the Olympics. He would always run up and sniff the Clydesdale horse when he came on. Go figure!

Nan
 
My dogs love watching tv - especially anything on Animal Planet. They aren't too in to the Dog Whisperer though. I swear I caught Dakota rolling his eyes the other night when Caesar was explaining that dogs shouldn't be treated like humans. Oh, and my Guinea pigs watch TV too. Karma and Dharma were both standing up watching Die Hard the other night.
 
My little chug (chihuahua/pug mix -- or so the vet speculates), Maggie, doesn't watch much TV. Nonetheless, at the kennel where we board her when we travel, each dog gets his/her own private little room with a couch and TV in it! I always wonder what she watches when we're gone.
 
DeborahG said:
My little chug (chihuahua/pug mix -- or so the vet speculates), Maggie, doesn't watch much TV. Nonetheless, at the kennel where we board her when we travel, each dog gets his/her own private little room with a couch and TV in it! I always wonder what she watches when we're gone.
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OMG Deborah, I must see a pic! That sounds like the cutest combo ever!
 
DeborahG said:
My little chug (chihuahua/pug mix -- or so the vet speculates), Maggie, doesn't watch much TV. Nonetheless, at the kennel where we board her when we travel, each dog gets his/her own private little room with a couch and TV in it! I always wonder what she watches when we're gone.
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There is a local kennel that I considered using that offers the same ammenities. Also, for $2.00 extra a day, your pet could get a gourmet frozen treat. I thought....now how would I know my baby received her treat? There is just no way of knowing! Hmmmm, I wonder if they have nanny cam's for dog collars?:p
 
fit44 said:
There is a local kennel that I considered using that offers the same ammenities. Also, for $2.00 extra a day, your pet could get a gourmet frozen treat. I thought....now how would I know my baby received her treat? There is just no way of knowing! Hmmmm, I wonder if they have nanny cam's for dog collars?:p
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I think I saw that some kennels are installing "nanny cams" and pet owners can log on to the web and see their fur babies.

If I were to log on, I would probably see my cats lounging on their backs ringing a bell for the nearest human to bring them a treat:rolleyes:.

Carrie
 
We've always had cats (the various rodents never expressed much interest in TV!), and some have been more curious about the TV than others. A cat named Puffy we had when I was young used to sit on top of it and paw at birds on the screen! That was hilarious. Shadow, our current cat, isn't really interested in the TV but she's fascinated by our computer monitors! Nicole (my daughter) and I were looking up bird sounds one day shortly after we moved down here. There are birds here we never saw in NE Ohio, and we found a site where you can play the calls of various birds and read about them. Shadow went NUTS that day! She was walking around the computer monitor over and over again, trying to figure out where the bird sound was coming from! She would stare at the screen, then she pawed at the speaker (it's in the monitor, and how she knew that was the small speaker is beyond me!!), then she'd walk around again, with this puzzled look on her face. It was too adorable.

Carol
:)
 
LauraMax said:
OMG Deborah, I must see a pic! That sounds like the cutest combo ever!
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Laura -- Thanks for the "plug" for my "chug." I think she's cute, of course, but I don't know if she's "objectively" cute. Probably more homely. She's definitely not quite as adorable as your puggle. I will, however, post a picture from home -- assuming, of course, that I can figure out how to!
 
Lilly, my sweet, adorable pug goes infrigginsane when she is sitting on my lap and a horse or dog comes on t.v. She lunges, screams, barks and scratches the t.v. (given the opportunity). She has left a few gouges in my legs when she leaps without warning.

We even put on the movie "Spirit" about the horses and she went insane over the cartoon horses! Hilarious!

Yesterday my friend sent me this link http://www.actrix.co.nz/special/cyberclean.html
and she was psycho Lilly until I turned it off. I think she really enjoys it deep down though. Some excitement in her day :)
 
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