TV for dogs booms but are they watching?

By David Silverberg

1. ___Six years ago, when Luca Carano was living in Barcelona with his then-girlfriend, they
2. decided to leave their dog Luna home alone as they went out for dinner. They usually took the
3. puppy with them, but on that night they left her at home.
4. ___“I was thinking right then, she's going to be bored and lonely, there should be something
5. on YouTube for Luna,” says Carano. He decided to act on his idea. He created the YouTube
6. channel Siesta Dog TV which features videos of dogs, for dogs, in colours they can see best.
7. Cartoons as long as 10 hours each feature illustrated dogs playing around in an animated New
8. York City, or dogs watching duck ponds. Calming classical-like or ambient music accompanies
9. the images on the screen, all made to relax dogs.
10. ___One of Carano's videos attracted around 3.5 million views. “I've seen how Luna enjoys
11. these videos, and I get so many comments from people who say they feel great leaving their
12. dog alone with my videos because it calms them,” Carano adds.
13. ___Over the six years since Carano started out, TV for dogs has snowballed. A host of
14. channels cater for the increasing number of pet owners who worry about leaving their dogs at
15. home.
16. ___“People are more closely attached to their dogs than ever before and they treat them like
17. children and worry about leaving them alone,” says Nicholas Dodman, the director of the Center
18. for Canine Behaviour Studies in Connecticut. “There's also more awareness these days about
19. separation anxiety affecting dogs,” he says. That's creating demand for dog-friendly TV —
20. other channels include Four Paws TV, Cartoon Dog Music, Puppy Dreamscape and Sleepy Cats.
21. ___Some videos show puppies frolicking or close-ups of squirrels, others stream loops of
22. squishy toys enjoyed by other animals or humans. Carano's videos, unlike other channels,
23. mainly feature blue hues, which dogs can see much clearer than other colours.
24. ___Making such material has become easier thanks to AI. “Some of our videos are AI, some
25. are hand-drawn, and technology allows us to make the videos set wherever we want, like
26. Hawaii,” says Carano. “And when it comes down to it, dogs don't care if what they are seeing
27. is AI”.
28. ___But do dogs actually watch TV and does it do them any good? The research is mixed. A
29. study from the Canine Behaviour Centre at Queen's University Belfast, published in 2023,
30. looked at the reaction of 50 dogs in a rescue shelter to different screens. It found that dogs
31. spent only 10.8% of the total available viewing time looking directly at the television monitors.
32. ___“The dogs in this investigation directed relatively little attention towards the television
33. monitors and habituated to their presence within a short period of time,” the report said. The
34. authors stressed that traditional forms of dog entertainment were vital for wellbeing. “The
35. provision of social contacts, both with other dogs and with humans, is essential and should be
36. considered the most important form of environmental enrichment for confined dogs”.

(Frolicking = playing energetically

Squishy = soft when pressed)

(Available at: www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq59leg3gp5o – text specially adapted for this test).