Heard about Dog TV.com the other day; it’s an online streaming service designed to keep dogs entertained, I guess, as the product is entirely aimed at our canine chums. My two are normally in the room with me for most of the day, due to my job as musician obviously being mainly evenings, but I thought it might be nice to have something on in the background to help keep them happy.
 “This just in; tonight’s dinner will be DOG FOOD!! YEEEAAHHHHH!!!”
It doesn’t seem very effective so far, but that could be due to the fact that I’m having to screen it on my iPad via their app, so the screen might be too small for them to appreciate; my laptop is obviously in use by me, and it’s not on TV over here (although I think it it’s on cable in the US and mainland Europe (although that being said, literally as I write this, Jeff has suddenly seemed to have become interested…he’s not taken his eyes off it for about five minutes now.) Either way, I have a free trial subscription to use, and I like to have it on just in case the dogs take to it. The other reason is the instrumental muzak they use; I’d love to have the radio on, but the lyrical content and DJ speak is too distracting to write against. Dog TV seems to have a constantly changing background tune that stops the room from becoming silent.
It’s also nearly unbearably tragic.
Every now and then they pepper it with brief spoken words, usually said by a child, to get the dog’s attention (it doesn’t work with my two, however…Jeff has now given up and gone for a sleep) such as ‘Hey doggy’ or ‘Good boy.’ The one that twists in my gut like a knife made of dog-owner guilt is ‘I’m over here!’ presumably to get your dog engaged, looking around for whoever is calling them. It doesn’t affect my pair, as I say, but it still kills me on two levels. 
One, it’s a constant reminder that, unless your dogs are asleep or relaxed, they would rather be playing or running, and would dearly love a child to play with them. I know it’s not realistic to keep your dogs entertained 24/7, but when I look at mine, currently stretched out on the sofa to my right (the one they’re allowed on) and lying in a position where I can’t see their faces, it makes me wonder (regularly) if they’re merely asleep, or unbearably bored, wishing they lived on a farm.We live in a flat, and they’re walked every day, and played with, but we don’t have a garden (they hate the rain and cold anyway, so they’d only be outside about 10 weeks of the year, but even so.)
Two (and I think this might be the one that hits me worse) it makes me think–every time–of dogs that never get walked, or played with, dogs that were bought as a novelty and then neglected ever since, merely fed and allowed to live…dogs that would probably be the ones that their owners expect to be entertained by something like Dog TV, owners who make themselves feel better by sticking their pets in front of the channel all day long and think it makes up for their pets’ complete lack of being walked. Obviously, there are dogs that are straight-up abused, but they don’t even get fed, let alone ‘treated’ to Dog TV; they, therefore, are not the image that comes to mind. That’s an injustice on a whole other level; the image brought to mind by this sound is just one of sad dogs, the dogs who hear ‘Over here, I wanna play!’ and leap to their feet, so desperate for any kind of love or attention that even a recorded voice saying it has that effect on them.
That said, if Dog TV makes me feel so guilty that they get an extra ten minutes on their walk today, then maybe it can’t be so bad.
“Are you happy yet? ARE YOU HAPPY YET?!?”
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