I’m on a sit with a pair of dogs in El Paso, Texas - pup, Sarah, about 3 yo has shown real interest in watching television. I’m catching up on several seasons of Yellowstone that I missed when it first came out. Sarah is watching along with me - but she seems interested only in scenes with dogs and horses.
The last time I had dogs aruond full-time was in the mid-1990s and not one of the 4 of them ever showed an interest in watching television.
Of course the televisions back then were a lot smaller with picture tubes. I don’t remember if I had a color or BW tv back then.
My cat had no interest in TV. She occasionally looked at cartoons for a few minutes but only briefly…. until that time I watched a “Nature of Things” program on the history of cats – how they spread around the world with Vikings etc. – and she was riveted. Right in front of the tv, clearly watching.
We find that quite a few pets appreciate some form of distractive noise when humans not presents. We’ve seen a range of options - from radio, tv, movies, etc.
Our own late dog, when left alone, was a regular listener to the audio edition of The Economist publication Poor dog . Each article only lasts a handful of minutes and has a different narrator, so the changing voices presumably seemed like there were several people present - bless!
I read that dogs couldn’t see the details on old screens. Now they know what they are looking at. My Rottweiler is very expressive when we watch zombies. hahaha
@toml, taking the contra view then we have looked after several few dogs that have become highly reactive when they see dogs or animals on the TV. Unclear psychological reason as otherwise normal dogs. To the extent that we had to carefully moderate what content we watched ourselves!
I trained my dog to not react to TV/video doorbells and door knocking.
How: I’d previously already trained him to understand “You’re OK” with endless soothing repetition (because he was a highly fearful and skittish rescue when we got him). I then combined that with endless repetition of “It’s the TV” when there were such doorbell or door knocking sounds. He’s had only occasional miscues in the years since.
I’ve more recently been working on teaching him to not bark if I say, “DoorDash,” during a delivery, but that’s not worked, because he probably thinks he’s protecting us from intruders.
Poor dog 
. Each article only lasts a handful of minutes and has a different narrator, so the changing voices presumably seemed like there were several people present - bless!
