What TV shows do dogs love?

dogs For some time now they have become real children and members of the human family, so much so that they share some of the hobbies of their owners, for example, going to the cinema. for dogs.

That’s why the University of Washington is conducting a veterinary test to determine which TV shows dogs like. For the purpose of monitoring the vision of animals.

According to Freya Mowat, a veterinary ophthalmologist and professor in the Department of Surgical Sciences at the College of Veterinary Medicine, the researchers wanted to determine factors such as age and vision that influence a dog’s interest in interacting with video content.

“The method we currently use to assess vision in dogs has a very low bar. For people, it would be like saying yes or no if the person were blind,” says Mowat. “We need more sensitive ways to test vision in dogs, using an equivalent canine eye chart. “We hypothesize that videos can hold a dog’s attention long enough to assess his visual function, but we didn’t know what type of content was most appealing and interesting to dogs.”

A study recently published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science found that dogs are more interested when they watch videos of other animals. Living with other dogs was the most popular.

Most often, dog owners described their pets’ behaviors as active, such as running, jumping, following screen activity, and vocalizing, compared to passive behaviors, such as lying or sitting. Dog owners also had the opportunity to show their dogs four short videos on topics of potential interest including a panther, a dog, a bird and highway traffic. They were then asked to rate the dog’s interest in each video and how accurately it tracked moving objects on the screen.

Study findings:

• Age and vision were associated with the dog’s degree of interaction with the screen.
• Sporting and herding breeds watch more content of all types than other breeds.
• Video content featuring animals was the most popular, and other dogs were by far the most interesting topic to watch.
• People don’t seem to be very attractive to dogs, ranking ninth out of 17 predetermined categories.
• More than 10% of dogs liked the cartoons.
• Movement on screens was a strong motivator of attention to the screen.

“Of course, dogs have a much shorter lifespan than their owners, and if new environmental or lifestyle factors emerge that affect visual aging, it may well show up in our dogs decades earlier than ours,” explains Mowat. “Our dogs can be our guardians, dogs in the proverbial coal mine.”