Is your dog actually watching TV? A vet reveals one theory

Dog owners are likely paw-sitive their furry friends watch TV with them when they’re gazing at the screen.In fact, TV has even become geared toward pooches with channels like DogTV, created for them and their owners.There are also plenty of viral videos on TikTok of people’s mutts reacting to shows and movies.But are they actually watching TV — or just staring at a screen of colors?Dr.

Freya Mowat, a veterinary ophthalmologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, explained that while dogs can see what is on a screen, they are likely glancing at it rather than focusing on it — and it’s not something you can train your dog to do.“There are dogs that will watch movies, but they’re actually the outliers,” Mowat told The Guardian.“Dogs mostly watch TV in very short segments, commercial-length amounts of time.“I think there are some dogs that know it isn’t real and don’t mind, but there are many dogs who think TV is just boring.

I don’t know that you can teach dog to be a consistent watcher of two-hour movies, versus one to five minutes.”Mowat and her team came to this conclusion during her research into canine eyesight, where they designed a modernized eye test for dogs that required them to look at a screen.“We needed to design content that was interesting to dogs because we can’t have them read an eye chart,” she explained to The Guardian.“When we see a patient in the clinic for ophthalmology, we wave our hands at the dog’s face,” she said.“If they react, that’s the test – which is kind of embarrassing.

And on the research side, we have these very elaborate mazes that take up a whole bunch of space and multiple hours to complete – very scientific but completely impractical.”In order to do this, Mowat conducted a survey in 2022 of more than 1,200 dog owners to find out what their pets watched on TV so her team could figure out how to keep the dog’s eyes on the scree...