That is really amazing that the dog focused on it for a whole hour. That's way longer than i can focus on TV, when i'm watching something, i'll usually be doing other things as well, web surfing, playing a game on my PDA, playing guitar during the commercials, playing with Zack. It doesn't hold my attention very strongly, though i do like to watch some things in this scattered way.
Zack concentrates on TV, not for an hour straight--as neither do i. Zack will sit and stare at TV for a few minutes at a time off and on all night, the cumulative time he watches is quite a lot, maybe half of every hour more or less. this has fascinated me. I've gotten so i'll just leave it on for him to watch when i'm not watching it at all, because of how he seems to enjoy it in some way.
He always turns to look at it when i first swtch it on, stopping whatever he'd doing. the sounds attract his attention, and the visual stuff fascinates him. Like right now, i have on the Humane Society Genesis Awards (just for him, i would not have been watching it, though i'm glad i did), and Zack was just now watching a cartoon that got an award. He sits and stares at it from start to finish. I cant get over this.
He watches all kinds of things, one night he watched a whole Sears commercial for Craftsman Tools. More than once he has intently watched politicians being interviewed. He will watch anything, news of the war in Iraq, a weather report, i can't figure out any common thread, it's not even just things with people and animals, but often it's some kind of visual design, some psychedelic color display, like on some commercials.
If it's a show with animals, he will often, though not always, get up and bark and run up to the TV and get up on his hind legs and try to get to the animals, trying to get around behind the TV and find them, one day when he didn't find them behind the TV, he ran outside to see if there was some way of getting to them from out there.
Oh, right now he's barking at a segment from the Simpson, Lisa is talking about how she doesn't want lambchops because she's against slaughtering lambs, the segment is getting a Genesis Award but theres no animal in cartoon. I don't know what made him bark. I think it was Homer.
The thing is, he's always watching. Now he's watching an animated dog treat commercial. He was really going nuts over some lemurs last week on Animal Planet. Elephants are an attraction, he watched an entire segment on lizards. and horses or zebras, he gets very excited about, he will bark. Anything with cats, lions, cheetahs, etc. Dog shows drive him wild. He watched a nature show segment about giant ants in quiet fascination.
He likes TV much more than i do. I will look for those DVDs. i looked on the Modern Dog Magazine site and didn't see anything about that, and no search engine. Is it in the current issue? What's the name of the article?
With my daughter when she was little, i didn't let her watch much TV because i didn't like the mesmerizing paralyzing sedating efect it seemed to have, i wanted her to be active and using her imagination to entertain herself. But with Zack, don't feel releuctant to let him watch. As long as he does his dog training class homework first! :lol:
here's a few of numerous photos i made of him watching tv a couple of weeks ago, this was all in one sitting, over about an hour, watching an animal channel. He was watching from my lap, then he got down and watched from the floor, then he got on the loveseat and watched from there, then he got in my lap again, then he got down again, still watching. he was watching a thing on lemurs. then, there was a thing on geckos. Then there was the thing on giant ants. And then, a dog show, which got him out of his chair and up against the tv screen. :lol:
the glasses i'm wearing in one of the pictures are reading glasses. I can't see the TV with them on. He was the one who was watching it, not me, but i get really fascinated when he does this. other dogs i've had never cared about what was on the tv, it was just an electronic box to them, they didn't believe in it. zack believes in tv. cl*p