I have to admit that I came in to the Greatest American Dog a little disappointed. When I caught the first glimpse of an advertisement, I pictured something else entirely...a tour across the country to meet various dogs of note, for instance. Reality TV is, in my book, just exactly what the world doesn't need any more of, ever, and so when I figured out the concept I wasn't thrilled.
Still, some of those dogs were very cute. There were all different dogs--little tiny ones groomed to ludicrousness and big, athletic ones. White ones, red ones, black ones. The dogs looked good.
My mom and my daughter and I were planning to go to the library that evening, but my mom called me and reminded me that the Greatest American Dog was coming on and we agreed that we'd both turn it on and see what we thought. If we liked it, we'd go to the library when it was over; if not...well, we actually failed to make that plan. The implication was that we'd turn it off and go earlier, but we didn't make any kind of plan about calling one another or anything like that. Maybe on some level we expected to like it.
We didn't.
The dogs were cute. I know I mentioned that already, but it bears repeating. There was this one reddish and white dog who looked, in my mom's words, like the quintessential dog. If you drew a dog for a children's story book or got a visual of a boy fishing with his dog, it would have been this dog. But there were other good ones, too.
The problem is, the show wasn't about dogs. It was about their owners, and most of the screen time went to the owners. There were sets, competitions, dumb costumes, and props. There was very little that's natural or comfortable to a dog. It was no more than Survivor or one of its clones with a bunch of dogs in tow--and some of the dogs weren't even treated very well.
It was bad. I won't watch it again. If these are, in fact, the Greatest American Dogs, then they deserve a better forum. Maybe even one that's about dogs.
Monday, July 14, 2008
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8 comments:
I have to agree with you that this show was very disappointing. I found the dogs to be cute and I wanted to see more of them on screen. Unfortunately, the owners did get in the way. I did enjoy seeing a familiar face on the show- Victoria Stilwell from "It's me or the Dog." I have always liked her methodology when training dogs. And I was glad to see she gave some advice to these supposed, great American dog owners.
The video is amazing!
It just reminded me of how animals and pets are important to human beings in this modern world, where no brother loves his own so much, just amazing.
I think we all should be aware of the importance of pets.
I liked the show's concept (not necessarily it’s execution)– but mostly the dogs so much I created a song especially for all the great American dogs out there. Check it out at http://www.musicforanimals.org It's a free download, it's fun and it's for all the dogs that mean so much to all of us dog lovers. Dogs Rule!
I caught the second episode and I found myself wondering where they found the dogs. Some of the dogs were remarkably trained and others just your average run of the mill dog. I don't know what constitutes the "Greatest American Dog" but the competitions seem to focus on training. The playing field is definitely nor even and the show seems a bit disorganized. I did get some amusement out of it, I though the dogs were adorable!
The Greatest American Dog is terrible, because it has nothing to do with dogs. It's about the vain owners.
I have a blog about dog politics. Dogs as the new voting bloc. Read my blog: Barleyblogger's Dogosphere
-- Barley
I agree the relaity show is a disappointment.
I totally agree! As a HUGE dog lover I was hoping for much, much more!!
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