Watching HBO (not TV!) this past Sunday, I was reminded of a blog post I read by Christie Keith on Pet Connection several months ago. She noted the lack of pets in TV comedies or dramas (in the larger context of a similar dearth of gay and lesbian characters), deeming it especially odd given the fact that some 70% of U.S. households are shared with pets.
No question. I wouldn’t want to go back to the days of dogcentric dramas like Lassie and Rin Tin Tin, set in a nonexistent but oh-so-enticing rural America. They gave me the sense that people who grew up in small apartments in Brooklyn with mothers who feared all creatures great and small couldn’t possibly give a dog a good life. Nor are such shows fair to dogs, who are given impossibly high standards to meet. Frankie, for example, would not be able to alert me to a small child falling into a well; he’s not tall enough to peer over the rim.
And, I know, it’s tough to give dogs supporting roles because they’re so likely to upstage the main characters. Still, we can do better than our current fare, or lack thereof.
Here, then, are my picks for the worst, best, and most creative depictions of dogs on TV today. I’m not going to try to explain the premises or plots of these shows for the uninitiated. Suffice it to say they’re all very much worth watching, even if one of them really stepped in it, dog wise.
Best showcase for dogs: Saving Grace is the hands down winner. Grace’s bulldog, Gus, puts in an appearance in every show and an entire episode was devoted to Grace’s search for Gus when he got lost. Another episode depicted the death of her police unit’s beloved German Shepherd, killed in action and mourned by all. And what can you say about a show that brings to life the slogan “In Dog We Trust”? Twice, Grace’s blue-collar, beer-swilling guardian angel, Earl, has alluded to a long-tongued dog as his “boss.”
I don’t watch the show for its Last Chance Angel theology, but for the amazing Holly Hunter (who, in an NPR interview, said she doesn’t believe in angels either) and the good supporting cast. Still, I can get behind the dog deity idea.
A Gus stand-in
Worst use of a dog. In Hung, the former service dog that Jessica (Anne Heche) adopts is purely a prop, and an ill-used one at that. Jessica brings home the ailing, elderly pooch — who gets no name or gender, as far as I recall– solely to earn points with her children. The dog is seen only lying on its side in the kitchen; it never gets to its feet. In the next episode, the children tells Jessica that “the dog smells.” Sure enough, the vet says the dog is very ill and will need IV fluids to revive it; she suggests putting it out of its misery. Jessica wants to save the dog for all the wrong reasons: So her kids will continue to admire her. Her husband wants to kill the dog because it’s too expensive to keep it alive (and, of course, because he doesn’t care about it). He wins, the dog dies, and Jessica won’t have sex with her husband. Creepy, unpleasant, yuck.
Update: Alert viewer (and excellent dog trainer) Erica Young informed me that the dog was a female named Doris. I sit corrected.
Most creative use of a dog. On True Blood, Alan Ball’s vampire soap, Sam, the shapeshifting bartender, usually turns into a dog (except when — spoiler alert — he turns into a bird to escape the evil Maryann). And when he’s a dog, he’s an excellent dog, friendly, frisky, fun. And while the idea of going to sleep with a dog and waking up with a man, or vice versa, is disconcerting, I wouldn’t kick either Sam or the dog out of bed.
The death of the world’s oldest dog
I suspect I’m not the first author to experience post-partum depression after giving birth to a book. There’s a sense of let down. The joy of seeing the book in print and, in my case, the fun of getting the promotional videos produced and posted…. that’s done. There it is, a physical artifact, small but all powerful to affect your moods. Will others love it, you worry? Be cruel to it? Ignore it?
And then there’s the big Now what? The only answers I can come up with: Selling the book. Selling yourself.
Aargh.
It didn’t help that, just before the big day, my dog, my muse, the reason the book exists, got sick. Really sick. Hooked up to an IV sick. People joked that Frankie was getting pre-publication jitters. I laughed, but the possibility that it might be true nagged at me. Had I imparted my stress to the little guy?
It’s in this context that PeoplePet.com‘s report on the death of Chanel, who won a place in the Guiness World Records as the World’s Oldest Dog, hit me a bit hard.
It’s not that I felt she’d been taken prematurely. Who could argue with a lifespan of 21 years? No cause of death was offered — no surprise — but I knew Chanel had been healthy as recently as May. How did I know? Because Chanel had her 15 minutes of fame back then, when she did the rounds of the talk shows for her 21st birthday.
Chanel, RIP
I blogged about Chanel, calling her the world’s oldest fashionista – this was still a dog fashion blog then — and citing her appearance on the Today show with Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera.
But it’s not just that I felt I knew her that created my dismay over her death, though that was part of it.
It’s that I worry it was her public appearances that did her in. Bright lights. Bad food. Too many people disturbing her much needed — hey, she was very very geriatric — rest.
And that, by extension, I’ll destroy Frankie’s precarious health if I take him with me on book tours.
He’s a shy guy. He hates car rides. And I’ve never even taken him on a plane. Not to mention, he has diabetes.
Forget Am I Boring My Dog? Am I Killing My Dog? is more to the point.
And now that I’ve put it out there, it seems absurd. At the moment, the only thing I’ve got lined up are appearances at local book stores and resorts.
And, after all, this blog supposed to be a guilt-free zone for good dog owners.
So I think I’ll put my worry about the harm I’m doing Frankie on hold until either Ellen or Oprah invites me to be on her show.