DogTV: Our critic and his injured cocker spaniel give their verdict on the first day of television for dogs – Aidan Smith

My wife says she can still hear the sickening thud and that she’ll never forgive herself.

These dogs are agog at the goggle-box so what's the verdict on their new dedicated channel, DogTV?

What makes it worse is she can also still hear her mother cautioning her about getting a dog because four children seemed more than enough, this advice arriving shortly before the van did.

Overwhelmed by a Girl Guide on a Haribo Halloween high and a permanently melodramatic three-year-old, my wife accidentally let go of Mabel’s lead.

The driver of the van didn’t stop. We couldn’t believe this. The vet who charged us £2,400 for the X-rays, the scans, the overnight stay at the surgery, the cast on the front left leg and the cone of shame couldn’t believe this. At least our cocker spaniel survived.

But for the next few weeks she’s stuck with me. I mean it’s always just me and her because every member of the family who pleaded with me to agree to a dog goes off to work, school and nursery while I WFH. Now though I mean really stuck: in the cone, in her cage, the local park seeming to be a mirage or a dream, bored stupid.

But what’s this… DogTV? A channel made up entirely of programmes to help man’s best friend cope with separation anxiety and stress? Well, as I say, there’s no separation going on in this house.

And before you query, in the age of wokery, whether I can still refer to a dog as man’s best friend I repeat: no one else is looking after Mabel so in her case I reckon I’m allowed to get proprietorial.

But try as I might – chicken, socks, Radio 4, the occasional hobble round the garden with a binbag to protect the stookie – it’s not the life she’s enjoyed in her brief five months of existence so there’s definitely stress.

The new TV station, which launched yesterday, would seem to have come along in the nick of time. Anchorwoman Laura Nativo promised a “scientifically-designed calming channel”.

She’s American and her website describes her as a “celebrity dog mom”. Nativo may preach calm now but in her acting career she starred in a film called Aquanoids with the tagline “Wow, monsters and naked babes!” which sounds like it was a Jaws rip-off, right down to a “Come on in, the water’s lovely” message from a cynical town mayor.

DogTV didn’t screen Aquanoids yesterday and I don’t think Mabel would like it. Mind you, a schlocky horror movie might have been preferable to silly footage of dogs in sunglasses, dogs playing pianos and dogs juggling balls. Mabel surveyed all of this with disdain.

The curled lip said: “If you buy me a Burberry cushion, I will eat your favourite trainers.” Later, after a shot of a chihuahua dressed as a “cookie-loving Easter bunny”, the curled lip said: “Put me in a pink tutu and I’ll leave a deposit in your favourite trainers.”

I wasn’t really getting DogTV, which was very American, specifically very Californian, pushing lots of extra kit like “food-dispensing devices” and the services of dog-walkers.

“Think of dogs as children,” the channel suggested. I’m new to the scene, but don’t some people have them so they can think of themselves as children and carry on acting like big kids? Or do they have dogs for the flattery? All that power and hanging on your every word, like they’re the President of the United States or something.

Then DogTV posed the question: “Do dogs grieve over a lost loved one?” Well, that was the entire premise of Greyfriars Bobby, a Hollywood heucherama classic. The answer came back: “Dogs don’t have the knoledge [sic] that death is forever.”

Mabel wasn’t feeling DogTV either but then I found out I could kill the philosophising by switching to the live feed and psychedelic imagery which was indeed calming and when my dog cocked her head curiously before resting it on her stookie I was envisaging an afternoon free from whimpering – but then the pictures changed: dogs playing, dogs sniffing, dogs encountering other dogs. All the things Mabel cannot do. How was that going to soothe her? It didn’t and she was soon howling madly.

I must admit that when I first heard about DogTV I thought it was going to run on traditional lines with dog dramas, dog documentaries and dog news – The Canine O’Clock News, perhaps.

The bulletins could have included features on notable dog-owners such as the real President of the United States, Joe Biden, about whom there was so much optimism when he was elected not least because his predecessor Donald Trump didn’t like dogs and used them as insults to abuse enemies and those he didn’t like, remarking that they’d sweated/died/were fired like a dog.

And what about Dilyn, Boris Johnson’s rescue? We haven’t heard much about him since he humped Dominic Cummings’ leg, peed in a No 10 staffer’s handbag, gnawed the feet of an antique table and prompted the order from his exasperated master: “Shoot that f****** dog!” DogTV should sign him up, give him his own show.

Something else I expected from the channel: proper recognition of the key roles played by dogs in popular culture.

Where is Spotty Dog from The Woodentops, Dougal from The Magic Roundabout, Tintin’s ever-faithful Snowy, Dick Dastardly’s never-loyal Muttley? Where are the reruns of Belle and Sebastian, Hector’s House, Huckleberry Hound and dagnabbit if it’s not my all-time favourite, Deputy Dawg? Where, for goodness sake, is Tony Blackburn’s Arnold (“Woof, woof!”)?

I’ve got DogTV on a free weekly trial so Mabel and I may give it another go. Or alternatively she may curl that lip again: “I don’t like being compartmentalised and ghettoised like this. Let’s have a Netflix binge.”

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