"Greatest American Dog" Is All Too Human

The new CBS summertime show Greatest American Dog (currently running on Thursday nights) is more mixed breed than purebred when it comes to reality shows, and that's going to disappoint animal lovers who were hoping for something better.

The 12 dogs (or "canine companions", if you prefer) and their owners who were selected for the show are sequestered at a posh estate serving as "Canine Academy", complete with every amenity a dog could want. The owners who brought them? Well, that's another story. Each of them seem to have their own issues about themselves and their relationships with their pets, and they're not always pretty.

The first "Dog Bone Challenge" is a game of musical chairs--last dog sitting wins. After that, the winner and the owner got to sit in a luxury suite while everyone else had to stay in one room. Then said winner got the chance to banish some unfortunate soul and his dog to three nights outside in an oversize dog house.

Let's see . . . that's one part Big Brother (minus Julie Chen and the skanky behavior), and one part Survivor for sending the loser to its version of Exile Island.

And then there's the Best In Show challenge with a panel of judges (two of them from dog magazines) deciding who should be eliminated--that's one part America's Got Talent. This week, it was a talent contest between three teams designed to show off their dogs' skills.

Team Aloha (the one wearing grass skirts) won high praise from the judges for the well-coordinated performances between owner and dog.

Team Disco Dogs (the one representing everything you hated about the 1970s) was a disaster, with host Michael hogging the spotlight at the expense of his Boston Terrier Ezzie. No wonder they called it the Me Decade.

Team Bark 'N Wag High (here's hoping Disney doesn't consider making High School Musical Reunion, with its characters aged ten years) was a mixed bag, with the guys in the group doing better with their dogs (dig that skateboarding bulldog!) than the women did. It didn't help that one of the women contestants physically manipulated her dog into sitting down, which one of the judges pointed out was a no-no.

The first to get sent home were Michael and Ezzie, which came as no surprise. What was a surprise is that the competition, instead of singling out the best performances, was set up to eliminate the weakest. There is no Worst In Show at Westminster.

Greatest American Dog is a show that belongs more on the Animal Planet channel than on CBS, which probably conceived this puppy as an attempt to get something on the air during the recently-concluded writers strike. Perhaps it needed better breeding.