The Longest-Running UK Television Show About Dogs
There are many reasons to take your dog for a lavish grooming session, but one of the biggest reasons is if they are set to be a star on television.
Nowadays, this would most likely be appearing at the annual Crufts dog show, but for nearly four decades, there was another show that a dog with the right skills could become a star on.
First airing on BBC Two in 1976, One Man and His Dog was a televised set of sheepdog trials that would continue to run until 2012 and can still be seen today as a special episode of the show Countryfile.
As with other sheepdog trials, the show demonstrated the skill and intelligence of the dog, as well as the command of their owner, as they would guide their dog to lead sheep through gates, into rings, separate an individual sheep from the rest and move it into a pen, all while a set of judges watched.
It was originally and most famously hosted by naturalist and writer Phil Drabble who had a very authentic and unique delivery, and was somewhat infamous for being exceptionally forthright in his opinions.
He turned down the hosting duties of One Man and His Dog because he thought the show would be boring. Its peak audience viewership of eight million in the early 1980s suggested there were quite a few people who might have disagreed.
He would later host it for 18 years and would be nearly 80 years old when he finally left the show in 1993, by which time both he and it had become national treasures.
The show continued as a regular series until 1999 when it instead aired an annual series of special episodes. This continued until 2012 as a standalone show, and the competition still exists as an annual fixture of Countryfile.
When it comes to dog-themed game shows, they either seem to only air for a very short space of time or become a regular fixture for a generation. Either way, it made stars of many dogs and created a demand for grooming at the same time.
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