Pets & People

43% Would Rather Watch a Movie With Their Dog. The Reason Isn't Love.

A survey of 2,000 people found nearly half prefer their dog as a movie companion over their partner. Look at why they said it, and it stops being a story about devotion.

By Sara Lim, Product Picks Editor

October 4, 2025 · 5 min read

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Forty-three percent of people would rather watch a movie with their dog than with their partner.

That’s the headline number from a survey of 2,000 respondents commissioned by the dog food company ACANA and conducted by Talker Research, and it is easy to read it as a charming little indictment of human romance. Dogs: better than men. Cue the group chat.

Then you read the reasons people actually gave, and the story changes.

The reasons are not affectionate

Ask the people who picked the dog why, and they don’t talk about the bond. They talk about being left alone.

44% said they prefer their dog’s company because their dog doesn’t interrupt.
42% said their dog doesn’t ask questions.
35% said their dog is a better cuddler than their partner.

Two of the top three are not compliments to the dog. They’re complaints about a human. The dog is not winning the audition; the partner is losing it, by talking during the movie. Only the third reason, the cuddling, is about anything the dog actively provides.

What that 43% is really measuring is a craving for company without conversation. A dog delivers exactly that: warm, present, and silent. It’s less “I love my dog more than my boyfriend” and more “I would like to watch this film without a running commentary.”

Worth saying plainly: this was a survey commissioned by a dog food brand, and brand-sponsored polls are built to produce a quotable number. That doesn’t make the responses fake. It does mean the fun framing came first and the data was asked to support it.

Movie night with a dog is already the norm

The more genuinely interesting finding is how ordinary this has become. 95% of respondents said they watch movies with their dogs at home, and 63% do it regularly. Whatever else is true, the dog is on the couch.

People also think their dogs have taste. 29% believe their dog prefers nature movies, 25% say their dog likes cartoons, and 30% report their dog gravitates toward classic movies and TV.

There’s an obvious bias problem lurking in those numbers, and the survey caught it: 32% of respondents named their dog after a classic film or TV character, and 16% named theirs after an iconic actor. A person who named their dog after a screen legend is not a neutral judge of whether that dog appreciates cinema.

The on-screen preference runs the other way too. 63% said they’d be more likely to watch a movie that has a dog as a character, 73% would be more likely if a dog is in the main cast, and 35% believe their own dog has what it takes to be famous.

Here’s what your dog actually sees

Now the part the survey didn’t ask, and the part that makes “my dog loves nature documentaries” more than a joke.

Dogs and humans do not see a screen the same way, and for most of television’s history dogs barely saw one at all.

Motion. The relevant number is the flicker fusion rate: how many images per second an eye needs before it stops seeing a flickering series and starts seeing smooth movement. Humans fuse at roughly 60 Hz. Dogs need something closer to 70 to 80 Hz. Older televisions sat below that threshold, which means the family TV that looked perfectly fluid to you was, to the dog in the room, a fast and slightly maddening slideshow. Modern high-refresh screens clear the canine bar. Dogs watching movies with their people isn’t just a cute habit that’s newly popular. It’s newly possible.

Color. Dogs are dichromats. They have two cone types, tuned mostly to blue and yellow, where humans have three. Reds tend to fall out as dark brownish-grey or near-black, and greens read as muddy yellow-brown. So a lush green rainforest scene is not lush or green to your dog. What it does have is blue sky, movement, and animal shapes, which is likely why “nature documentaries” keeps surfacing as the answer.

“The dog on your couch is not following a plot,” says Dr. Mara Chen. “They are tracking motion, shape, and above all sound. A bark or a whine from the speakers will pull a dog’s head around far faster than any sweeping landscape will.”

Attention. Recent research backs up that dogs really are watching rather than merely facing the screen, and that whether they engage seems to track with individual temperament, not breed mythology. Some dogs lock on. Others could not care less. Both are normal.

So should you put something on for your dog?

If you want to be practical about it:

Sound matters more than picture. Animal vocalizations, not scenery, are what reliably get a dog’s attention.
Don’t read taste into it. A dog fixed on the screen is responding to movement and noise. That isn’t a review.
Watch for the stressed watcher. A dog who barks, lunges, or paces at every on-screen animal isn’t enjoying the film. If your dog can’t settle, that’s arousal, not fandom, and it’s a reason to turn it off rather than a fun quirk.
The couch is the point. The 95% number is the honest finding here. Your dog is not there for the movie. Your dog is there because you are.

What newer research adds

Since this survey ran, researchers have taken the question of dogs and screens more seriously. A 2025 study drawing on a large sample of dog owners found that a substantial majority of dogs engage with screens regularly, and that a dog’s personality, how anxious or how excitable they are, predicts how they watch: which dogs track the moving animal, and which ones bark at the doorbell that isn’t there.

The takeaway for anyone reading the 43% and feeling smug about their relationship: the survey found your dog is quiet. The science found your dog is paying more attention than you thought. Both can be true, and neither means the dog has opinions about the third act.