Dog lovers' eccentric lives on show

You live in your car, you are surrounded by excrement, you are progressively estranged from your family, and you spend most of your time speaking in a high, squeaky voice.

And surprisingly, this is not a decline into homelessness and mental health problems. It is where dog ownership can lead, as depicted on Prime's reality show, Showdog Moms and Dads (Saturday, 7.30pm).

Truly, dog owners get enough bad press without this sort of merciless expose. Anyone who has seen Christopher Guest's uproarious mockumentary movie Best in Show will already have some idea of the personality ravages of people hooked on showing their dogs.

That was fictional, but Guest was not making stuff up. These owners and breeders, though their hearts are mostly in the right place, are quite perilously mad. Sometimes, but not always, their dogs are almost as bad.

Mostly, the animals are long-suffering. The series follows several dedicated dog- showers and their hapless animals through their show lives, and what passes for home lives. MORE>>