Every time my parents leave the house, they turn the TV on for their dog, Jake. Dinner out, grocery store, visiting friends, it doesn’t matter.
Before they walk out, Jake gets his water bowl filled, whatever blanket he likes is arranged on the couch, and the TV goes on.
My parents would probably argue that Jake is basically a small person covered in fur and therefore obviously needs entertainment. I’ve always thought it was a little ridiculous.
Psychology makes it seem much less ridiculous than I thought.
The bond works like every other attachment relationship
The relationship people have with their dogs can function like a real attachment bond, the kind psychologists usually study between parents and children or between romantic partners. It’s not a metaphor. The emotional machinery is the same.
Sigal Zilcha-Mano, a psychologist at IDC Herzliya in Israel, along with Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver, applied attachment theory directly to human-pet relationships.
They found that dogs can serve as safe havens, meaning people turn to them when upset, and as secure bases, meaning their presence makes owners more confident about taking on challenges.
Jake does both. My mom talks to him after a hard day. My stepdad is visibly calmer when Jake is lying at his feet.
The dog isn’t solving anything. He’s there, and for an attachment figure, being there is most of the job.
Lawrence Kurdek, a psychologist at Wright State University, found something else that surprised even researchers in the field.
In a study of nearly a thousand dog owners, participants reported being more likely to turn to their dogs for comfort when distressed than to their mothers, fathers, siblings, best friends, or children. Only romantic partners ranked higher.
And the attachment runs in both directions. Dogs use their owners as a secure base too.
In experiments, dogs were more willing to take on a difficult or unfamiliar task when their owner was in the room. An unfamiliar person didn’t produce the same effect.
Once you see it as a relationship, the departure rituals make sense
When we leave people we love, we rarely just disappear without trying to soften it somehow.
You text your partner when you get there. You leave a note for your kid. You tell someone there’s dinner in the fridge. You say call me if you need anything, even when you both know they won’t.
With a dog, you can’t do most of that. You can’t explain that you’ll be back in two hours. You can’t promise you’re not leaving forever. You can’t leave a note.
So you fill the water bowl. Put the favorite toy where they can reach it. Lay the blanket out. Maybe turn on the TV so the house doesn’t go completely silent the second the door shuts.
Maybe you say Be good, buddy even though you know he doesn’t speak English and has no plans to be anything other than asleep in four minutes.
The details are different from what you’d do for a person. The impulse is the same: I’m leaving, but I want this place to still feel okay while I’m gone.
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Part of the ritual is for the person leaving, not just the dog staying behind
If you’re attached to someone, separation affects you too.
There’s a tiny discomfort for my parents when they’re walking out the door while Jake is staring at them from the couch like they’ve personally betrayed him. His ears go flat. He doesn’t follow them to the door. He just watches.
My parents can’t tell Jake they’ll be back after dinner. But they can turn on whatever show they’ve apparently decided he enjoys and tell themselves, okay, he’s settled.
That doesn’t make the gesture fake or selfish. A lot of caregiving rituals work both ways. They comfort the one being left behind, but they also help the person leaving tolerate walking out the door.
The parent who tucks the blanket tighter before heading to work isn’t keeping the child warm. They’re doing something with the tenderness they can’t take with them.
The partner who sets up coffee the night before isn’t saving someone five minutes. They’re saying I thought about you before you were even awake.
The TV probably matters less than the routine around it
Dogs are sensitive to their owners and to familiar patterns. Research on dog-human attachment shows that an owner’s presence can meaningfully change how a dog behaves, and that separation problems are often tied to the strength and quality of the bond.
That sensitivity to routine cuts both ways. A dog who knows the sequence, the same sounds and movements and small rituals before the door opens, may find the departure easier to absorb.
The routine itself becomes a kind of signal: this is how leaving works, and it includes the part where you come back.
So maybe Jake watches every second of whatever is on. Maybe he’s asleep before my parents reach the end of the driveway. There’s no way to know, and it probably doesn’t matter much either way.
The interesting part is that they’ve built a departure routine around making Jake’s world feel familiar when they aren’t in it. The TV is one piece of a larger sequence: water, blanket, toy, noise, goodbye. The same order every time.
People do this with each other constantly. We drop pieces of normal life behind so absence feels less abrupt. A jacket draped over a chair. A voicemail someone keeps. A playlist left playing in an empty apartment. The objects aren’t the point. The continuity is.
The TV isn’t a cure for everything
The television isn’t a treatment for a dog with serious separation anxiety.
If a dog is panicking, destroying things, hurting itself, or showing intense distress whenever an owner walks out, that’s a different issue and may need help from a veterinarian or a behavior professional.
And the research on pet attachment is more complicated than it might seem. Hal Herzog, a psychologist at Western Carolina University, reviewed more than a hundred studies and found that the link between pet attachment and wellbeing is surprisingly mixed.
Strong bonds with pets don’t automatically make people happier, and in some cases, owners with anxious attachment styles toward their pets reported more psychological distress, not less.
So the point isn’t that every dog-owner bond is healthy or that flipping a switch makes everything fine. Sometimes people just think their dog likes noise. Sometimes the TV is already on and nobody bothered to turn it off.
I’m probably going to stop making fun of my parents quite as much when they put the TV on for Jake before dinner. He may not care what’s playing. He may be asleep before they’re out of the driveway.
But they get in the car a little easier. That’s what the whole routine was always for.
