Explore! Life as a Dog
29:28
Grades: 3 - 8

Video Description: For this episode of Explore! we focus on the lives of our canine friends and ask the big picture question, “How can we better understand our own senses by comparing them to how a dog experiences the world?” Students meet and interact with Radar, a four-year-old terrier mix and with Dr. Ed Migneco, veterinarian at Hillside Animal Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. They’ll discover fascinating facts about a dog’s five senses, and explore what it’s like to hear, see, smell, touch and taste the world from a dog’s point of view. We investigate x-ray machines and learn how they help a veterinarian diagnose a dog’s medical condition. And through it all, we compare what we learn about dogs to a human’s five senses and how we experience the world.

Type of Video: Program*
Unique Video ID: Veterinary-5**

Quick Ideas for Using the Video:

  • After viewing the video have students write a short remembrance, story or essay about a pet of your own, another person’s pet you have known, or create a fictional story about a pet.
  • Obtain and read a copy of “It’s a Dog’s Life” by Susan E. Goodman. It goes into fun detail about how dogs see, hear, smell and how they adapted to meet their needs. Ask students to brainstorm some of the things they saw in the book that shows that dogs have adapted. Guide the discussion so that the students gain a general understanding of the word ‘Adaptation’
  • Introduce the following vocabulary words to students before watching the video: breed, canine, gustatory, olfactory, species. Allow students to listen and watch for these words while watching the video and write down definitions as they go.

 

*Programs offer long form exploration of a topic(s) in the area of study with single or multiple guests interacting with an audience.

**The unique Video ID can be used to quickly locate a single video in the ET collection. This search function is designed to let teachers assign students to watch a specific video and have only that video appear as a search result. Just click on Search and choose “By Video ID.” Then type in the Video ID as it appears above. Be sure to include the dash.

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