"No nastiness or sneakiness": Why Chris Brown jumped at new show
Beloved vet Dr Chris Brown has jumped at the chance to be on The Dog House Australia, a new show matching families with rescue pups.
The program follows the team at the Animal Welfare League, with Dr Chris providing the show’s narration.
The TV vet says the show has gained “kind of a cult following”, and that people would come up to him on the street asking if he had seen it.
“To be able to be part of something that is just such a beautiful show, it’s intentions are so pure,” he told 10play.
“You don’t get shows like this very often that are just lovely. There’s no nastiness or sneakiness, there are just dogs that bloody well need homes and people who - through all sorts of different scenarios - find themselves in need of that extra bit of love in their life and this animal shelter is all about bringing them together, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.”
Since the show details what led each person to the shelter and what each dog is like, Dr Chris describes it as more of “a love story” than “a dog show”.
“What I really enjoy is the fact that this is a situation where it’s actually the dog’s choice, it’s not really the people,” he says.
“The people come in and they just have to trust in the process and trust that the dogs are going to make their choice.”
With the Animal Welfare League team watching each meeting between the dogs and people, they can make sure that they are both getting along and feeling safe.
“There’s a certain innocence with rescue dogs,” Dr Chris says.
“You see this innocence, this vulnerability, and all of it can be solved by just finding the right person for them to rebuild their lives with, and when you see that match work it’s a beautiful thing.”
Sometimes the dogs had negative experiences with certain people in the past, meaning that potential adoptees with the same appearance or energy could bring those feelings back.
“These dogs have earned the right, through their past, to have a few things go their way and the first of those is being able to have a say in where they spend the rest of their lives,” Dr Chris explains.
“It’s an interesting part of the process and that matchmaking is a weird science sometimes.”
As a result, Dr Chris says that some of the matches on the show didn’t quite go as planned.
“I think you learn something from that, and both dog and people step away from those times where it doesn’t quite work and you go okay, that’s a bit of a lesson. How does that shape where we go from here?,” he says.
“You try and take a positive out of that connection that doesn’t quite hit the mark.”
Despite the spike in pet adoptions during the coronavirus pandemic, the stigma around shelter dogs still persists, which Dr Chris hopes to dispel.
“Dogs in shelters aren’t bad, they’ve just had bad luck,” he says.
“Shelter dogs generally just have open hearts ready to go and are just looking for the right person.”
The DogHouse Australia continues to air on Tuesdays at 7.30pm on Channel 10.
Image: @drchrisbrown / Instagram