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Do you know which dog breed is number 40 on the AKC's dog breed popularity list for 2024 and happens to be what I believe to be the most infamous dog on television? Additionally, I own this breed. Which dog am I talking about? Stay tuned to find out which one.

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Welcome to Family TV Uncovered, where I talk all about clean, family-friendly TV shows and movies that shaped my childhood. I'm your host, Jennifer, and in today's episode, I'll be talking about Lassie.

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I believe the most famous dog on television is the one and only Lassie. Lassie is a breed that many people don't know. And I know this firsthand because I own this breed. Lassie is portrayed by a rough collie, not to be confused with the border collie. I love this breed. I fell in love with this breed from watching this show.

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I grew up watching this show. I'm referring to the black and white version of this television show. And I found it on Nickelodeon, I believe is where I was watching it when I was a child. So you could only watch it if you had cable television. I always watched this show every day when I came home from school.

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And I looked forward to it so much because I just loved following the story of Timmy and Lassie. The show is just so sweet. And you saw the family go through different situations, Timmy through different adventures that always led him into trouble. But Lassie was always there to save the day at the end of the show.

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And the best thing about this show as well is the wonderful acting that Lassie does through every single episode, which is thanks in no part to the awesome dog trainer, Red Weather Wax. That's a whole nother topic that I could talk about, but I don't want to go on the dog training tangent. But I will leave some information on the blog post, if you want to learn more about the Weatherwax family and the dogs he has trained and the generations of lassies that he trained.

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So again, I own a collie. My collie is named Anya. She's seven years old. I love her dearly. She is a great family dog. She loves children. And when I go out with her in public, 95% of the time I get asked, what kind of dog is that?

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It's amazing how unpopular it is because growing up, everybody knew what breed a rough collie was by looking at it because of Lassie. But because people don't watch Lassie anymore, it's understandable why many people don't know. So this show is definitely full of adventure, excitement, but above all about the bond between a child and his dog, a boy and his dog.

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The show has endless loving about honesty, compassion, serving others, obedience to your parents, and problem-solving skills. Of course, some of those problem-solving skills Lassie does on her own as well and helps save Timmy from a dangerous situation or saves another animal or a neighbor.

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Lassie's just an all-around gentle dog that loves everybody and wants to help everybody. So of course, some other values that the show also talks about or that the show depicts are about respect, mutual respect, responsibility, and kindness to one another.

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It's amazing how during the show, because of the time period it's set in, you see children outside playing with each other, neighbors communicating with each other and supporting one another through tough times and helping one another. It's just an interesting time period to watch and imagine yourself in because it is vastly different than what we experience now.

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Personally, we don't have any relationships with our neighbors, except maybe one, people don't talk to each other anymore. Our cell phones, our smartphones are everywhere you look, people are looking at their phones rather than interacting with people. And that's something that I love reminiscing through this show is watching families be families and not having the distractions of modern devices.

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Some standout episodes, boy, there are too many. This show was on the air from 1954 to 1973. And all the shows were in black and white. I do remember there were a few storylines that were multi-episodes. You had to watch, I think, a week's worth of episodes in order to follow the storyline. It was like a part one, part two, part three.

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I do remember one of those storylines being a time when Lassie was separated from her family. And it was a very emotional journey, a very emotional set of episodes because you really see the effect that the effect of losing an animal or thinking you've lost an animal forever on a child's heart and mind.

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And it is reminiscent of personal experience from losing pets. I'm sure any of you that are pet owners out there know what it's like to lose an animal. That animal is like a part of your family. And it's just, it's something that cannot be replaced by another. There's no other animal on earth like the one that you lose.

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And it's exactly what you see with Lassie when she's separated from her family and Timmy thinks he's never going to see her again. But it's also beautiful, again, showing what parents will do for their children. Parents don't like to see their children suffer. And the parents do everything they possibly can to help Timmy find Lassie, driving forever to where they think she may be.

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And I know personally that my own dad went to great lengths to help me find a pet one time and driving to different animal shelters and going to different places where we thought the animal, the pet was. And so it's, this show is very relatable. And also because my own children experienced the loss of an animal a couple of years ago, our cat disappeared.

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So again, we went all the animal shelters, looked online, made ads, talking to neighbors. It's something that made us talk to our neighbors, but unfortunately we never ended up finding our animal. But again, this show above all shows the bonds between humans and their pets. And how important they are to our lives.

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Now, the Lassie that I'm talking about was when Lassie and Timmy were the stars. And Timmy was portrayed by Jeff Provost. But the show did start before these characters. It was actually another family played by, I think the name was Tom. The original series started with...

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Now, the series did start before Jeff Provost came to the scene. And it started with a boy named Tom Reddick who played, I can't remember his character name. Anyways, the show had a different set of characters before it switched to John Provost, Hugh Riley, and June Lockhart, who played the mom and the dad to Timmy in the show.

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The show is so heartwarming and it's just always been one of my personal favorites. It's something that I strongly urge you to give a chance and watch it. Your kids can definitely watch it on their own. There's nothing but positive messages in this show. I wish more people would watch it just because it was such a great show.

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So where can you watch Lassie right now? Currently, the only way I've been able to watch it is through YouTube. You can search on YouTube for Lassie episodes, and there's a bunch of episodes that will populate that you can binge watch to your liking. This show just has such a lasting legacy.

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Obviously, it does because I'm still talking about it. And the few people I run into in public when I'm out with my dog, my own dog, people that come up to me and say, Lassie, or they know Lassie. There's so many times when we're out in the streets when people say Lassie. And I have to tell them, and it surprises me because like, okay, there are a few people that know who Lassie was.

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So if you grew up watching Lassie, I would love to hear from you about your favorite moments. I would love to hear from you if you've ever owned a Collie or currently own a Collie. It would be nice to meet some other Collie owners. You can send me a www.familytvuncovered.com.

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That brings us to the end of this Family TV Uncovered episode. I hope you enjoyed learning about Lassie. If you liked this episode, please leave a review. Help me grow this podcast by sharing it with your family and friends. And thank you again for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode.