Where have all the TV dogs gone?

The dogs of ’90s television, Thompson argues, offered a “retro feel” audiences craved, in direct reference to the comedies that came before. On Mad About You and Frasier, the foregrounded presence of dogs made unconventional family situations feel more, well, familiar. The Buchmans were happily childless (for most of the series, at least) and twice-divorced Frasier shared his apartment with his father, Martin (John Mahoney). Their pets filled an emotional void that, on domestic sitcoms past, would have been occupied by kids.

If anything, dogs carried more narrative importance in ’90s television than they ever had before. For one thing, Eddie and Murray had regular male names. “Not Spot or Fido or Lassie or Rover,” Thompson points out. “They were characters, equal to the human stars.”

So what happened? You might think the great doggy exodus would be the result of an increased awareness of animal cruelty in entertainment, an issue at the forefront of public consciousness now more than ever. HBO’s racetrack-drama Luck was abruptly canceled in 2012 after three horses were killed during production.

But this isn’t the work of the Humane Society. Over the last two decades, we’ve experienced what Thompson calls a “complete shriveling up of the traditional family sitcom.”