From action packed reality series to dramas and dogumentaries, no matter where you are in the world, you can usually find on a terrier on TV.

"Dogs are a schedule's best friend," says Paul Heaney of, managing director, Cineflix International, dog-related programming. His company distributes dog based shows including RSPCA Animal Rescue, Animals at Work and Pet Police.

While, pan-regional pay TV broadcasters including Animal Planet and Nat Geo Wild, unsurprisingly, air a raft of dog series, these shows aren't only fare for cable and satellite networks, but often broadcast on free-to-air channels. They are a perfect way to segue from a female-skewed daytime schedule to a male-skewed evening schedule, according to Bo Stehmeier, head of sales at European distributor Off The Fence.

He says: "Dog shows are becoming a phenomenon; we see more and more dog shows, it's a nice niche genre. It's co-viewing and you also don't have to contextualise dogs," he adds.

Off The Fence is selling series including 10x22mins America's Cutest Puppies, which is produced by Kaos Entertainment for WEtv, Unleashed: A Dogumentary, produced by Tangent Entertainment and airing on Sky in the UK and Discovery in Germany and Japan, and Designing Dogs, a one-off doc for the Smithsonian Network in the United States.

Dogs definitely travel and international broadcasters have no qualms airing American animals, but equally canines from other countries also do well. Outright Distribution's UK-originated format It's Me or the Dog, which was produced by Shed-owned Ricochet, has sold to Australia's Network Ten, Prime in New Zealand, TV2 Denmark and Animal Planet in the States.

Discovery-owned cable network Animal