(Some adult viewers aren't sure of his gender, but female pups on the show always have eyelashes, and Zuma doesn't.) Skye, the only female in the main crew, is a perky cockapoo, and a pilot. Are you beginning to get the picture? Zuma is a chocolate lab who wears orange and commands a hovercraft, because he's a waterdog. Rocky's a mutt, so he's scrappy and resourceful and wears green (and is afraid of water): his kennel converts into a recycling truck. Rubble, a bulldog, is in construction, and has a yellow hard hat and a convertible dump truck/crane/bulldozer. Marshall, the klutzy but well-meaning Dalmatian, drives a red fire engine. The panicky adult calls Ryder on his ever-present cellphonic device, and Ryder selects the pups he'll use for the rescue, based on the working skills of their breeds.Ĭhase, the gruff but golden-hearted police dog who is allergic to cats, is a German shepherd who wears blue and drives a police SUV. To a three-year-old, a 10-year-old is a god.

At least it’s not violent.”Įach episode begins when someone, usually a hapless adult from an inclusive range of colours and races, runs into mild trouble (real menace is still a no-go in preschool TV) in Adventure Bay where the pups live communally with their 10-year-old tech-wizard master, Ryder. “There’s something completely unobjectionable about Paw Patrol,” another parent admits. “Well, I don’t dislike it.” It’s a common reply. If you ask Cassandra if she likes Paw Patrol, she says “Do I like it?,” and then she pauses. When Dash was younger, he insisted his mother, Cassandra Drudi, sing the Paw Patrol theme song as a bedtime lullaby, which drove her crazy. Such devotion mystifies any number of parents, whether they’re the kind who don’t mind the show, or the kind who resort to blogs and comment threads to accuse it of being simplistic, quasi-fascistic, ultra-materialistic, and repetitive. Sign up for our weekly Parenting & Relationships newsletter for more columns and advice When the pups roll around with their master Ryder at the end of every adventure, Dash slides to ground and rolls around himself. When a pup shouts its possibly cringe-making catch phrase – 'No job is too big, no pup is too small!' – Dash croons it too. He's like a Straussian classicist who knows the plot of the Odyssey by heart but loves rereading the same scenes over and over again, sucking new meaning from each take.īut what meaning? It's impossible to tell.

'Thirty.' He lets the word fall out of his mouth sideways, his eyes never straying from the screen in front of him.

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