So, This Is Man’s Best Friend? (Published 2011)

Animal Planet runs up the white flag on Saturday night. The dogs have won.

Until now, television has been making an effort to reform badly behaving mutts, with shows like “Dog Whisperer” on the National Geographic Channel. But in a new series, “Bad Dog!,” the folks at Animal Planet, no doubt after conducting extensive research and war-game simulations, seem to have concluded that the battle against growling, biting, territory marking, furniture ripping and garden-bed digging is unwinnable.

The show presents assorted dogs that are expanding the boundaries of bad canine behavior, then does nothing to correct the beasts. Instead, it seems to revel in their wickedness. It’s as if your toddler slugged Granny when she wouldn’t give him a cookie, and rather than discipline him, you posted a video of it on YouTube.

The series opens with an episode called “Bad to the Bone” (immediately following “Houdinis,” a pilot for the show that was broadcast in 2010). We see four dogs and, inexplicably, a monkey that are trying their owners’ patience in various ways, and then at the end one is crowned the baddest dog (yeah, spoiler: sorry, the monkey doesn’t win) of the week.

You learn a lot about dogs from the clips of these models of naughtiness. You learn, for instance, that they are close to figuring out how to drive cars, which would be the beginning of the end for us humans, the equivalent of the moment when Caesar voices his first word in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”

A bichon frisé named Manna Moo has, along with a host of other bad behaviors, taught himself to honk the horn of his owner’s delivery truck when he gets tired of waiting for the man to return to the vehicle. It’s only a short step from there to, “I’ll drive, Pops; you can sit in the back and hang your head out the window for a change.”

The clips offer a certain amount of humor. One dog is nominated for keeping the household awake by sleepwalking, or, more accurately, sleep-running. A video shows the animal asleep on his side; his legs start to move in a running motion; then he gets up and darts smack into a wall.

Yes, these bad dogs have a funny side, but make no mistake about the evil that lurks within. Another nominee has trashed his owners’ house while they’re away.

“Nothing was sacred to this rampaging beast,” the show’s narrator says, as the camera zeroes in on a badly mauled Bible. Somewhere, Satan is laughing.

As revealing as the show is about the extent of the dogs-gone-wrong epidemic, it also tells us something about the people who own these animals. In several instances the doggie depravity is captured on video because the owners have set up surveillance cameras. Yo, people: If you’re deploying electronic gear to spy on your pet, it may be time for a new pet. No need to drive Bowser to the pound, though; he can probably do it himself.

Bad Dog!

Animal Planet, Saturday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.

Produced for Animal Planet by Cheri Sundae Productions. Cheri Brownlee, executive producer for Cheri Sundae Productions; Erin Wanner, executive producer for Animal Planet.