Herrrmerrn will teach your dog to french kiss. Full mouth, full tongue, full dog kissing classes.
In the wild, wonderful world of internet absurdity, few sketches have licked the line between funny and feral quite like School of French Kissing for Dogs. Originally released on Funny or Die in 2011, the short film—created by Heather Anne Campbell and directed by Payman Benz—imagines a training academy dedicated to teaching canines the fine art of “full mouth, full tongue” kissing. Yes. With humans.
The tone is pure parody: part mockumentary, part fever dream, part grotesque mirror held up to our deranged culture of pet worship. The school’s fictional founder, a deadpan instructor of “intimate interspecies connection,” takes viewers through the curriculum with the earnestness of a yoga guru and the ethics of a mad scientist. The result is so disturbingly sincere it loops back to hilarious.
Like the best satire, School of French Kissing for Dogs works because it’s almost believable. In a world where people buy prams for pugs and book chakra-cleansing retreats for schnauzers, a French-kissing academy doesn’t feel that far-fetched. The sketch exposes the strange elasticity of human affection—how easily love for our pets mutates into performance, indulgence, and faintly erotic weirdness.
Of course, no dogs were harmed or smooched in the making of the video (though several reputations may have been). It’s comedy that makes you wince as much as you laugh, the kind that dares you to examine where tenderness becomes transgression.
And perhaps that’s the enduring appeal of the piece: it’s not about dogs at all, really. It’s about us—our loneliness, our craving for connection, and our endless, tongue-in-cheek attempts to make meaning in a world that’s already gone barking mad.