Daphne Merkin had an excellent article (registration required) last Sunday in the New York Times Magazine about the obscene lengths some people go to in order to pamper their pets:
At the risk of drawing ire, I would like to suggest that there is something profoundly awry about the way our culture treats pets. To wit: We spend more money annually on pet-related supplies and services (an estimated $35 billion last year) than we do on toys for children. To wit: The New York Dog Magazine, which features un-tongue-in-cheek articles on whether or not to buy health insurance for Fido (5 percent of pet owners have insurance) and how to keep your canine in a custody battle ("Start a diary showing that you are the primary caretaker," advises Raoul Felder, divorce lawyer to the stars. "Note how many times you walk the dog"), is but the latest entry in a crowded field that includes Dog Fancy, Modern Dog and The Bark. To wit: If you're looking for a place to board your dog while you're on vacation, you could do worse than Canine Cove in Sausalito, Calif., a cageless facility offering a quiet area to watch TV as well as an outside lounge area.
How has it come to pass that outfitting a dog with a $1,380 Hermes crocodile-and-calfskin leash-and-collar set doesn't seem too absurd -- too shameful? How is it that our sense of humanity has been transferred to members of the animal kingdom -- the domesticated and overbred as well as the wild and exotic -- so that we lavish affection, money and moral outrage on them while we gripe about the homeless instead of empathizing with their plight and ignore our elderly altogether?
Merkin raises some fine points, especially regarding the animal rights movement's apparent greater concern for the welfare of lab rats and monkeys over those who might benefit from testing to find cures to diseases. She sets her position opposite the likes of Peter Singer, who want to equate human emotion with animals, and while I find myself siding with her in the respect that I'm more concerned about my sister than I am about her dogs, I suspect I'm coming at the argument from an entirely different philosophical standpoint.
Where Merkin chooses to castigate the pet pamperers for their apparent disregard for human suffering (she opines that the lavishing of material affection on our pets somehow eradicates some of the class guilt we feel for not being able or willing to genuinely help those of our fellow men who are in need) I choose to rudely remind everyone that we're talking about dumb animals here.
Reading about people who drop a grand for a dog collar fills me with the kind of rage I imagine that Zack de la Rocha kid feels when he sees a Christmas special. They're animals, for crying out loud. I love dogs, but if you tried to convince me the only way to keep my pooch happy was to spend $1300 for a Hermes collar, I'd laugh in your face while Fido whizzed on your Cole Haans.
The problem here is not that people are stupid (which may be the case), but that we're talking about heaping luxuries upon domesticated beasts. These are creatures content to eat their own feces and lick their own scrotums while spending three hours fascinated by a rubber mouse on a string.
I can see dropping $5 on a chew toy at Petco, but most dogs, for example, don't require much financial investment beyond sticking a tennis ball down a gym sock and supplying them with a bowl of Alpo a day. If you find yourself buying fur-lined sweaters and jeweled collars for Bit Bit, well, you're a horribly misguided individual who need to die so that your heirs might better distribute your wealth.
Just sayin'.
Some people treat their animals like kids. People who would treat their kids stupidly also treat their animals stupidly. This is no surprise.
Also, there's a long way between $5 chew toys and $1300 Hermes collars. I've done my share of the former and none of the latter. Where I have spent "excessively" is on medical care for my animals. Sure, I could just let them die and get another one, but if I have the money, it's mine to spend that way even if other people think it's dumb. My nieces and nephews (my probable inheritors) will simply have to suck it up.
Isn't this indicative of our consumerist idiocy in general? Polo outfits and $100 shoes for infants that can't even stand up? Over-priced fad-today-gone-tomorrow toys? My brother and I did just fine digging in real dirt, playing with rocks and sticks, and drawing on plain paper. And my mother-in-law wanted hip-replacement surgery for her aging rottweiler. Capitalism sucks.
Okay, look here: I don't have kids, and it doesn't look like I'm going to have any in the near future. If I want to spend my money at Petsmart then who the hell are you or anyone to tell me that I shouldn't? I mean, I hate sounding defensive, but I have never spent more than 20 bucks on any sort of collar for my dog. I do however try to give her the best food for her health, as well as a comfortable bed and toys that she loves. Anyway who's to say that I don't give just as much money in charitable donations to homeless shelters? Why so much anger towards pet owners? Some of us might never get the chance to have a "She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named", and spending a little money on our pets makes us happy. Besides, I agree with Ginger. There's a huge difference between a can of Alpo (and God help your dog if that's what you're feeding it) and a $1300 collar. Big gray area in between, don't you think? Okay now I'm going to go off and snarl.
Snarl away, though I'd hoped most people would understand I'm not referring to the act of keeping a comfortable and healthy animal. Neither the magazine article nor my entry are talking about taking care of a pet's medical needs or ensuring they eat well, but rather the act of spending a thousand dollars on jeweled accessories and the like.
And Merkin was the one opining about people sublimating their guilt at not giving to charity by pampering their pets, not me.
I'm not sure where this became about me hating pets or their owners, because I don't. I've owned dogs before and I will again. The article and my little screed are aimed at that [less than] 1% of the pet owning population who drop obscene amounts of scratch for a crystal food dish or pet pedicures. Am I telling those people how to spend their money? Uh, yeah...because someone obviously needs to.
And Alpo was the first thing that leapt to my mind.
As an owner of two dogs, I've never been able to justify high-priced luxury goods for my animals. But some folks have more money than sense and that's never going to change.
The more ambiguous issue is spending big dollars on things like vet bills. Sure, $1,000 for a dog collar sounds ridiculous because, well, it's *just* a dog. But what about a $1,000 vet bill to remove a potentially lethal tumor from Fido's throat? Is Fido still *just* a dog then? I'd venture to say many (if not most) of the owners financially able to spend $1,000 on a collar - but who think doing so would be stupid - would nevertheless plunk down that kind of dough for an operation to save their pet's life... despite the fact that it would be cheaper just to put the animal down and get a new one.
My brother-in-law's ex-wife is one of those people- an overpriveledged trust-funder who speaks to her grotesquely obese cat in the most annoying baby talk, and refers to it as 'Baby Jesus'. All this talk of collars and food dishes is nothing tho- try regular visits to not only a pet psychiatrist, but a pet psychic as well. I thank the gods for the day Lee kicked her to the curb and saved his whole family from dealing with her insanity
and refers to it as 'Baby Jesus'
If she referred to it as "Big Baby Jesus," in honor of ODB, that would've been cool.
As it is, that's just creepy.
I sometimes wonder if its these kinds of little excesses that cause Anti-Americanism worldwide. Most American pets, even the gym-sock-and-Alpo-grade pets, live better than a good chunk of the global community ever could hope to live.
I think $1300 dog collars are a very good example of "Western excess."
All of you people lambasting such expenses as $1300 collars will be regretting it once our Ape Overmasters seize power. They not only have extravagant tastes, but also long memories--they won't soon forget which of you rabble rousers will need "re-education."
How dare you pink, hairless bipeds not pay proper tribute! Me, I'm all for gilded tire swings and the like--nothing is too good for the Simian High Command.
I find that the more narcissistic and spoiled our country becomes, the more irrational people become about their pets. Let me explain. Pets don't ask anything of us so we can give them as much as we're comfortable giving them without feeling *required* to do so. They love us unconditionally so, again, we don't have to work at the relationship with Foo-Foo like we have to work at our relationships with people, even our own children. Our pets, especially dogs, worship us and lavish us with affection, regardless of our nasty hygiene habits or our lousy temperments.
Pets are the perfect accessory, too. Just look at all the spoiled rotten starlets (paging Paris Hilton) who carry their pets around like luggage and treat them with about as much concern as you'd treat your overnight bag. For a lot of pet owners, it's all about them and they don't want to have to worry about the needs and demands of other humans.
Bravo.
This is something that has made me insane for years. Yes, be good to your pet, but it's still a PET. Yes, you have an emotional attachment, but it's still an ANIMAL. Yes, you can spend as you please, but how do you justify spending on a BEAST instead of a human?
And yes, I have pets, have had pets my whole life.
Makes me crazy.
While I am a huge animal rights guy, equating animal rights with $1300 collars is like equating human rights with a house in the Hamptons or a BMW.
The problem here isn't that animal people are misuguided or stupid. The problem is that rich people are arrogant, indulgent, self-obsessed, and generally stupid -- whether we're talking about how they treat their pets or how they treat themselves vs. the rest of humanity. Anyone looking for a class war has their perfect starting point here.
As Aerosmith once famously (and mighty ironically, given their bank accounts), "Eat the rich."