"Seventy-seven percent say they want to be called pet parents, and 60 percent say they love spoiling their pets. They spend more. They’re more likely to treat their pets as human, and therefore, they’re more likely to get fresh food. They’re more likely to get premium kibble. They’re more likely to get a puffer vest at our Reddy shop."
Said Petco CEO Ron Coughlin, quoted in "Who spends the most time (and money) on pets?" (WaPo).
He was talking to investors, though, so take that with a grain of kibble.
Various statistics presented at the link, with numbers that demonstrate things like "Women, Whites and Republicans tend to own more pets."
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45 comments:
"In a stadium of 100,000 people and 100,000 dogs, 0 dogs and 3 people would be named Lem___."
My two English Labs are absolutely members of my family, but I am not their parent. I am not the dog-father, even though I am sometimes mystified with why they do the things they do, like eating their own poo.
What have I ever done to be treated with such disrespect?
If I'm not mistaken, our pets seem to own us...
Pet parents don’t want to be called pet owners."
"Owns. Owns."
"If you see two life forms, one of them is making a poop, the other is carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge?"
This is in most aspects a zero sum ratio: the more you humanize your pets, the more you dehumanize yourself and your fellow homo sapiens.
We absolutely love our dogs, but I find the whole "pet parent" thing appalling..
The trend to call pet owners moms and dads is a cynical attempt to extract guilt money from them. When anyone calls me my pet’s mom I look at them in horror and say, “I would never castrate my son” (or “force my daughter to have a hysterectomy”) And that’s the end of that.
He was talking to investors, though, so take that with a grain of kibble.
ha ha ah ah aha ha ha ha ha
Kibble is bad, try canned instead
maybe Freshpet, I've been using Freshpet (It's refrigerated dog food, super high class, you can usually find it in the grocery store, I would strongly suggest buying it in the grocery store and not the pet speciality stores).
the other thing is that you can buy raw chicken at the grocery store, I usually go with thighs
(uncooked chicken bones are totally safe, they are soft)
"experts" will try to scare you with horror stories about Pitbulls, giving chocolate to a 110 pound golden retriever, or whether it's safe for a dog to eat a chicken leg he picked up in the street
I made my poor Golden Retriever Scout drop a chicken bone one time. He picked it up in the street. And I went into a panic because the "experts" had warned me that this was a lethal event. So I'm screaming at my dog, terrified he's going to die.
"Drop the chicken bone, Scout! DROP! DROP! YOU MUST DROP THE MOTHERFUCKING CHICKEN BONE RIGHT NOW. BAD DOG! BAD DOG!
(If the ASPCA had been there, they might have had me in handcuffs for verbal abuse and male insanity).
Scout (internal thought process): "I really don't want to drop this chicken leg. It's not just a bone, it's the entire chicken leg. I think it's Bojangles, or maybe KFC. It's way way way way way way way way way way way way better than that fucking cheap motherfucking kibble you've been putting in my bowl. You know kibble can sit on your fucking shelf for a decade. On your shelf! No refrigeration! Would you eat any food that has been sitting on a shelf for 6 years? Would you, Taylor?! WOULD YOU?
Anyway, my Golden Retriever, Scout, man I loved that dog, RIP. He lived 12 years, because living with me is easy as pie. Usually. I am very laid back. I got one rule, don't pee in my house.
My new dog, Vanna, 8, (I won't pay for the DNA test so no idea what breed she is) she's got such a sweet life -- refrigerated dog food! raw chicken! holy shit he loves me! -- I have this slight fear that maybe Scout is waiting in the afterlife for me, and he's mad, Stephen King mad, because I had a vet surgical remove his balls.
You want to "humanize" a dog? Imagine a man in the afterlife waiting for you because you castrated the motherfucker. So that's a terrifying thought, thank you Satan, you might have scared me for 10 minutes with that one.
(Don't be afraid of evil spirits, it's retarded. God is all-powerful, and he loves us all. We are all his children).
If you want to try prayer, girls, call God "daddy" and see what happens. You can go formal, too, of course, but if you want intimacy with God, I would suggest "daddy"
I'm an "owner."
That's my dog, Scout.
I own him.
My property.
Try to take him from me and see what happens.
A phrase I utter around my house: "She's a dog."
Now get rid of the word "pet." Isn't it patronizing and demeaning? I believe the proper expression is "animal companion." At least until we have to drop the speciesist "animal" part.
Our basset hound does not eat kibble. He gets meat, chicken and ground beef. He sometimes eats "Cheerios" for breakfast. Spoiled ? Nope. Just an old dog with an old owner.
When I take a pet to the vet and they ask about my "fur baby" I'm revolted. They all do it, though. The more human the pet, the more thousands the owner will drop to treat it.
"If you see two life forms, one of them is making a poop, the other is carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge?"
Shit disintegrates in no time. It's gone.
I once got in a spat at work with a lawyer (she was anal, so of course she hated the word "anal," and I was too polite to point out that only anal people hate the word "anal")
She had the strong opinion that dog owners had to pick up the shit and the pee because it kills the grass and makes the earth suffer.
Me: "How the hell am I supposed to pick up the pee?"
Anonymous Lawyer Girl: "Not the pee, of course. I didn't mean the pee. Nobody can pick up the pee."
Me: "So the earth is suffering from the pee? Another mistake from God? People keep saying he's perfect, and there's pee everywhere."
Anonymous Lawyer Girl: "I just meant, pick up #2. You know."
Me: "The deuce? You want me to pick up the deuce? With my hands?!"
(the whole room is laughing, hard-working people love to have me around for comic relief)
Anonymous Lawyer Girl: "Don't you use a bag or something?"
Me: "You're asking if I use a bag? It's fertilizer! God's great gift to the planet earth."
Boss: "Taylor, you know you're not allowed to mention God in here, people don't like that."
Me: "I didn't do that, I was worldly as shit back in 1998, but it amuses me in 2023 that shit jokes and teasing-the-anal was fine in boring legal jobs back then, but saying "God" to another human being was considered a moral, legal, and ethical disaster by people who went to law school."
Moral: the organized want to organize you and it's fine to resist that shit
pardon the use of French words
sorry France for calling feces a French invention
it just cracks me up a little
As a long-term pet owner, I've noticed the trend - and the marketing that feeds it, incidentally. Petco and PetSmart aren't passive players here.
Two dogs, two cats, one pack (behaviorally). We have an old-time country vet that's terrific, and when I look at the cost of the modern urban-veterinary business models, holy smokes pet ownership sure gets expensive, reminds me of city dentists. Our country vet is much less expensive and gives better care.
The cats get premium food wet & dry, the dogs I make the food for every week, an easy chore, boiled chicken, sweet potato and squash, brown rice.
But they are not kids, or proxy substitutes. They're pets - but also members of family, that's how we have always rolled.
There's a budding entrepreneur who had an epiphany of sorts when the sun hit the remaining nose smudges on a car window of his deceased pet.
He's offering a service to turn those sorts of images into pieces of art to remember their pets by.
Pet parent? LOL. No our cats and dogs are not related to us. We are not sons-of-a-bitch, nor are we mom/dads-of-a-bitch.
“Blogger Kate said...
When I take a pet to the vet…”
For what it’s worth, Kate, I’m a vet who finds the trend revolting too. I’m semiretired for various reasons but I trace a good bit of my lackadaisical career path to my dissatisfaction with the humanization of pets. The first time I recall feeling this way was when I learned that UC Davis vet school was performing kidney transplants in cats. It seemed like an inflection point, as prior to that era we as vets and pet owners made decisions on common sense. Just because we could do certain extreme things to prolong a pet’s life didn’t mean that we should. I still lead off discussions with owners in that way whenever there’s a treatment option that is extreme, invasive, and expensive.
I had no idea what my dog's name was, but I called him Lothar.
One evening in Madison in the 1970's I was walking him, and we met a foofy little dog with a foofy little owner, who was calling it Settanta. Lothar's snout made a bee-line for Settanta's back end. The owner said that it looked like he was really interested in Settanta. I replied that he was probably more interested in Sessantanove. He was not brought up in North Jersey, as I was, so missed the reference.
"Nobody can pick up the pee"
Very meta, St. Crow. T-shirt ready.
My wife and I recently had to have a cat put down. We arranged to have the animal's body cremated, because we could afford it, because my wife was too upset to deal with a kitty corpse, and because it beat digging a hole in the back yard. The deceased pet services company called a couple of days later to make arrangements. The woman on the other end of the line kept referring to 'the baby.' She had the voice of Betty Boop. That interaction creeped me out the worst of anything about the sad event.
We had a Cavalier, who recently passed-away. My daughters, perhaps knowing how much I abhor the idea that I am a pet's parent, liked to tease me with the cav-dad epithet.
The French didn't invent shit. But they did at some point decide stepping in it is good luck.
That's pretty inventive.
I'm an "owner." I use "master" only to explain that I'm not one, and that the dog runs everything except driving and doorknobs. I usually refer to him as "my boy," even though he's now the equivalent of about 95 years old. I think when he's talking to his dog friends he mostly refers to me in phrases that include the word "idiot."
Pet parents want to be on equal footing with real parents. As if the bond and responsibilities they have with their dog is equal to a child.
It is just lame posturing for the childless.
Incidentally, on the subject of poop duty, the dung beetles here in Texas make quick work of the dog piles, usually only takes a day or two in my back yard. But of course in urban settings, apartment complexes and so on, well it just stands to reason if you want a dog, you need to tidy up after them. My daughter lived in one of these in Ft Worth for a while and I was appalled at how many people think it's perfectly alright to (a) pen up large working breeds in small apartments, barking all day long and (b) leave their dog's crap in high foot-traffic areas for everyone to enjoy. I might find myself adorning windshields and door handles if I ever found myself in that situation and made a positive connection, just sayin'. I hear some of the trendier complexes are now tracking down offenders with DNA, at the offender's ultimate expense. Ha: Sh*t happens.
It is absolutely lame posturing for the childless. Some of my friends refer to their grown children's pet as their "grand-dogs." Not me.
And don't even start with the plant-parents. That's a whole thing too!
When people ask if I have a dog, I say Yeah, he's in the yard.
Which he is, technically.
For whatever reason I just didn't think of my relationship to my dog as ownership, even if of course it was. I sure didn't think of myself as his parent.
I've lived with many dogs, but he was the first I'd have called mine because he was the first who chose me. So he was my dog, I was his person, and now I miss him.
Rory, 12:32:
That was wonderful. I hope your boy lives to an even riper old age.
No readering. But then I made up a name for my dog and he's not listed either.
Ps I trust folks name their pot house plants.
People who want to be called pet parents are just immature and emotionally stunted humans.
You are not an adult until you have and raise children.
I read somewhere that Golden Retrievers didn't have cancer 100 years ago (or whatever) but now they do.
I think that's probably the "preservatives" the dog food companies are putting in Kibble. Many of those are carcinogenic in humans, so not allowed in our food.
Canned food is fine for dogs, I think, and reasonably delicious.
(I judge the latter by how quickly my dog eats it). Canned food is way safer than dry, and your dog loves it way more than Kibble. Refrigerated is the best (but it's not cheap).
Frozen chicken thighs, by the way, are shockingly cheap. A lot of "people food" is way cheaper than official dog food. Consider shopping for your dog in the people food section.
I used to find frozen "soup bones" for $2. Compare that to what they charge in the dog food section! Also I always give my dogs human scraps, they love that stuff.
Can't be bothered to care what pet owners call themselves, but can we all agree that dressing up dogs and cats in cute outfits NEEDS TO STOP?
Pets are humanized as human substitutes. WaPo dehumanizes humans in their turn. Apparently, such is the Choice of class-disordered populations with progressive viability.
I also do not like the 'pet parent' idea, I prefer 'animal companion'. However, they do become members of the family. Our beloved boxer developed cancer and died a few months ago. I still grieve and miss her every day.
CStanley,
Not sure I agree with you.
Something like 40 years ago, my parents had a Doberman named Liebling, who had a melanoma on her nose. The parentals didn't write her off; instead, they took her -- seriously! -- to Sloan-Kettering. Where her melanoma was sent into permanent remission.
Liebe, of course, died decades ago, but my parents are still dobie rescue folks, and still ferry dogs in need of specialized care to NY, NJ, PA. (They themselves live in MD.)
As for me: Well, we have two cats, both getting very old (15 years, both). I hate the idea that we will lose one or both soon, but we are doing everything in our power to keep them comfortable, well-fed, well-watered, and well-loved.
My skin babies want a fur baby, but they aren’t responsible enough to take care of it yet. Perhaps when they become skin older children.
Michelle Dulak Thomson,
I understand and didn’t mean to imply that aggressive medical therapies are never appropriate. I’ve overseen treatments, including chemo that I’ve administered myself and surgeries, radiation, etc that I’ve facilitated through specialists, that had positive outcomes like you describe.
It’s just in the aggregate, there are some vet specialists with too much of a God complex and/or a greed motive, and pet owners making emotional decisions that they often can’t afford. I find myself counseling clients sometimes to step back and accept that good palliative care and eventual euthanasia is sometimes the best option especially when considering lifespan and prognosis.
Let me tell you about Alfie, the $600 guinea pig.
We bought him for $15.
He slipped a disc.
The vet gave him a cortisone shot, proposed surgery, kept him in a cage at the clinic for a few nights.
Before I realized that I wasn't really paying attention and told them to feed him to one of the large breed patients they were lodging. Or just let him slip out the back door and meet his natural fate on the streets of Chicago.
They were willing to euthanize him for $45. I agreed. And kicked myself for letting them propose "treatments" that made absolutely no sense for a $15 guinea pig.
Final vet bill for Alfie? $630
This is actually a very positive trend I see in various places on the Internet :) Like literally a day ago I came across this https://listonic.com/listonic-for/pet-parents.html
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