== DESPERATELY SEARCHING FOR LOVE WITH DOGS ==
Namaskar,
Here below are a few articles depicting the scene of pet care and, in
particular dog care, in the US nowadays. The rich and wealthy are
spending $43 billion annually catering to their pets accessing services
like pet resorts, spas, & personal trainers etc. Yet side by side, in
the US there remain 2 million homeless people, 15 million jobless and
unable to get the minimum requirements needed for life, and millions of
children go to bed every night hungry.
In addition people have become totally emotionally linked with their
pets such that they kiss their dogs and have their dogs sleep with them
in the same bed at night. Tragically in this materialistic, techno-age
society, people have become alienated from one another and from
spirituality and instead invest all their emotional attachments and love
unto their pet, i.e. dog. In a nutshell, that is the situation these
days in the US.
So on the one side dogs are treated lavishly and given top-grade care,
and on the other side there are millions of homeless people in the US
who have nowhere to live and no food to eat. Such is the growing dichotomy.
Our first and foremost duty is to take care of humans and then animals;
indeed when our fellow brothers and sisters are hungry and dogs are
treated like kings then what kind of society is that. Certainly we are
to love all beings, including dogs, but not at the expense of or instead
of human care. Such are the parameters of our AM ideology.
Baba says, "In many countries the cost of the monthly meat ration for
the dog of a rich person exceeds the salary of a teacher." (HS-1)
Here the point is that we are to care for our fellow human beings first
- humans should not be second-class citizens in favour of dogs etc. We
should first ensure all humans are properly housed, fed, cared for,
clothed, and educated.
Unfortunately, nowadays, billions and billions of dollars are spent on
luxury items for dogs while around the globe there are at minimum 2
billion people living in ghettos, slums (jhuggi-jhopari), and shanty
towns etc. Such people live without clean running water while
innumerable dogs in the US drink filtered water out of silver bowls.
The situation has really become over the top. This is how capitalism
works: The rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Those with
excess money become degraded.
Baba says, "Where there is over-accumulation people tend to misutilize
wealth by indulging in their baser propensities rather than their finer
ones." ("Three Causes of Sin)
The wealthy in the US spend more on indulgences for themselves and
extravagances for their pets than helping the suffering humanity. Such
people are involved in sin, according to Baba.
Indeed, the amount of money ($43 billion) spent on pets in the US is
more than the gross domestic product of 110 nations around the globe,
including countries like Sri Lanka ($41 billion), Guatemala ($37
billion), Kenya (32 billion), El Salvador (21 billion), Iceland (12
billion), and Nepal ($12 billion). Or how about this: what the entire
country of Mongolia spends in ten years is equal to what rich pet owners
spend in a single year.
Please read below to learn how pampered dogs have become in the US,
whereas people shun other humans who are in need.
Namaskar,
Gagan
Michael Schaffer: America's Going To The Dogs
"Pet fashion shows, Chihuahua social networking, veterinary
antidepressants [and] ambulance-chasing animal lawyers" are just the tip
of what Philadelphia-based journalist Michael Schaffer says is a kind of
pet-obsession iceberg in the lives of the American middle class.
When Philadelphia-based journalist Michael Schaffer's dog started
messing the house and barking non-stop while he and his wife were at
work, he went to his veterinarian for help.
"It's called separation anxiety," his vet said. "There's a drug for that."
And while Schaffer and his wife had promised themselves they wouldn't be
like those pet owners who spend a fortune on their pets, they sprung for
the antidepressants anyway — and then he wrote a book about it.
In //One Nation Under Dog,// Schaffer explores the $43 billion industry
that's grown around our obsession with our pets and how that booming
market reflects our evolving ideas of consumerism, family, politics and
domesticity.
But One Nation Under Dog is no dry industry analysis: It's a book, as
Schaffer explains on his Web site, that's meant "to say as much about
how contemporary humans live as it does about the modern lives of dogs
and cats."
Schaffer has worked as a writer and an editor at the Washington City
Paper, U.S. News and World Report and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
~ FROM DOGHOUSE TO OUR HOUSE ~
By the time we finally saw Murphy, we'd driven the two hours of highway
from our house in Philadelphia to what felt like the last rural place in
all of New Jersey. We'd nosed through the town— over a pair of railroad
tracks, past a warehouse, down a short road. And we'd gingerly tiptoed
past the chain-link fence that held Boss, the massive Saint Bernard at
the shotgun-style home opposite the town's small-scale animal shelter.
My wife spotted him first, an oddly undersized example of the same breed
running around the muddy melting snow in the kennel's yard: "It's
Murphy!" she exclaimed.
We'd spotted the pup a few days earlier on Petfinder, the Web site that
lets prospective adopters eye hundreds of thousands of potential
adoptees from shelters all over the United States. For a long time, we'd
visited the site as a diversion, a way to kill time at work staring at
snapshots of wet noses and wagging tails and drooling jowls. We'd e-mail
links back and forth, each of them attached to a heartbreaking story of
how this particular dog was a sweetheart who really needed a place in
some family's happy home. Eventually, we got to thinking that it was
about time we became that happy family.
And then we stumbled across the page that featured Murphy, his tongue
drooping, his watery eyes staring cluelessly from inside a cage that
turned out to be only two hours away. When we arrived that morning, we'd
been talking about him long enough to feel like he was already part of
our household. The woman who ran the shelter mashed a 100-length
cigarette into an old tin of dog food as she led him over. As they got
close enough for us to see the matted dreadlocks on Murphy's back, Boss
began growling. "Don't mind him," the woman said, as the guard dog's
growls turned to angry barks. "Boss don't like other dogs."
Murphy, though, was another story. He was sweet and cuddly and goofy,
exactly as we'd wanted. Of course, we tried to stay skeptical. Knowing
little about dogs when we started thinking about getting one, we'd
searched for wisdom in a book on how to adopt an animal. Don't let those
heartbreaking shelter stories trick you into getting an animal you can't
handle, it warned. Put them through the paces now, or suffer later. So
in the ensuing half hour, we tried the book's suggested tests as best we
could. We put food in front of him and then snatched it away. No
growling. A good sign. We put more food in front of him and then pushed
his face away as he ate. No nipping. An even better sign. The shelter
manager gazed with dismay at this spectacle of anxious yuppiehood: one
of us reading reverently from the book, the other vaguely executing its
tests on the befuddled dog, neither of us quite sure what to do next.
Following the book's instructions as if they were holy writ, we asked
how Murphy had wound up in the shelter— and then steeled ourselves
against what we'd been warned would be a maudlin spiel designed to
undercut doubts about a potentially troublesome pooch. The dog, we were
told, had been brought to her kennel twice. First he was turned in by
someone who the manager suspected hadn't been able to unload this
especially runty runt of his litter: Murphy was eighteen months old and
63 pounds at the time; ordinary male Saint Bernards can weigh in at 180.
Next he was returned by a woman who couldn't housebreak him.
"But she was some kind of backcountry hick," said the shelter manager.
"She didn't even know what she was doing." Ever since, Murphy had been
waiting in a cage next to Boss's yard, staring up at people like us.
"Look," she said. "I don't much care about you, but I do care about him.
And if he goes and bites someone, someone like you will put him down,
right? Since I don't want that to happen, I'm telling you: He don't bite."
The logic was pretty good.
The dog was pretty sweet.
The time was pretty right.
And so we said yes, signing some not quite official-looking paperwork
the adoption document identified the dog as "Murfy"— before forking over
one hundred dollars and agreeing to take into our lives a Saint Bernard
with fleas and dreadlocks and a stench somewhere between warm bunion and
rotten tripe. The shelter manager whipped out a syringe, planted what
was purported to be a kennel cough shot into Murfy/Murphy's snout, and
wished us well. We coaxed the dog into the backseat of our Honda, where
he promptly fell fast asleep.
As we began the drive home, we felt a bit proud of ourselves. Not for us
the fancy breeders sought out by so many in our sweetly gentrified
corner of upscale America. Not for us the genetically perfect beagles
and bassets and Bernese mountain dogs whose poop is sanctimoniously
plucked from city sidewalks in recycled blue New York Times
home-delivery bags. We'd gotten a dog, yeah, but we weren't going to
become, like, those people— the ones who shell out for the spa days and
agility training and homeopathic medicine for their animals, the ones
who laugh it off when their puppies frighten children away from the
neighborhood playground, the ones who give up vacations and promotions
and transfers in order to save pooches with names like Sonoma and
Hamilton and Mordecai from having their lives disrupted. No, not us.
That's what we were telling ourselves, anyway, when the PetSmart came
into view along the edge of the highway. "We should go in— get some food
and stuff," said my wife. "It'll just take a sec." Thus began our
unwitting journey into the $41-billion-a-year world of the modern
American pet.
It didn't take long to realize that the line between sober pet owner and
spendthrift overindulger wasn't as clear as I'd imagined.
I started thinking about that very subject an hour or so after Murphy
nosed his way into the PetSmart— at around the time the
exhausted-looking staff at the in-store grooming salon told us there was
no way they could attend to our filthy new pet today; we ought to have
made reservations a couple of weeks in advance. My wife, who'd grown up
with a dog and had roughed out a budget when we started thinking about
adopting one of our own, hadn't been aware that salon grooming was such
a standard piece of contemporary pet owning that chain stores had
weeks-long waiting lists. Still, without having to shell out for a wash,
we made it out of the store that day for under $200. Murphy had a new
bed, a pair of collars, an extend-o-leash that expands up to twenty-five
feet, a variety of chew toys— that he's never used— and other goodies.
The spending seemed like basic, ordinary stuff.
But as anyone who's read one of the dog-owner memoirs that seem to
occupy about half of the weekly New York Times best-seller list could
confirm, it was no onetime expense. It's a basic law of pet
storytelling: Just as the romantic comedy vixen must wind up with the
guy she'd vowed not to marry if he were the last man on earth, so too
must the beloved dog stomp and scratch and poop on your very last nerve—
and chow down on your shrinking wallet— before weaseling his way into
your newly receptive heart. No surprise, then, that four years later
Murphy has gone through a variety of ever newer beds (he seemed not to
like the old ones) and redesigned collars and leashes (we wanted to try
the special ones that are said to keep dogs from pulling too hard) and
still more chew toys (we have a PetSmart discount card now and live in
the eternal hope of finding one he likes). He also owns Halloween
costumes (too adorable to resist), reindeer antlers (ditto), and a
picture of himself with Santa (alas, ditto once more).
He has been implanted with a LoJack-style microchip that will help us
find him if he gets lost.
His food— or should I say "foods"— comes from that burgeoning market
sector known as "superpremium."
He's stayed at an array of upscale local kennels— sorry, pet hotels—
when we've gone out of town.
On other trips, when we took him along, he got to stay in our hotel
room. One place left a doggie biscuit on his doggie bed and sent up a
babysitter when we went out.
Did I mention he's on antidepressants? The vet diagnosed his anxious
howling when left alone as "separation anxiety," and it turned out there
was a pill for it.
Or that he has a professional dog walker? In fact, the current one is
his second; the first dropped him because she had too many clients.
Or that when we tote up the numbers, he's proven responsible for an
eerily large portion of our social life? Dragging us into the
neighborhood park on a daily basis, he's introduced a wealth of new
neighborhood characters into our life. One of them was a cat whom
Murphy— to his lasting regret— found shivering in a hollow tree. We
brought her home and named her Amelia. And then there were two.
Then we decided to add a human baby to our flock. We'd known this would
mean prenatal treatments for my wife. It was a bit of a surprise,
though, when other prenatal attention focused on treating Murphy.
Worries about how the dog would react to that new child sent us
scurrying into the pricey orbit of one of our city's best-known dog
trainers for six weeks of private lessons. Unfortunately, her take on
canine behavior was so different from that of the guy whose classes we'd
first taken upon adopting Murphy that we went scrambling to the massive
pet-care section of our local book superstore, where we have purchased a
veritable library of books about how better to raise pets.
In fact, both pets hover around all sorts of other spending decisions,
poking their snouts into our deliberations on things like furniture ("I
like it, but Amelia would rip it to shreds") and— most painful of all—
our purchase of an SUV (between a new baby, a Saint Bernard, and a Honda
Civic, something had to give).
Despite all those early vows of pet frugality, I've not felt especially
strange about any of the choices we have made. At the time, each of them
seemed mundane and obvious: A dog needs walking when his owners stay
late at work; furniture and cars ought to match a household's needs;
and, particularly with a baby in the mix, it makes eminent sense to work
on a large animal's behavior. I would say that the story of Murphy and
us isn't the story of a couple whose priorities were upended by a
heart-meltingly adorable animal but, rather, the tale of a household
engaged in what has become the normal way to raise a four-legged member
of the family. And yet when I tote it all up, the truth stares at me
with its own big, wet eyes: I've seen those people, and I'm one of 'em.
If you have pets in contemporary America, you probably are, too. Pleased
to meet you.
There are an awful lot of stories about pets in the media these days,
but nearly all of them fit into two basic categories.
Category number one is that old standard: the tearjerker, the tale of
the abused and the abandoned, the victims of indifferent owners or dire
shelters or youthful sociopaths or simply the cruel hand of fate. The
years I spent researching this book were a big period for such stories.
In Pennsylvania, a high-profile political campaign focused national
attention on puppy mills, the high-volume, low-standards facilities
where dogs are often kept in gruesome conditions as they churn out
litter after litter of merchandise for the nation's pet stores. In
Virginia, the indictment and imprisonment of Atlanta Falcons quarterback
Michael Vick on federal dogfighting charges turned into a full-blown
media circus as reports detailed the dozens of pit bulls brutalized at
Vick's Bad Newz Kennels. And all across the country, the deaths of
hundreds of cats and dogs who ate tainted pet food pulled back the
curtain on an ill-regulated multibillion-dollar industry that happened
to feature some of the world's biggest corporate names.
The sob stories stand in dramatic contrast to the second, and possibly
even bigger, category of pet reportage: the pampered pet tale, the
gape-jawed peek at the animal kingdom's most coddled critters— and the
masseuses, chauffeurs, and pet-set fashionistas who cater to them.
Whether they take the form of a local newspaper detailing the opening
of, say, Duluth's first luxury doggie spa, or of a sober national
magazine like BusinessWeek dedicating its cover story to the booming
U.S. pet industry, the pampered pet tales feature amazement— and hints
of disdain— at what many pet owners now see as ho-hum basics of life
with an animal. Yet while there's a small army of activist groups, and
no shortage of scholars and reporters, who have dedicated themselves to
uncovering the root causes behind the sad and often criminal stories in
category one, there's far less material examining the dramatic cultural
and economic changes that underlie the zany stories in category two.
This is a book about those changes. It's a story about how America's
housepets have worked their way into a new place in the hearts, homes,
and wallets of their owners. In a relatively short period of time, the
United States has become a land of doggie yoga and kitty acupuncture and
frequent-flier miles for traveling pets, a society where your inability
to find a pet sitter has become an acceptable excuse to beg off a dinner
invitation, a country where political candidates pander to pet owners
and dog show champions are feted like Oscar winners. Sure, some tales of
pampered pets still have the occasional ability to amaze us. Take
hotelier Leona Helmsley's will, for instance, in which the "Queen of
Mean" left $12 million to a lapdog named Trouble while giving nothing to
several of her own grandchildren. Such far-fetched stories are part of
what scholar James Serpell calls the roi s'amuse tradition of pet tales:
The king amuses himself. But for the country's 70 million non-Helmsley
pet-owning households, other examples of everyday luxury, once
unimaginable, seem de rigueur. Yesteryear's table scraps have been
replaced by this year's home-delivered doggie dinners.
What happened? It's not like the animals have changed much. As any
nostalgic pet-owning memoir will illustrate, the party in the
relationship that changes is inevitably the human. Historians tell us
that we've always been suckers for that doggie in the window. But
exactly how that love manifests itself, and just who gets to go to the
barnyard dance, has evolved dramatically. Compared to our
subsistence-farming ancestors, we're all kings now. So compared to their
ancestors, our pets live like princes.
Tales of pet keeping can be traced back to ancient societies. Tales of
animal pampering are nearly as old. In China, the Han emperor Ling was
so enamored of his pets that he elevated them to the rank of senior
officials in his court. Ling's dogs got the best foods, slept on ornate
carpets, and were given personal bodyguards. For most of history,
though, ordinary people had to be spectators for such amusements. They
always had animals around, of course, like cows or chickens. But for the
most part, even the animals who weren't there to be eaten had work to
do, herding sheep or pulling carts. Until recently, few people could
afford the variety of animal classified as a petthe one with no
productive job whatsoever.
And so it was up to the blue bloods. Members of the Athenian aristocracy
were said to pay twenty times the price of a human slave to buy
especially esteemed dogs. In Japan, the seventeenth-century shogun
Tsunayoshi so loved dogs that he made it illegal to speak of them in
impolite terms; he instituted unpopular new taxes to pay for his own
collection of one hundred thousand canine friends. In Uganda, the
despotic nineteenth-century king M'Tesa's love for dogs prompted
courtiers to curry favor by keeping their own pets. In Britain, the
lapdogs in the entourage of Mary, Queen of Scots were clad in blue
velvet suits; she snuck one of her beloved brood to her own execution,
where it was discovered after Mary was beheaded. King Charles II, whose
passion for dogs was such that he once placed a newspaper ad after one
of his pets went missing, became the namesake of his own line of
Cavalier spaniels. After the Glorious Revolution placed William and Mary
on the throne, the couple sparked a new fancy for pugs from William's
native Holland. The British Empire has waxed and waned over the
centuries, but Queen Elizabeth II still travels with her pack of corgis.
The connection between pet keeping and power remained true even as
royals gave way to tycoons atop society's pecking order, and as pets
began to prowl the fault lines of class conflict. Nineteenth-century
Parisian pet-keeping fashions, with a proliferation of books, coats,
collars, bathing outfits, and the like, might have put even contemporary
Manhattan's pet scene to shame: Could fancy doggie day cares compete
with wealthy flaneurs walking pet turtles through public arcades? But
even as Europe's newly rich were embracing an ever-changing set of
pet-keeping fashions, there were great concerns over the supposedly
dangerous animals that belonged to the urban under-class. Moneyed types
worried that the blue-collar dogs had picked up what they saw as the
violent, unclean customs of their human companions. The solution to this
alleged problem: exorbitant animal taxes intended to put the squeeze on
proletarian pets. Only rich pet owners would do.
Well-tended animals also became standard upper-crust accoutrements in
the new nation across the Atlantic, where all people were supposed to be
able to reach the top, and to bring their animals with them. As early as
1899, Thorstein Veblen, the great student of American pageantry and
pomposity, sussed the secret meaning of pet ownership for the Gilded
Age's elite: Pets were living emblems of conspicuous consumption. "As he
is also an item of expense, and commonly serves no industrial purpose,
he holds a well-assured place in men's regard as a thing of good
repute," Veblen wrote in his celebrated Theory of the Leisure Class, the
book that brought us the term conspicuous consumption. I'm so rich, the
industrial dandy's logic went, that I can afford to feed— and house, and
bathe, and clean the tumbleweeds of shedding fur from— this totally
unproductive creature. In an age when many people still forced their
children to sing for their supper, or at least work in a factory for it,
this was quite a concept.
This is not to say that pet keeping was limited to such consumers, or
that it could always be ascribed to such cynical motivations. American
pet keeping existed, often in fairly elaborate forms and at spots up and
down the social ladder, well before Veblen took on the pet-owning
leisure class. The inhabitants of pre-Columbian America hunted or
domesticated a variety of animals, but what we now understand as pets
came across the Atlantic with the Spaniards. Diaries that predate the
Constitution tell of beloved family cats. In the mid-nineteenth century,
there was a craze for imported caged birds. By the twentieth century,
pets were a way for powerful politicians to make themselves look more
down-to-earth— the exact opposite of Veblen's notion. President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt's Scottie, Fala, was a national celebrity, traveling
with him to war conferences and visiting defense plants; the dog's
breeder published his own book in 1942. Presidents ever since have
deployed pets the same way— although FDR was probably the only one
threatened with congressional investigation over pet pampering, the
result of false rumors that he had dispatched a destroyer to retrieve
the dog after Fala was accidentally left behind in the Aleutian Islands.
Pet keeping continued to evolve with the country, following each era's
ideas about kindness, domesticity, and comfort. The lapdog in the
millionaire's mansion became the golden retriever in the suburban
backyard; the kitten from the litter of your neighbor's tabby became the
kitten you took straight from the SPCA adoption center to the
veterinarian's spaying practice. Everyone knows dogs are supposed to
teach you about love and loyalty and fun. But I found something I had
never expected when I first glimpsed my dog's sweet, dopey face: the
story of modern America. In the chapters that follow, I travel to
diverse corners of our pet kingdom to experience the often surprising
ways that pets like Murphy serve as a fun-house-mirror reflection of our
changing notions about such universal subjects as family, health, and
friendship— and more historically specific topics like bureaucracy,
justice, consumerism, and the culture wars.
Maybe the most telling change involved a very small piece of
architecture, once ubiquitous, which I saw very little of as I journeyed
around the new world of America's pets, pet owners, and pet businesses:
the doghouse. Yes, one firm makes a $5,390 structure modeled after a
Swiss chalet. But for the most part, though we still talk of people
being sent to the doghouse, the physical structures have disappeared
from our landscape. Their occupants have moved indoors, to be with their
families, in far bigger doghouses: ours.
From ONE NATION UNDER DOG by Michael Schaffer. Copyright (c) 2009 by
Michael Schaffer. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
====
NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2007
The High Cost Of Pet Care
Pets may be wonderful companions, but owning one is a big responsibility
that includes a financial commitment.
According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association
(APPMA), Americans spent $38.4 billion on pets. The association says
that 63 percent of American households own at least one pet and there
are almost 74 million dogs and 90 million cats living in the country.
Food is one of the greatest expenses for dog owners, costing an average
of about $241 per year. The Early Show veterinary correspondent Dr.
Debbye Turner said people can also cut costs on food. Although premium
brands are usually more digestible for pets, if you can't afford them,
no-name brands are fine.
Visits to the veterinarian are also pricey. A regular visit for a dog
costs about $211 and for a cat, it costs $179. Dr. Turner said you don't
have to be rich to afford owning a pet.
The most efficient way to avoid extra costs is prevention. Having your
pet vaccinated, spayed, neutered and getting their teeth cleaned will
prevent a host of health-related problems down the road that will cost a
lot more than the cost of the preventative care.
"The first year is most expensive," she said. "You have all those
full-time costs. You buy the food bowl. The litter pan, the leash, plus
initial vet visit for de-worming vaccinations. They are more extensive
the first year, they get better after that."
According to the American Animal Hospital Association, the average cost
of neutering a cat in 2002 was $62 and $106 for a dog. The average cost
of spaying a cat was $99 and $142 for a dog.
Some veterinary clinics offer wellness or preventive care programs for a
monthly or yearly flat rate that covers the cost of a yearly exam,
vaccination boosters, maybe even test for intestinal parasites. For
example, The Banfield Hospitals at PetsMart offers a plan that ranges
from $15.95 to 34.95 a month and covers routine exams, vaccinations, and
heartworm test. A premium plan covers X-rays, blood work and teeth cleaning.
Comparing the cost of preventive care to the cost of treating a
preventable disease, it is clear that the upfront cost worth preventing
the pain and suffering to your pet, and your wallet.
Here Are Some Estimates:
# Cost of a kidney transplant: $7,000 or more
# Cost of canine cataract surgery: $2,000 - $3,000
# Cost of cancer treatment: $5,000 or more
# Cost of chemotherapy: $2,000
# Cost of surgery after animal is hit by a car: $3,000
# Cost of diabetes maintenance: $600 - $1,000 a year
Some companies provide pet insurance. Most policies cover accidents,
like being hit by a car, other injuries, diagnostics like MRI's, CT
Scans, Ultrasound, plus radiation treatment, chemotherapy, and surgery.
Policies can cost anywhere from $9 to $200 a month, depending on the
coverage you'd like, the breed, age and health condition of the pet.
Most policies carry a deductible — usually $50 — and have maximum
amounts that the company will pay for particular procedures. Some
companies even require that you take your pet to one of the approved
veterinarians on their list. Many policies will not cover an old pet,
certain breeds, or a pet with a previous condition. Only 2 percent of
pet owners currently utilize pet insurance, but Dr. Turner said it is
worth exploring, especially if you have a new pet.
The APPMA says that boarding a dog usually costs about $202 and boarding
a cat costs $119. At least for dogs, miscellaneous costs for things like
toys, training, grooming and vitamins and nutritional supplements, are
the most costly, averages about $380. Miscellaneous costs for cats
average about $149.
"It's going to be $1,000 a year for a dog, $700 a year for a cat," Dr.
Turner said.
