Radio News
by Michael Schaffer

I’ll be on Fresh Air with Terry Gross tomorrow (Wednesday).

The Carnivorous Animal’s Dillemma
by Michael Schaffer

Pet Connection’s very smart Christie Keith has a story on SFgate about the phenomenon of raw feeding for dogs and cats.

I spent a bunch of time writing about that in the food chapter of my book. As with most of the other things I wrote about, I was most interested in what it said about humans and where we are as a society. Just as the pet food of the 1950s was a pretty good reflection of the TV-dinner era, so too is today’s pet food, with a diversity stretching from Wal-Mart’s bestselling house brand to an endless procession of high-end, organic boutique indie brands.

At the top of the line, price-wise, is raw food, which plays to our modern attention with nature, and more fear that we’ve lost touch with the natural order. In the wild, the argument goes, wolves didn’t have baked food that looked like breakfast cereal: They had prey, which they ate raw. So there are now a few lines of food that come raw, some with a bit of bone mixed in on the logic that a wolf would consume some bone while devouring a rabbit. Of course, the ground-up, freezer-friendly stuff isn’t good enough for advocates of the “prey model,” who note that wild wolves didn’t have precut medallions to eat, but had to rip flesh from bone. This model suggests people ought to feed whole chunks of carcass to their pets, no matter the consequences to the living-room carpet.

Anyway, I felt like the whole scene was pretty telling about our human fads and phobias with regards to food and nutrition–not that those fads and phobias are at all wrong, given what the melamine scandal has taught us. Christie is right to analogize it to the locavore and slow-food movements in human-eating. No matter what nutritionists say about how complicated it is to feed a pet a balanced diet on a DIY basis, there are a lot of people who for pretty good reasons think it’s better to try.

Christie writes:

To most people, pet food is something that comes in a bag or can. The package might be illustrated with pictures of meat chunks, vegetables and grains, but what’s inside is probably the most thoroughly processed food product on the market.

Still, quite a few dog and cat owners are deciding that packaged food isn’t the only way to feed their pets. Over the last two decades, they’ve become a vocal movement advocating food for pets made with whole, fresh, minimally processed and usually raw ingredients.

…

Most of those people, when they did mention raw diets to their veterinarians, got a lecture about the dangers of homemade diets and raw foods in particular. A lot of vets think it’s impossible to make a homemade meal for a dog or cat without a PhD in nutrition and a food laboratory in the garage. And a raw diet? Given the amount of bacteria in raw meat, they say, that’s a recipe for sickness and death for your pets.

So why do so many pet owners insist on feeding raw diets to their pets? And why is the modern raw pet food movement not just alive, but growing?

If the terms “slow food” and “locavore” come to mind, you’re on the right track. Modern raw feeders aren’t crazy, back-to-nature hippies or indulgent pet parents trying to spoil their fur babies with grass-fed steak tartare. They’re part of a much larger movement interested in doing right by farm animals, the planet and their local economies.

Read the whole thing here. Or check out Chapter 11 of my book.

Home News
by Michael Schaffer

I have a piece out in the Boston Globe’s “Ideas” section about the phenomenon that undergirds a lot of the changes I wrote about in my book–the social promotion of pets from man’s best friend to America’s ersatz child. You can read it here. There’s also a Q and A with me from TIME magazine here. I taped an interview with Terry Gross last week for Fresh Air on NPR. It’s supposed to air shortly, though I’m not sure of the date. And I have a number of other radio gigs in the next few weeks: public radio’s Marketplace (air date undetermined; it’s soon), To The Best of Our Knowledge (April 12); Pet Life Radio’s Oh, Behave! (podcast); KERA-FM’s Think! (April 2); Wisconsin Public Radio’s Conversations with Kathleen Dunn (April 8); WHYY-FM’s Radio Times (April 9); and more still to come. By which point you’ll pretty much be sick of One Nation Under Dog.

Another Dog Book
by Michael Schaffer

Speaking of books, word is that Michael Vick–currently serving 23 months on dog-fighting charges–is shopping a book of his own, which will tell his story of a rise from poverty to NFL stardom and a subsequent descent to become quite possibly the most loathed person in America. Vick is also in bankruptcy proceedings, accordng to Rush & Molloy, which may explain his sudden literary motivation.  Coverage of that angle leads to the sort of awesome pet-era jurisprudential conundrum that I wrote a lot about in my own book: Had Vick crimes hurt humans, the law would have made it impossible for him to benefit from a book that traded on his notoreity. But the “Son of Sam” laws, which would hand over his earnings to those he wounded, apparently don’t apply to people who kill and maim animals. Although I have a feeling that there’s a lawyer somewhere out there willing to put that question to the test.

Pets and Jobs
by Michael Schaffer

It’s official, via the CBS Evening News: Two of the top four recession-proof jobs in the country, as measured by the guy who wrote a book on the subject of recession-proof jobs, are in the pet industry: Veterinary technicians are number two and veterinarians themselves are number four. The CBS story goes on to profile a woman who was bored with her corporate job and decided to train as a vet tech–essentially a nurse for the four-legged world. She’s always loved animals, and she’s much happier now. But aren’t pets the ultimate case of discretionary spending, asked reporter Jim Axelrod. Not so, quoth a talking head, who explained that things have changed, and pets are a lot more like family–creatures we’ll scrimp and save in order to provide for. Memo to Axelrod: I just wrote a whole book on that subject! And it comes out tomorrow! I’d be happy to be your talking head.

Or you could just rely on Uncle Sam: In 2007, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its first ever report on pet services, predicting 19 percent growth over the coming decade. “Pet owners—including a large number of baby boomers, whose disposable income is expected to increase as they age—are expected to increasingly purchase grooming services, daily and overnight boarding services, training services, and veterinary services, resulting in more jobs for animal care and service workers,” it concluded. “As more pet owners consider their pets part of the family, demand for luxury animal services and the willingness to spend greater amounts of money on pets should continue to grow.”

Tax Tips
by Michael Schaffer

It’s official: You can’t deduct your dog as a dependant. From the Charlotte Observer’s blog:

A free tax tip from Patsy Schober of H&R Block in Charlotte: No matter how much your dog is a part of the family, expenses and all, you may not declare Butch or Snowball as a deduction.

“As long as pets don’t have a Social Security number, you can’t count them as dependents,” she says.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Add it to the $43 billion tab…
by Michael Schaffer

Via ZooToo, here’s an AP story about one of those costs of pet ownership that doesn’t pop up in the consumer stats: For the first time, the federal Centers for Disease Control has done a formal study of injuries from falls caused by pets. Cats and dogs, the story reports, cause 86,000 serious falls each year. “Serious” is defined as requiring a trip to the emergency room. Like the cost of treating bites or the cost of cleaning poop from streets and parks, these are part of the broader social bill for a pet-smitten society. All of these factors can probably be mitigated by owners’ behavior, but never quite eliminated.

The story quotes Judy Stevens, an epidemiologist and co-author of the report:

Stevens, an injury researcher, said she got the idea for the study after getting asked at conferences about falls caused by pets. The report was released Thursday and is being published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Researchers looked at emergency department reports for 66 U.S. hospitals for 2001 through 2006. They checked patient charts for mentions of dogs and cats involved in nonfatal injuries.

From that, they concluded that about 3 out of every 10,000 people annually suffer fall-related injuries from cats or dogs that are serious enough to send someone to the hospital.

The rate was nearly twice as high for people 75 and older. And women were two times more likely to be injured than men.

The story goes on to report that most cat-related falls involved tripping over the animals, which is kind of a relief. I’d been curious about how else they could cause people to fall.

Now, before you get ready to string up Fluffy and Fido, consider that car accidents injure 3.4 million people each year, golf-car incidents wound 147,696, an baseball and softball lead to 108,300  hospital visits annually just for kids between 5 and 14.

When Disaster Strikes
by Michael Schaffer

The blog at Tails magazines highlights this story about plans to deal with pets in disaster situations:

A powerful trifecta has agreed to partner for the sake of animals in emergencies. The American Red Cross, American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), andAmerican Veterinary Medical Foundation (AVMF) have signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) as a way of laying the groundwork for cooperative action on emergency preparedness and response. The partnership allows for enhanced organization of emergency responders on behalf of animals in the wake of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. Under the terms of the MOS, responders will mobilize during both local and national efforts.

In major national disasters, such as hurricanes and forest fires, an average of 100,000 animals, including pets and livestock, become separated from their guardians or owners. One of the prime objectives of the MOU is to reduce these numbers. The AVMA will serve as technical adviser to the Red Cross regarding aspects of disaster response related to animals.

In my book, one of the themes I found over and over again was the increased centrality of pets in people’s lives, and how the institutions of society are–slowly, not always effectively–grappling with it. On some places, this involves battles over leash-laws in public parks, battles that indicate that pet owners are willing to agitate to use their share of public space in ways they need. In other places, it takes the form of pet-friendly offices or restaurants or hotels, an indication that the people who run those offices, restaurants, or hotels see that there’s money to be made from folks who travel with their animals. (Walking the dog is a great reason to leave work right at quittin’ time; letting workers bring the dog helps undercut that reasoning, too.)

But none of those are life-and-death issues. I was fascinated to find a study that indicated one top reason cited by people for not wanting to leave abusive spouses and partners was fear for what those people would do to pets left behind. Most battered-women’s shelters typically don’t allow pets, which means its either stay in a terrible situation with your animal, or leave the animal behind. In response to this research, a bunch of shelters have either okayed pets or teamed up with fostering programs.

Likewise, as the above news shows, Katrina helped vividly illustrate that people won’t just leave the dog and cat at home as the waters rise. Because pets weren’t permitted on evacuation busses or in shelters, some people opted not to flee–and others were justly outraged at the pet carnage caused by the omission. (This shouldn’t have surprised anyone who’d watched previous evacuations unfold, but it did). After the storm, Congress passed a law requiring local and state disaster plans to include pets. Like the partnership between the red cross and the vet groups, it’s not simple altruism at work: They’ve realized that you can’t help some humans unless you help their pets, too.

A Dose of Bling
by Michael Schaffer

The economy may be in the dumps and the banks may be failing, but there’s still time for well-dressed pooches. So much for recession chic: This month’s Luxury Pet Pavillion has crowned a winner of its coveted Best-Dressed award. I’ll leave it to you to ponder what this means about American culture–I’m off to avoid my own daily money-making duties by walking my dog.

Congrats, at any rate, to Bobby Gorgeous the Pomeranian, below, and his “parent,” Guylynn Gia:

The Dogs of (Post-) War
by Michael Schaffer

It’s the best of times and the worst of times for Iraqi pets.

Today’s Los Angeles Times reports that pet stores are seeing business boom in newly (relatively) peaceful Baghdad:

The pet industry was a sleepy trade in Saddam Hussein’s final years, hampered by international economic sanctions and an ever-shrinking middle class. The most exotic pets were generally bought by elite families, who could afford expensive animals, whether a monkey or a Siamese kitten. Then came the violence of the last few years: The Ghazel market, on a main boulevard in downtown Baghdad, has weathered two bombings since 2007.

But now, with bloodshed down and civil servants earning higher salaries, families are enjoying their spending power, the relative calm and the freedom to buy luxuries unavailable in sanctions-era Iraq. 

Even dogs, traditionally considered unclean in Islam, have become popular…

So far, so good. But just a week earlier, the New York Times featured a harrowing report on another byproduct of (comparative) peace: Baghdad’s municipal government, freed from having to spend all its time dealing with bombings and the like, is now able to turn its attention to the city’s strays. Unfortunately, turning its attention to the dogs tends to involve…killing them, en masse:

While human beings in Iraq were killing each other in huge numbers, they ignored the dogs, which in turn multiplied at an alarming rate. Now stray dogs are such a menace that municipal workers are hunting them down, slaughtering some 10,000 in Baghdad just since December….

One of the dog control officers, out poisoning dogs on a crisp and clear winter morning, explained that he was only doing his part, unglamorous maybe, to make life here better.

“Iraq has many problems,” he said. “We are here on a mission to kill stray dogs.”

With fewer bombs going off and hardly any bodies being dumped anymore, the dogs are perhaps the biggest problem on the filthy and rubble-strewn streets of Baghdad. Packs of strays scare schoolchildren and people who get up at dawn to go to work. They gather at open-air butcher shops where customers choose their meat from flocks of live sheep….

Of course, these two things are not necessarily contradictions. Pet ownership and pet control are both relative luxuries, for citizens and government respectively. And Iraq certainly wouldn’t be the only society to live with the epic inconsistency that’s represented by one group of animals fetching big money from warm families while another is shunned and killed. (And lest Americans decide to get on our high horse, consider our most memorable national contribution to the Iraqi understanding of the relationship between man and domestic animal).