Veterinarians Without Borders
by Michael Schaffer

I’ve written a lot about how ideas of pet health mirror ideas about human health–from nutrition to education to, especially, veterinary medicine. Though it’s great news for dogs and cats and other critters, the change in vet medicine sometimes makes humans feel a little anxious as they ponder how some American pets have access to medical equipment unavailable to humans in even non-impoverished overseas countries, or as we grapple with what it means that some pet owners can pay for big-ticket lifesavers like veterinary interventional radiology, while others have to give up on their beloved pets because they can’t foot the bill. VIN News Service has a piece up about an altruistic example of veterinary doctors following human-medicine doctors’ example: The birth of veterinarians without borders, which offers basic vet services to underserved populations:

Under the auspices of Veterinarians Without Borders, a livestock veterinarian and a small-animal practitioner will spend nearly three weeks in Liberia next month looking for ways to help the West African country rebuild following 14 years of civil war and unrest.

When they arrive, Drs. Arlene Gardsbane and Beth Miller will be the only practicing veterinarians in the entire country.

“War wiped everything out,” said Gardsbane. She speculated that some Liberians with veterinary degrees left their country during the prolonged strife and are settled elsewhere now.

Gardsbane and Miller, who were classmates in veterinary school at Louisiana State University, will take to Liberia some basic tools, including rabies vaccines and dewormer, and plan to hold a one-day clinic in the capital city of Monrovia, but their main purpose is to assess the country’s needs and develop a plan to promote the health of the people, their pets, livestock and wildlife through veterinary medicine.

The veterinarians learned of Liberia’s needs from Gardsbane’s brother-in-law, Paul Sully, an international development specialist in Maryland who spent time in Liberia in the 1970s as a Peace Corps volunteer. One of Sully’s long-time friends from that period is Joseph Boakai, who later served as Liberia’s minister of agriculture and is today the country’s vice president.

Learn more about the organizations–or donate–here.

Pets and Landlords
by Michael Schaffer

I’ve been fascinated this year with the paradoxes of how the financial collapse hits America’s pets. On the one hand, the pet industry reports that spending has continued to rise, despite the calamities that have hit other retail sectors. On the other hand, there are countless stories about shelters overrun with abandoned pets, many of them left homeless by recession-hit owners. It’s really a 2009 updating of the classic dichotomy in pet media coverage: One minute, the press is full of gape-jawed stories about pampered pets lounging in $100-a-night spas. The next, there’s tear-jerker coverage of the abused victims of Michael Vick or an Amish puppy mill. To use a probably inapt analogy, it’s kind of a four-legged version of literature’s madonna/whore complex.

As far as spending goes, I’ve squared the circle by looking at who has a choice, and who doesn’t. Marketing research since the collapse began last year suggests that people will scrimp and save for themselves before downgrading their pets: We’ll trade down to Wal-Mart while keeping our animals on the pet equivalent of Whole Foods. But that, of course, assumes people have a choice. The stories about the recession’s animal victims often involve owners who didn’t have a choice–most obviously, those who’ve been foreclosed out of homes and have had to seek housing from pet-unfriendly landlords.

It’s not so much a matter of people giving up the dog because they can’t do the regular feeding and upkeep; it’s that they think the only alternative is to be homeless themselves.

Could that be changing. Via the Seattle Times, here’s an AP story suggesting the soft economy may be prodding landlords–who, after all, need to make money on rental units, too–to open up a bit when it comes to pets:

Apartments.com reported more landlords have loosened their pet policies over the past 18 months. The online apartment listing firm says landlords are responding to the spike in demand from renters searching for pet-friendly digs.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some renters are homeowners displaced by foreclosures who have taken their pets with them, while others are longtime renters with pets looking to upgrade during a soft market.

The story is notably short on any sort of statistics, but it would stand to reason that landlords, like anyone else, would respond to the market. Still, I’d be curious about what people in shelters are hearing in terms of this phenomenon.

Take Your Dog to Work Day
by Michael Schaffer

As a writer who works from home, I mark Take Your Dog to Work Day every day. Friday, though, was the 10th annual national observance of the non-holiday. I think the growth of participation is one of many examples–from airline frequent flyer miles for traveling pets to restaurant doggie bowls for diners accompanied by Chihuahuas–of how the country is becoming increasingly pet-friendly. This, in turn, is all evidence for the major trend I focus on in my book: The social promotion of pets from mere Best Friends to full-fledged members of the family. You might not make residential or employment or even dining decisions on behalf of the buddy who lives in the doghouse in your back yard. But you will when it’s a family member who sleeps in your bed and, increasingly, gets blessed with a popular human-baby name like Jake or Max or Bella.

As I write, these phenomena aren’t universal, but the trend lines are pointing in one direction. When I first started looking for a Take Your Dog To Work Day event to visit, I imagined they’d all be in yuppie businesses, like those internet firms with the in-office ping pong and the free Diet Cokes. In fact, the biggest event near me was at a highway services firm in Northeast Pennsylvania, about the opposite of a yuppie office.  The boss told me they might make it permanent, as the presence of pets boosted morale. It’s not just for San Francisco dogs anymore.

Of course, as a guy who spent his share of time contemplating Marxist social science texts, I should note that one major advantage from the management point of view is that dogs at the office means dog-owners aren’t hustling to get home in time for the early-evening walk. Having Fido around–I mean Jake or Bella–may also prove an extra way to wring some labor from dog-smitten hirelings…

PS: Bonus TYDTWD footage from North Carolina is here.

Do I Hear $55 Billion
by Michael Schaffer

Back in February, when the American Pet Products Association rolled out its latest annual sales numbers and reported that the pet industry would grow, despite the lousy economy, to $45 billion in 2009, I have to admit I was relieved. After all, I’d just finished a book about how pets had become part of America’s families and that, as a result, we’d seen pet spending nearly triple in 15 years. But because of the publishing industry’s long lag times, there had been an economic implosion between when I filed my book and when it was published. Would everything I’d written be disproved?

As it happened, no: Just as in the recession of 2001–and pretty much every downturn stretching back to the 1970s–pet spending proved more resilient than other sectors of the economy. People who have a choice will scrimp for themselves before demoting the family dog or cat.

Now comes IBISworld, an independent market-research firm, which predicts that the industry will top $50 billion this year. The dollars-and-cents numbers, of course, are irrelevant, because so much pet spending is under the table, the $10 you slip to the kid who walks your dog. What is interesting is the trend lines, and they all suggest that something significant has changed in how Americans see and treat their pets.

For an example of where some of the money goes, check out this Chicago Tribune article about a new pet-hotel chain with a killer app: Its facilities are located next to airports, making it easier for travellers to drop off and pick up. Never mind the great travel bust of 2008: Business, the paper reports, is booming:

At $47 a night, dogs get a private room, plenty of playtime and round-the-clock care. The facility also is open for doggy day care any time of day or night, for $25 to $32 per day. With many customers watching their budget, Nadeem has created promotions, such as discounts for longer reservations, additional pets or frequent users.

Bo Knows Tomatoes
by Michael Schaffer

Thank God for Gina Spadafori. The executive editor of PetConnection.com is a serious reporter who happens to be an animal lover–and not, as is too often the case in the pet-related media, a pet lover who simply enjoys writing about animals.  The fact that she’s someone who can cover City Hall or the police department was crucial back when she was blowing open the pet-food poisoning scandal, and it has popped up again and again since then as she covers a realm that’s perpetually hamstrung by misinformation and by views that are shaped by emotion rather than facts. This week, Gawker goofs on an official potrait/baseball card of Bo the Dog that was recently released by the White House. The card lists the dog’s favorite food as tomatoes. “So we took to the internet,” writes John Cook, “and sure enough—they’re poison!” The post was quickly picked up in the Christian Science Monitor, and we were on our way to that greatest of media events: A presidential pet scandal! Except that, as Gina notes, it isn’t:

Would have been nice if Gawker or the CSM had checked with the experts at the ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center, which reports that tomato plants may be a minor problem, but ripe tomatoes are not.

PS: John Cook just emailed to take umbrage to this post. He notes that he actually picked up the phone and interviewed a Colorado State U. vet school professor who said: ”Mother nature didn’t design dogs to eat them. One or two tomatoes is not going to do anything to a large-sized dog, but no—they’re not a good food. The glycoalkaloids could cause colic and bloating—they stop the activity of the intestinal tract.”

He’s right. What I was glad Gina did was get ahead of the thing before Cook’s comic riff about dangers to Bo’s life, when whispered down the lane, blossomed into full-blown doggy scandal elsewhere in the media.

Murphy in the News
by Michael Schaffer

It’s not every day you notice your dog on the front page of a local tabloid. Luckily, my Saint Bernard was not the subject of a scandal. It was just the author photo from One Nation Under Dog, which freebie Metro gave a shout-out to.

Dog Train to Moscow
by Michael Schaffer

They always say Russia’s brutal history has made Russians especially resourceful when it comes to their own survival. Same goes, apparently, for their dogs. Here’s a piece from The Sun  describing how Moscow’s strays are smart enough to sleep in the suburbs, where the open space leaves them less harassed, while commuting by underground into the city, where there are more scraps to eat.

The clever canines board the Tube each morning.

 

After a hard day scavenging and begging on the streets, they hop back on the train and return to the suburbs where they spend the night.

 

Experts studying the dogs say they even work together to make sure they get off at the right stop - after learning to judge the length of time they need to spend on the train.

The mutts choose the quietest carriages at the front and back of the train.

They have also developed tactics to hustle humans into giving them more food on the streets of Moscow.

(Hat tip: dogster)

Pet Estate Planning
by Michael Schaffer

The article on the CNBC website is your standard personal-finance advice column: How to plan for catastrophic accidents, unexpected expenses, the care of loved ones in the event the reader dies. With one difference, naturally: The insurance-purchasing the piece guides you though involves veterinary care, and the estate-planning section focuses on setting up a posthumous pet-care trust–something that 40 states now permit. I delved pretty far into this stuff while reporting One Nation Under Dog, but I’m still amazed sometimes when I read how mainstream Fur Baby America has become.