A Landmark Dog Custody Case
by Michael Schaffer

From today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Tomorrow, a second trial on the custody of the nearly six-year-old brown pooch is set to begin. The Williamstown woman plans to testify again that her ex-fiancé broke an oral agreement to let her have the dog after she moved out of their house.

In March, a three-judge appeals panel ordered a new trial, saying Superior Court Judge John Tomasello should not have treated Dexter as just another piece of furniture during the first trial, in Gloucester County, in 2007. The new trial will be heard in Salem County, where Tomasello is now assigned.

Gina Calogero, Houseman’s attorney, said the appeals panel had issued a “landmark decision” on pet custody, which she called an “emerging field and cutting-edge law.” Calogero, who specializes in animal rights cases, says many judges are now being asked to decide who gets the pet when there is a breakup.

“Ten years ago, I never heard of any such case,” said Calogero.

A few thoughts:

1. This is a phenomenon I wrote about in my book. As pets have become a more emotionally important part of people’s lives, their attachment to them has taken on new forms, forms that reflect not just the eternal nature of animals, but the specific nature of our ever-changing human society. Divorce battles are a big part of that society, so it’s no surprise they’d involve pets.

2. The institutions of our society–courts and schools and governments that write restaurant codes and the like–adapt slowly but surely to changes in the way we live. And, sure enough, they adapt to the social upgrade we’ve given pets. It’s not fast enough for those of us with pets, of course, but eventually things change, whether it’s allowing restaurants to be pet-friendly if they choose, or devoting chunks of public land to dog runs, or drafting emergency evacuation plans that include pets. Same goes for figuring out how to adjudicate pet lawsuits or custody battles–and do so in a way that treats pets not as property but as the emotionally crucial beings they are in many people’s lives.

3. If I were a judge, I would be frantic to not establish a precedent that judges should decide these things. Not because it’s not worthy, but because it is a hell of a lot of work. Child-custody is tough enough–and at least the kid can talk.

4. The woman in this story has been on the Today show and otherwise been treated as an exotic. Someday fairly soon, it won’t seem so exotic.

Chihuahua Zero?
by Michael Schaffer

One of my regular journalistic gigs is as a columnist for Obit magazine, where I do a wrap-up and review of how the media has covered the week’s major deaths. To help with the task, I have google alerts and subscriptions to a bunch of services that tip me off when some notable kicks the bucket. One little sign of the times came earlier this week via Celebrity Death Beeper, which sent out an alert to note the passing of Gidget the Chihuahua, star of the famous “Yo quiero Taco Bell” TV commercials. The AP even covered the news.

Via Petconnection, I also came across a very sweet obituary for the dog at PeoplePets.com.

“Other than a few other small cameos, Gidget’s working life didn’t continue much beyond her Taco Bell legacy. But she left quite an impression. ‘One time, I kid you not, she actually pushed her stand-in out of the way because he was still there when she arrived on set,’ [trainer Sue] Chipperton recalled with a laugh. ‘Gidget always knew where the camera was.’”

One thing I’m not so sure about, though, is Gina’s speculation about the grim side-effects of a nationally famous Chihuahua:

It’s a shame that her rise to cultural icon pushed the Chihuahua into every idiot girl’s purse and made it a staple of every quick-buck breeder’s shady operation or every puppy-milling scum’s “inventory.”  A lot of those dogs have been turning up in shelters steadily ever since. Breed rescuers and ethical breeders will be picking up the pieces for years to come.

It only stands to reason that media exposure would boost a breed’s popularity. But while I was researching my book, I spent some time chatting with Hal Herzog, a scholar who has actually crunched the numbers about why some breeds rise and others fall in popular appeal. Though tracking breed population is an inexact science–Herzog uses AKA registration figures, which don’t encompass all dogs and are themselves declining even as the pet population grows–his research suggests that media exposure has little to do with it. Winning the Westminster Kennel Club title, for instance, hasn’t had any dramatic impact on a breed’s population.  Ditto pop culture exposure, where, Herzog writes, famous cases like the run on Dalmatians sparked by 101 Dalmatians was the exception rather than the rule. Of Gidget, he writes:

The majority of the many hundreds of movies, television shows, and commercials featuring dogs have had little or no impact on the popularity of obscure breeds. Take the well-known Taco Bell television ad campaign that ran between 1997 and 2000 featuring a Spanish-speaking Chihuahua named Gidget (“Yo quiero Taco Bell”). The extemsive exposure of the breed during 3 years of media saturation did not produce an increase in the popularity of Chihuahuas. Indeed, registrations for the breed declined 43% between 1998 and 2003.

Now, it’s possible that Gidget affected Paris Hilton, who in turn caused puppy millers to turn their ghoulish attention to Chihuahuas. In fact, that seems the most logical explanation to me. In fact, I suspect Paris’ much-photographed travels with her pup helped shape ideas about the glamorousness of pets–ideas that have had rotten effects in terms of spurring frivolous pet-as-accessory acquisitions as well as well as good ones like helping open more restaurants to pets. But I don’t know that based on any data. The rise and fall of breeds turns out to be one of these very odd phenomena where causality is very hard to tease out.

Cat Appetizers
by Michael Schaffer

There’s a great story this week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about Purina’s three and a half year quest to create its major 2009 product roll-out: An appetizer for cats. The story  describes the various trials and errors of the secret team that developed a product the firm is now willing to launch even in the teeth of a recession. And it dwells on a subject near and dear to my heart: The overlap between how humans think about our own food, and what we provide for our pets. Why, for instance, is the new line marketed as an “appetizer” rather than a treat?

Consumers who buy Fancy Feast are considered to be highly devoted to their cats. In the pet industry, they are called “pet parents.” Pets are part of the family.

As the line between pet and owner has blurred, the differences between their foods have faded, too. (Although that can go too far. One failed concept — not created by Purina — was a pet food that could be shared in a bowl by people and dogs.)

In early 2007, still unsure of what to name its nascent concept, Purina hosted a focus group in St. Louis. Project Trident — named for the three-pronged fishing spear because Purina, at this point, believed its new product would feature only seafood — was under way. Six consumers were given a description: pure seafood for cats, but not a full meal. They discussed ways to express the concept, to describe it.

Someone said, “An appetizer.”

Biroscak was struck as he watched the focus group from behind a one-way mirror.

“That was a ‘wow’ moment for us,” he recalled.

It seemed like a perfect fit. People have a positive connection to the word “appetizer,” Biroscak said. A sense of excitement. Appetizers taste good. And they have been growing in popularity, from tapas restaurants to boxed appetizers sold in supermarket freezer cases. There is an emotional attachment, too, a sense of celebration with appetizers.

Read the whole thing here.

When Worlds Collide
by Michael Schaffer

Almost fifteen years ago, after college, I spent a year living in Sri Lanka.

This year, I published a book on the changes in how we live with pets, and what they mean.

Among the things I write about are how petmania isn’t just confined to Yuppie enclaves. In fact, in places from Ypsilanti to New Delhi, the arrival of doggie day spas and pet-industry trade shows gets hailed as a sign that modernity has arrived.

I was reminded of this when my pal Dan Bass, who also lived in Sri Lanka as an anthropology student, forwarded me this email he’d gotten. It’s an advertisement for a pet fashion show. And, yes, it’s in the capital of Sri Lanka.

Pupperware!
by Michael Schaffer

The Lansing State Journal has a piece about how, as in previous bad economic times, people are turning to direct-sales work to help make ends meet. But, of course, there’s a difference between this and previous bad economic times: There’s been a fairly significant change in the role of pets in American life. So people are maintaining the same level of spending on their animals, with all the care and familial obligation that implies. No surprise, then, that one area of growth in direct-sales has been stuff for pets. Bring on the pupperware parties! And lest you imagine this as a la-de-da coastal fancy, here’s the piece from the Lansing (Mich.) State Journal:

No longer just makeup and vitamins, companies such as Shure Pets, a direct seller of pet products, allow animal lovers such as Jenny Andrews of Battle Creek to make a little extra cash without leaving her Chihuahua, Jersey, behind.

…

When Andrews joined Shure Pets in December, she was the only consultant for the Chicago-based company in the Battle Creek area. She has since recruited eight friends to join the company, which has about 2,000 consultants.

The economy seems to have had little effect on the pet retail industry, which brought in more than $43 billion in 2008, according to the American Pet Products Association. Americans are on track to spend $45.4 billion on their animals in 2009, according to the APPA.

Meanwhile, pet services makes the Central Pennsylvania Business Journal’s list of top five businesses to start now.

Stressed-Out Pets
by Michael Schaffer

Since the financial collapse last fall, I’ve spent a lot of time looking into the effect of the recession on pet spending. The folks who feed and train and medicate pets, of course, claim with varying degrees of caveat to be recession-proof. And in fact, pet spending didn’t take nearly the hit as other sectors during the recession that followed the burst internet bubble and terrorist attacks of 2001. By February, well into the crisis, the American Pet Products Association was saying that spending had actually risen in 2008 and would continue to do so this year. Which was good news for me, since I’d just written a book examining the meaning of all that American pet spending.

But a British story this week looks at a different way that financial troubles are affecting pets’ lives: A new study shows that the animals are picking up subtle cues from owners who find themselves stressed out by the economic climate. And those cues are prompting all sorts of unfortunate behavior.

A study by Sainsbury’s Finance discovered that 3.35 million dog and cat owners have seen their animal exhibit various behavioural conditions in the last year, amounting to nearly a fifth of the UK’s total number of cats and dogs.

The most common form of problem was damaging furniture, with more than a million owners reporting this, while moodiness and nervousness were also widespread.

Joanne Mallon, Sainsbury’s Pet Insurance manager, said that the stress people are feeling because of the recession “can have an adverse effect on the household’s pets”.

She added: “Cats and dogs can be very sensitive to their owner’s feelings and behaviour so changes in mood such as irritability, distress or remoteness could be sensed and leave the animal themselves agitated or depressed.”

Check out the whole story here.