TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93TT0222> <title> Aug. 16, 1993: Reigning Cats and Dogs </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993 Aug. 16, 1993 Overturning The Reagan Era </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> SOCIETY, Page 50 Reigning Cats and Dogs </hdr> <body> For Americans and their pets...er, companion animals...it's the best--and worst--that money can buy By HOWARD G. CHUA-EOAN--With reporting by Adam Biegel/Atlanta, Ann Blackman/Washington, Dan Cray/Los Angeles, Daniel S. Levy, Elizabeth Rudulph and Andrea Sachs/New York Sandra and Michael Wornum have three Salukis, greyhound-like hunting dogs from Egypt. But they do not have a doghouse. Instead, the silky-coated canines live in a $10,000 four-room addition to the Wornums' house in Larkspur, California. The TV room is decorated with Erte lithographs and rugs from Istanbul. Another room has a grooming table and bathtub. The art gallery is hung with Saluki portraits. Then there is the "repose room." Says Sandra Wornum: "If we have a dog that's ill or depressed or out of sorts for the day, we send him into the repose room and he gets himself back together." The country is going to the dogs. It is also going to the cats... Meet Cherry Pop, a 12-year-old prize-winning Persian. She has two miniature Rolls-Royces (one red, one white) to match the Corniche of her owners, Vi and Huey Vanek, wealthy Florida socialites in their 60s. Cherry Pop's past two birthday parties were celebrated at the posh Lago Mar hotel on Fort Lauderdale beach. A nine-piece orchestra serenaded her with standards, including her favorite--Unforgettable. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is planning a story on the snub-nosed feline. When a smitten Japanese investor offered the Vaneks $50,000 for the cat, Vi sniffed, "She's not for sale at any price." Excessive, perhaps. Over the top, certainly. But while most people do not go as far as the Wornums or the Vaneks, Americans as a whole spend $20 billion a year on their pets. (They spent a mere $15.7 billion on both movies and home videos.) More than half of all U.S. households have pets--or, to be politically correct, animal companions. Increasingly, younger people, having delayed starting families, are devoting their attention to dogs, cats, rabbits, ferrets, hamsters and pigs. Such animal magnetism has created a burgeoning service industry that handles everything from vegetarian cookery for carnivores, liposuction for overweight dogs and funeral services for parakeets. Says Irwin Krinsky, a Detroit businessman who is a partner in a freeze-dried-pet-food company: "People love their pets to such a degree that they'll open their pocketbooks to wild and wacky things." "Pets remain in that pre-terrible two stage all their life," says Alan Beck, professor of animal ecology at Purdue University. And there are facilities that will accommodate those who wish to pamper their companions like children. Among these is Kennelwood Village in St. Louis, Missouri, a day-care center for as many as 100 dogs that offers swimming (with lifeguard on duty) and tetherball championships. Whirlpool therapy is available for the arthritic. "We're just like a hotel," says general manager Judy Bremer-Taxman. "Mommies and daddies drop their pets off in the morning and pick them up at night. People find it nice to come home at night and find their pup is as exhausted as they are." For their "infants," owners can purchase an unending array of toys. Mouse Chaser, for example, is a scratching post with a mechanical arm hanging off the top that raises and lowers a rubber mouse to tease kitty with. Dogs can frolic with a ball with a built-in gyroscope that makes the orb change directions unexpectedly. Open a pet mail-order catalog, and you'll find--for $19.99--the Easy Rider Car Harness, a contraption to protect beloved companions from automotive mishaps. Those who feel the need for supernatural intervention can purchase a St. Francis of Assisi medallion (about $10) to hang around the necks of their pets. Deadhead dog lovers can buy miniature tie-dyed T shirts for $15. Also available are tuxedos and tiaras for canines to wear at human weddings. For more informal occasions, "leather" biker gear can be purchased. For that matter, pets can also be tattooed. Says Krinsky: "Anything you can think of for humans is marketable for pets." Including liposuction. Bruce Bauersfeld, a Los Angeles veterinarian, recently used the technique to remove fatty tumors from a dog. Word got around, and Bauersfeld was asked to suction off common fat from a flabby dog's thighs. He did, but he isn't sanguine about the procedure. "I'm not sure if I'm ready to start running around doing tummy-tucks on dogs." Pet medicine, though, can rival treatment for humans. Dogs and cats can undergo dialysis, pacemaker insertions and joint replacements. Fractures are no longer simple splint-and-wire jobs but involve stainless-steel braces used on the bone. At Auburn University, doctors use CAT scans and magnetic-resonance imaging to locate brain tumors--and then operate to remove the diseased tissue. Animals, however, can be therapeutic for their human companions. People exhibit marked improvements in blood pressure when they care for pets. Understandably, a growing number of nursing homes have pets. "The animals allow touch, contact, distraction and stimulation for populations that don't have it," says Beck. Furthermore, he says, "people with animals are assumed to be nicer. That's why politicians like to be seen with them." When the end comes for pets, there are ample services available for mourning. William Green, who owns a pet cemetery in Elkridge, Maryland, will charge an average $425 for a dog funeral (the price includes viewing and burial). The pet is placed in a hardwood casket--with sculpted velvet scrolls, flowers on the outside, padded satin inside, complete with pillow and blanket--and is eventually interred in a concrete vault. Embalming is an extra $50 to $75. Green also offers to bury pet owners next to their companion animals. "People do more for their pets than they do for their own mother and father," declares Julie Hurley of Los Angeles' Pet Memorial Park. "About 60% of the graves out there are covered with flowers every week, and at the holidays people put Christmas trees on the graves, with lights and everything." Says Edward Martin, co-director of the Hartsdale Canine Cemetery in New York State, the oldest pet cemetery in the U.S.: "Many, many people who don't have pets think it's a bizarre way to spend money. But we find that most of the people who come here are average. The thought of throwing their pet in the garbage can is not acceptable to them." Yet humans can be fickle, which leads to the dark side of America's obsession. While pet ownership allows people to play at being parents, it also affords them the chance to play God, deciding everything about an animal's fate--whether it lives, thrives or dies. Shelters are inundated with pets abandoned on highways, city streets and in shopping malls. "Many people take almost a retail attitude toward animals," says George Wirt of New York's Bide-a-Wee Home Association for Animals, a no-kill pet shelter that actively seeks to place its wards in new homes. "They view them as commodities. They get whatever pleasure they can get out of them, and when it becomes a headache it is time to give the animal up." Every year 12 million animals make their way to shelters. Only 2% of lost cats and about 25% of the dogs are reunited with their owners. At least 25% of the animals in the shelters are purebreds. It costs about $1.4 billion to impound, feed, house, adopt and put to sleep unwanted pets each year. According to the Doris Day Animal League, 25% of pets are destroyed by the time they reach 2 years of age. Some carcasses are used in anatomy classes or processed into "animal protein" for beauty products. Yesterday's expensive companion becomes today's homeless beastie. Among the most commonly abandoned: Rottweilers and Shar Peis, and most recently, the Vietnamese potbellied pig. But there are also the rescuers. Dale Riffle and Jim Brewer run Potbellied Pigs Interest Group & Shelter (PIGS) out of Charles Town, West Virginia. Says Rachel Lamb of Washington's Humane Society of the U.S.: "Most people got the pigs because they were trendy or exotic. They got attention. But they didn't know anything about the specialized care required for the skin, hooves, tusks. There were also behavior needs that can't be met in the city--like wallowing and rooting. Obesity is a problem. I've read stories about pigs who were fed spaghetti and pizza." Over the past 10 months, Riffle and Brewer have relocated more than 50 homeless pigs in 30 states. They now have 54 on their property awaiting placement. It isn't easy. "They're not like a puppy," Riffle says. "They don't come running up to you. But once they realize you're the food supply, they love you. If a pig sees you take food from a refrigerator, you'll have to put a lock on it." Riffle's $25,000 salary from running a mail-order catalog goes toward paying for the upkeep of the pigs. But he's not complaining. "Once you have a pig, you bond with it." Which explains Lonnie Lehrer's feelings for Taro, a 5-year-old Akita who sits in a New Jersey K-9 jail awaiting his fate--possibly death. After Taro allegedly injured Lehrer's niece in 1990, a panel of two dog trainers and a veterinarian decided that the Akita qualified as "vicious" and should be destroyed. Lehrer has since spent $25,000 in legal fees and court appeals to save Taro's life. Says Lehrer: "It's more than just money here: it's the principle. I could buy 20 of these dogs at $1,000 each, but that's not it. The animal is an individual, he has a personality, the animal was born in our house, he is a family member. It's a matter of not compromising my principles." That is the paradox and ultimate enchantment of pets. By choosing to be responsible for nonhumans, we can define our humanity. </body> </article> </text>