About two-thirds of U.S. households have at least one pet, up from 56 percent in 1988, according to records from the American Pet Products Association.
Additionally, Americans spent $136.8 billion on their pets in 2022, up from $123.6 billion in 2021.
An estimated 91 million households in Europe own at least one pet, an increase of 20 million over the past decade. The pet population in India reached 31 million in 2021, up from 10 million in 2011.
Mexican households together have a total of 80 million pets, such as dogs, cats, birds, rabbits and other companion animals, according to figures from the INEGI Self-Reported Well-Being Survey.
Pets are becoming more and more like humans, or at least that seems to be the goal of their owners.
They are pampered with personalized nutrition plans and special carriers or cages, canine hydrotherapy, and stays at boutique cat hotels. Many even refer to their pets as “dog-children” or “cat-children.”
At All the Best, a high-end pet store chain in Seattle, the most popular items are dog and cat toys designed to stimulate and bring happiness to animals that are increasingly “lying around alone and bored,” said Annie McCall, the chain’s marketing director.
Now, animal welfare ethicists and veterinary scientists are asking whether we have gone too far in our efforts to humanize our pets.
The more we treat pets like people, they argue, the more limited and dependent our companion animals’ lives become, and the more health and behavioral problems they may develop.
“We now view pets not just as family members but as equivalent to children,” said James Serpell, professor emeritus of ethics and animal welfare at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
“The problem is that dogs and cats are not children and owners have become increasingly protective and restrictive.
Therefore, animals are not able to express their own canine and feline nature as freely as they would otherwise.”
The health risks begin, of course, with breeding.
One of the most popular dog breeds in the United States is the French bulldog, a member of the brachycephalic family, flat-faced dogs that get along well with people but have trouble breathing, among other serious health problems.
But we are also changing the relationship of our animals with their environment.
Because of concerns about bird predation, many cats now spend their entire lives indoors. Until the late 1970s, even urban dogs spent most of their time outdoors, either in backyards or roaming freely around the neighborhood.
“Now, the off-leash, loose dog is considered contrary to the natural order of things,” said Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist in Colorado whose work focuses on animal-human relationships. One of the fastest-growing market segments is the so-called pet confinement sector, which includes indoor cages and fences as well as head harnesses and electronic collars.
“The level of limitation that dogs face is profound,” Pierce said.
“Although dogs were more likely to be hit by cars several decades ago, he added, “those risks were outweighed by the freedom of experience and movement.”
The modern pet paradox, in a nutshell: “Owners don’t want dogs to behave like dogs,” Serpell said.
While dogs are being allowed into an increasing number of human spaces (restaurants, offices, shops, hotels and more parks with designated dog areas), their growing presence has not translated into greater independence.
Confinement and isolation, in turn, have led to an increase in aggression and separation anxiety in animals, Serpell said. About 60 percent of dogs and cats are now overweight or obese. And due in part to the burden and expense of pet ownership these days — veterinary fees, pet sitters, boarding costs — more people are abandoning animals in shelters, leading to higher euthanasia rates.
In 2023, more than 359,000 dogs were euthanized in shelters, the highest number in five years, according to Shelter Animals Count, an animal rights group.
“We’re in a weird time of pet obsession,” Pierce said. “There are too many of them and we keep them too intensely. It’s not good for us or for them.”
It is true that domesticating an animal has always meant achieving a balance between its nature and ours.
“Defining freedom in a dog, an animal that has been artificially domesticated and selected by humans for so long, is a really interesting puzzle,” said Alexandra Horowitz, a canine cognition researcher at Barnard College.
Horowitz drew a contrast with stray dogs, the category to which most of the world’s estimated 900 million dogs belong.
Free-roaming dogs have shorter life spans and no guarantee of food, Horowitz said, but they can make their own decisions.
“That’s an interesting model for us to consider: thinking about how to make a dog’s life richer, with options so that they are not captive to our whims all the time, without endangering society at large,” she said.
In recent years, Scandinavian countries have begun banning the breeding of some dog breeds that are particularly prone to disease, such as the Cavalier King Charles spaniel.
In Sweden it is illegal to leave pets alone at home for long periods, and in both Sweden and Finland it is illegal to confine animals to cages and fences within the home in most cases.
But it’s unclear whether these animal welfare policies reconcile or reinforce the fundamental paradox of pet ownership today, said Harold Herzog, a professor emeritus of psychology at Western Carolina University who studies animal-human relationships.
“The more we view dogs and cats as autonomous creatures, the less we can justify keeping them as pets,” he added.
#kill #pets #love
