The New York Times publishes the “crocodile” for the dog Finnegan, the canine psychologist: “They, like us, have lives that deserve to be remembered”

Finnegan, “a dog known for his exemplary sense of smell”, received an “obituary” (in Italian “crocodile”, ie a long obituary written by an editor in the form of a journalistic article) in the New York Times: “They, like us , they have lives that deserve to be remembered, ”wrote Alexandra Horowitz, her owner, who is also the owner of a Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, the women’s arm of Columbia University.

Unlike the Italian press, where the posthumous memory of personalities finds a place in the sections of the newspaper in which they were protagonists, in the Anglo-Saxon world, there is a real page of obituaries: a “Spoon River ‘of portraits written by specialized journalists who devote their days to doing just that. Finnegan, who died in New York at age 14. But he was a dog. Writing the obit for the opinion page, Horowitz took advantage of the occasion to champion a cause.

“The Obit section does not publish animal portraits despite the fact that an obit is the commemoration of a life and animals have lives too,” writes the canine psychologist, and cites the opinion of William McDonald, the head of the obits, according to to whom “it would be incongruous to see the story of an animal alongside that of men and women who have lived exemplary lives”.

This is a “nonsense” that Horowitz would like corrected: “In the 18th century the word ‘obituary’ was applied to any death. The nineteenth-century newspapers were full of dog obituaries. ‘ Even the ‘New York Times’ has published many, as news however, even if in the format increasingly similar to the obit of a person, with age, cause of death, short biography and reasons for fame: as for Gus , the Central Park bear or Laika the first dog to fly into space.

«The reality – comments Horowitz – is that, in exalting the importance of human life over that of other animals, the obit of a dog seems grotesque to most». Can they change things? The psychologist’s opinion after all was published with wide prominence, alongside those on Ukraine and domestic politics in the stars and stripes. The ground is fertile at a time when the ‘pet economy’ is booming. In the US, six out of ten families have a pet, but Covid has accelerated the phenomenon, adoptions have doubled and the prices of breeding puppies are skyrocketing due to market demand.

Millennials pamper their pets like babies and spend an increasing portion of their earnings on them. And here is why Finnegan’s obit, who was recognized on the street as a star after appearing in television broadcasts, according to Horowitz should not appear to be an oddity: “The obits index the values ​​of our culture, and in this culture we have more and more learned to value non-human life “.