Rabid Read online
Also by Pamela Redmond Satran
Fiction
The Possibility of You
The Home for Wayward Supermodels
Suburbanistas
Younger
Babes in Captivity
The Man I Should Have Married
Nonfiction
How Not to Act Old
1,000 Ways to Be a Slightly Better Woman
Beyond Ava & Aiden
Cool Names for Babies
Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana
The Baby Name Bible
Contents
Doggie Style
Beauty
Spa Menu
Crazy? Walking Your Panda
Hairstyles
Tattoos
CRAZY? Just a Little Botox around the Balls, Please
fashion
How to Dress Your Dog
Accessories
Quiz: How Hipster Is Your Puppy?
How to Knit a Sweater from Your Dog’s Fur
DOGHOUSE
In the Doghouse
CRAZY? There Goes That $9 Million
How to Furnish Your Dog’s Home
Fêng Shui for Your Dog
The Well-Appointed Dog Home
Going to the Dogs
DOG FOOD
Not the Same Old Dog Food
Dog Treats
And to Drink?
Halloween Dog Smoothie
Dog-Food Accessories
The Pudgy Puppy
CRAZY? Fat Camp for Dogs
Dogs as Food
SICK PUPPY
The Well Dog
Ten Crazy Things to Keep in Your Dog’s Medicine Cabinet
CRAZY? Patch the Pot-Loving Pup
Alternative Therapies for Dogs
Quiz: Get the Condoms and the Squirt Guns, Stat
CRAZY? Pooper Snoopers
Dog Therapy
Top 10 Reasons Your Dog Needs a Shrink
Crazy? Freud’s Dog Thinks You’re Nuts
There’s a Pill for That
How to Be a Dog Psychic
Dog Horoscopes
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
Dogs and Art Timeline
Dogs and the Visual Arts
Dogs and Movies
Top 10 Best Dog Movies
Top 10 Highest-Grossing Dog Movies
Dogs and Television
Dogs and Music
The Emperor’s New Song?
Songs to Dance to with Your Dog
CRAZY? Knit Your Own Dog
Dog Books
What to Read if You’re Sick of Dog Books
Dog Magazines
Fourteen Best Dog Websites to Waste a Day On
Dog Festivals
Dog Halloween
Dog Sports
CRAZY? Dancing with the Dogs
How much is that doggie?
Dogs and Money
The World’s Most Expensive Dog Products
The World’s Most Expensive Dogs
CRAZY? You Can’t Be Too Rich, Too Thin, or Own Too Many Chihuahuas
The World’s Richest Dogs
Luxury Services for Dogs
PUPPY LOVE
The Social Dog
Dog Meet Ups
Dating your Dog
Test Your Doggie Sex IQ
CRAZY? Seriously, This Stuff’s Hard to Get
Dog Weddings
DOGS ARE THE NEW KIDS
Parenting the Fur Baby
Dogs vs. Kids
Doggie Day Care
Take Your Dog to Work Day
Helicopter Dog Parenting
Dog Toilet Training
Name That Doggie
Eighteen Things Every Fur Baby Deserves
CRAZY? Breastfeeding Your Dog
Toy Things
FAMOUS DOGS
What’s Your Celebrity-Dog IQ?
Celebrity-Dog Matchup
Royal Dogs Timeline
CRAZY? Presidential Dog Is a Lot of Work
ARE DOGS GOD?
The Evidence For and Against
Dogs and Religion Timeline
Devil Dogs?
Exactly How Amazing Can Dogs Be?
dead DOGS
Is This Goodbye? Or Just, See Ya Later?
Ten Things to Do with Your Dog’s Ashes
CRAZY? Sorry, God, But That’s a Twisted Plan
How to Clone Your Dog
Quiz: Are You Crazy about Your Dog—or Just Crazy?
Acknowledgments
Introduction
ure, you’re crazy about your dog. Your grandparents might have kept Rover chained up behind the garage and fed him some crap kibble, but you wouldn’t do that kind of thing any more than you would paddle your child or dine on boiled, well, hotdogs.
The dog universe has changed radically since Rover’s day. Dog ownership is at an all-time high, with more households including dogs than children under eighteen. Half of dog owners consider their dogs to be equal members of the family, 75 percent say they’d go into debt for their dogs, and over 90 percent would risk their lives to save their dogs.
We’ve become more enlightened in recent years about the lives of animals, more sensitive to their rights and their emotions, and more conscious of their importance to our well-being. At the same time, more of us delay marriage, get divorced, live alone, put off having kids, or decide not to have them at all. Which all adds up to our dogs assuming greater importance in our lives.
And so Rover isn’t called Rover or one of those objectifying, marginalizing names anymore: he’s called Rufus—or Lola or Max or Sadie or one of the other human names that dominate the canine Top 10.
Rufus doesn’t stay home alone all day whining at squirrels; instead, he and Max and Sadie go to doggie day care, where they’re fed organic chow and videotaped for the benefit of their human parents.
Behavioral problems? You take your dog to a trainer—or maybe a canine shrink.
Rufus was Princess Leia for Halloween (he has some gender issues that the testicular implants and the meat-flavored Prozac didn’t really begin to address). His favorite treats are the pink, frosted martini-shaped ones, though if he doesn’t cut back he may have to slim down with a regimen of low-carb food and yoga.
And okay, he sleeps in your bed, but you never let him put his head on the pillow and crawl under the covers.
Or at least that’s what you tell everybody because you d
on’t want them to think you’ve crossed the line from being crazy about your dog to just crazy.
The thing is, it’s really hard in our over-the-top dog culture to tell exactly where that line is. Is it reasonable to bake your pooch those sweet potato muffins she loves, but crazy to turn her vegetarian? Is it normal to have your pet professionally photographed, but crazy to buy her dogcentric music—played via special dog-sensitive speakers—that you can’t even hear?
To help you judge, we’ve laid out the range of possibilities—from endearingly loopy to scarily nuts—on topics from hairstyles to health treatments, celebrities to death. Where do you put yourself? And what about all those other dog people? I guarantee that no matter how crazy you may have gotten about your dog, there’s somebody crazier out there. Much, much crazier.
The bottom line may be that no matter how far you go, it makes no difference to Rufus. Whether you string diamonds or a plastic collar around his neck, whether you feed him Kobe beef or Grandpa’s stale kibble, he’s going to love you just as madly. And in the face of that kind of insane devotion, can anything we do truly be called crazy?
What, you’re letting your dog go out like that? With all the new grooming and fashion products and styles around, dog owners can’t just let their dogs run around uncombed, unpolished, naked. Pet Fashion Weeks in New York and Japan feature runway shows, design and grooming competitions, and exhibition halls full of new ideas. Here are the major canine style trends in both beauty and fashion.
Beauty
Spa Menu
Used to be, taking your dog to the groomer meant a quick bath, a session with the clippers, and a pet who looked like a newly shorn Marine but at least no longer smelled of skunk. Now, though, the array of possible treatments is much more luxurious, with real canine spa menus offering the following options:
•Pawdicure. Nail smoothing, pad/elbow treatment, colored pawlish, and even a glittery topcoat or stick-ons that can make your dog look just like that slutty checkout girl at ShopRite.
•Soothing hot oil soak. Why merely condition your pet’s coat when you can soak him in a vat of hot oil? No wait, that doesn’t sound good. Whatever: this is recommended for itching and allergies.
•Anal gland expression. Is your dog “scooting” his bottom or doing an unusual amount of embarrassing licking? Then anal gland expression may be in order, and yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. External or internal expression of the anal glands releases a substance that can cause unpleasant odor or discomfort for your dog. And really, just the fact that someone will do this for $10, the price at most salons we surveyed, should be enough to make you get it, whether your dog needs it or not.
•Sanitary trim. Basically, a doggie Brazilian.
Why should you, or your dog, be the only one to get a pedicure? Better idea: Matching toenails!
•Hydrosurge bubble bath. Aromatherapy bath—calming scents include lavender, geranium, and carrot seed—with jet-spray rinse.
•Deep cleansing facial scrub. You, you probably just wash your face at night. But for your pet, a special blend of plant extracts including chamomile, calendula, eucalyptus, mint, aloe vera, and green tea can hydrate, soothe, and wash away unsightly stains.
•Fresh blueberry facial. So the plant extracts weren’t good enough? The blueberry facial is extra gentle and, we assume, guaranteed not to actually stain your dog blue.
•Oatmeal and brown sugar exfoliating facial scrub. A hypoallergenic exfoliating scrub made especially for dry skin is applied to the face as the client—yep, that’s your dog—sits under a gentle steam lamp for ten to fifteen minutes, not, we repeat not, trying to lick the oatmeal and brown sugar off her face, just sitting there patiently while the steam opens her pores and the technician, maybe even the same technician who performs the anal expressions, extracts impurities with gentle face massage.
•Mud treatment. Mud mask or bath treatment covering either just the face or the entire coat to nourish, detoxify, exfoliate, and soothe. They tell you they use special mud that contains jojoba, olive, and macadamia oils, which of course is much, much different from just letting your dog go outside and roll around in a puddle for half an hour—isn’t it?
•Perfume spray. You have a wide choice of signature scents for your dog, from Aroma Organic Pawfume in papaya and coconut to faux designer brands like Arfmani.
•Full dental treatment. Brushing, tooth and gum treatment, tartar control. For the dog who’s too damn lazy to do it himself.
CRAZY? Walking Your Panda
The trend in China: Groom your dog to look like a panda—or a turtle or a tiger. Anything but a dog. Is it happening here? At fancy grooming shows, yes, though we’ve yet to spot one walking down the street—at least as far as we know.
Hairstyles
What do dogs have plenty of? Hair! Which makes it the most logical area for adornment. It may be as out as a mullet to clip your dog’s hair close while leaving pompons at her tail and feet, but the following haircuts and hair treatments are in:
•Hair dye. Just like people hair coloring, hair dye for dogs comes in permanent, semipermanent, and wash out, in a range of colors from natural looking to green and purple. Use all over your dog’s body or on select places: magenta ears, anyone?
•Spray-on color. Want to fashion bright flowers on your dog’s backside? Then temporary spray-on color may be the answer.
•Henna. For that natural redhead look.
•Colored chalk or BLOpens. In case you’re not the parent of a six-year-old and are not familiar with BLOpens, these are nontoxic markers with an attached tube you blow through to create an airbrushed effect.
•Extensions. Feathered, beaded, braided, or brightly colored.
•Creative haircuts. Mohawks, spikes, and fades.
•Dreadlocks.
•Backcombing and bouffants.
•Wigs. Long and flowing or short and spiky, blond or bright green.
Wigs are proof that a dog can never have too much hair.
•Glitter, pompons, plastic flowers. All can be glued on safely with school glue.
•Messy. As with humans, messy “I’m too cool to comb my hair” hair is cool. And may be had with no effort on your part at all.
Tattoos
While there are reports of dogs themselves being decoratively tattooed—and temporary pet tattoos are available for that edgy night on the town—most dog owners find the practice unethical. The animal has to be sedated, which carries its own dangers, and has no desire to be tattooed.
CRAZY? Just a Little Botox around the Balls, Please
While the Humane Society opposes surgery done for purely cosmetic reasons and the American Kennel Club bans physically altered dogs from competition, there is one area where dog cosmetic surgery is catching on: testicular implants.
You heard right. The idea is that ball implants will bolster Buddy’s self-esteem after neutering and make him feel just like the other dogs. And lest you think this is a publicity stunt, the manufacturer of Neuticles, which cost nearly $100, claims to have sold a quarter million pairs so far.
Most of the other canine plastic surgery performed today has a medical rationale, such as rhinoplasty on short-nosed dogs to relieve breathing problems, chin lifts on mastiffs to relieve drooling problems, and fold tucks for bulldogs around the eyes, cheeks, and vulva to relieve—oh God, please don’t tell me.
Breast reductions are not unheard of, but again, usually are done for a health reason such as excessive sagging due to pregnancy or deformity due to overbreeding.
The exception: Brazil, where even I could afford a facelift. Canine plastic surgeons there do everything from Restylane for crooked ears to Botox for wrinkles. (Wait: dogs get wrinkles?) But São Paulo surgeon Dr. Edgard Brito has his limits: “I would never,�
� he has been quoted as saying, “attach an artificial testicle.”
The exceptions are identification tattoos, which many breeders use along with microchips to identify dogs in case they’re lost or stolen, and tattoos done for health reasons, as when a vet tattoos a dog’s nose black to protect it from the sun.
But dogs are a popular subject for human tattoos: a Yorkie across the back of the neck, a smiling Lab on the calf, or maybe a stylized mythological dog curling around a bicep . . .
You’ll never have to miss your dog’s face if you have it tattooed on your leg.
Fashion
How to Dress Your Dog
What, you just let your dog walk around naked? There’s no excuse for that, especially when you could dress him or her in one of these amazing fashion items:
Wait a minute. What are these front two shoes for?
How Hipster Is Your Puppy?
Do you want your puppy to be a hipster? You do? Okay, then you’ve probably failed before you even start. Being a hipster is all about not wanting to be a hipster, and wanting to be a hipster pretty much guarantees you’ll never be one. Not really. Got it?
Good.
That said, the whole so-uncool-it’s-cool thing pretty much means that the only way to be truly cool is to be truly, truly uncool, which means that the coolest thing you can do is to try to be cool. And yes, we’re absolutely sure that’s clear.
But if you still need definition on exactly how hipster your pup is, take this simple quiz: