Pets should not be “family”
and the sooner we correct that excess, the better.
Unavoidable disclaimer: this is NOT a condemnation of any single pet owner. This is a condemnation of the cumulative effects on society of certain pet-related strategies, and of those who impose or tolerate those strategies. Don’t take it personally.
I’ve never had or even wanted a pet myself, for several reasons, but I do see and understand that pets are a big source of sincere joy for many people, and I have NOTHING against that, in principle. At the same time what pet ownership has become today honestly worries and saddens me.
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My first, most obvious cause of concern around pets is people spending thousands of Euros, getting in debts too, not just to get purebreed pets of questionable origin (more on this in a moment) but to treat them as much as possible like actual human babies. The most visible example I see very often these days is the increasing number of people I see carrying this or that mini-dog in small strollers made specifically for dogs. And when I happen to see dogs bearing rings at weddings, I can’t help thinking “they really had no relative or friends they considered worth of carrying those rings???” (1)
The “questionable origin” is the existence of breeds created and consciously perpetuated with features that make pets suffer, just because they make them cuter (more on this here and here).
Stuff like this was already make me thinking that pet ownership and common sense have parted ways. I had already observed one year ago that pets have become another case of too much choice to be really good for everybody involved, both pets and humans.
That was last year. This year, the increasing “premiumisation” of pet food, together with reports that the pet toys and pet cosmetics markets are both expected to double in ten years, looked more of the same: bad and dumb, but not enough to write again about it.
Ditto for fake Emotional Support Animals (even if they really contributed to discourage airborne overtourism, which I doubt), and for “smart” or “AI-powered” gadgets that make pet life just as “modern” and uselessly stress-inducing as human life is expected to be. Why bother too much, I thought, about stuff like “smart” dog collars that “beam the owner insights into their pet’s sleeping, eating, trotting, barking and scratching patterns”, when it’s just one more category of “smart” consumer products gone off the rails?
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I learned that the “business of pet longevity is booming”, by promising dog owners “more moments of joy together” (that is less time with humans) via sophisticated dietary supplements or treatments as exclusive as “$275 pet-longevity strategy sessions to get personalized protocol of supplements and off-label prescription medications”.
What made me think this matter deserved its own post now was the deep reason for that boom, which I’ll describe in a moment, plus another thing I discovered in the same days: if making a pet live not necessarily happier but longer isn’t enough, the equally booming pet CLONING business is here to help everybody with enough money to think their pet deserves resurrection, and not just with cloning. Quoting from that article, you could also try “cryopreservation, that is preserve the carcass of your pet at subfreezing temperatures in the hopes of one day reviving them. Clients can even arrange to have their terminally ill animals euthanized on site to speed the process.”
Now I really long for the days when all pet owners could be brainwashed to spend were toys, food and toiletry.
Why I am sad and worried about “Peak Pet”
Denial of death (which nobody should confuse with the wish and need to live as healthy as possible until one’s time has come) is as ancient as humanity. Lifespan extensions or cloning for pets are just an expansion of that wish, and a hardly surprising one, I guess, in a world where immortality choices like religion or parenting have (just temporarily, I suspect) heavily fallen out of favour.
Even ignoring that extreme, the life pets are made to live these days really seems to me surely not in their best interest, and to be one of the physical sides of a generalized human retreat from closeness with other human beings.
Pets wouldn’t have such an apparent great time if society put more efforts in supporting human family and friendship. The increase of attention, commitment and expenses that pets are getting comes from a big increase in the number of people who don’t even TRY to have family or friends anymore because, thanks to consumerism powered by high-tech, they finally have something else that:
hides loneliness and lack of purpose by finally being presented as necessarily expensive and time consuming, that is just as important, as having kids or any other long-term, equally committed relationship with other humans...
while being at the same time immensely easier both to mold and control as one wishes, AND to terminate in any moment. If you get tired of a human family member you are legally obliged to support you can’t just drop him into a shelter or into a friend’s lap, no question asked, without any social consequence.
Or, as I read on Quora, “Dogs are more controllable kid replacement”
“Peak Pet” like this sucks at so many levels. It sucks that it exists to begin with. When the majority of a generation concludes that pets are better than children not just because they’re (so far) more affordable but also because, as new research suggests, “having a cat or a dog to keep you company could boost your wellbeing as much as being married or meeting up regularly with friends and relatives” it’s not a sign that pets are good (which they are). It’s a sure sign that public mental health is screwed because we’ve let family, friendship and more (see end of next paragraph) go to waste, to the advantage of both digital and physical (e.g., pets) replacements.
Peak Pet also sucks because it increases inequality, and not just because “routine pet ownership... now costs an average of $4,272 per year”): the background vibe I perceive here is that, while the rich can and should aspire to go to Mars and live forever, the rest of us should make do with making pets live longer, while accepting euthanasia as not such a big deal (2), and even eugenics, eventually: once “pets are family just like human children” coupled with “harmfully overbreed pets are cute period” becomes a no-brainer fact of life there is not enough road left, in my humble opinion, before conclusions like “what’s wrong with selecting every human traits in vitro, just for convenience and personal satisfaction?”
Finally, it sucks that people are actively encouraged to do this by companies that exploit them.
People who want their dogs live longer wouldn’t get so much cuddling by businesses as they do if dogs didn’t live every moment in the same places as their owners, long enough to be comparable to humans... but not long enough to make the financial ludopaths known as “Venture Capitalists” go bet elsewhere. That is, a big reason why demand to make dogs live longer gets so much recognition is that dogs, being much better human simulators than traditional guinea pigs, can accelerate research and official approval of commercial products and services for extension of human lifespans, where really big money can be made.
Two-sentences, conspirationist and - just for fun - provocative digression and unfair oversimplification: Is there a better subject than people who voluntarily lock all their money, time and attention into a combination of pet and smartphone, walking the former while scrolling social media and AI chatbots? I mean, if that combination is both highly profitable by itself, and enough to replace both critical and emotional intelligence, there is no need to also build a metaverse to control people! Which, by golly, it's just what happened:
What should be done?
Back to the concrete, undeniable issues, Peak Pet is just another area of life that used to be good because it was simpler, spontaneous and generally more authentic, and is now being deliberately ruined by greed turbocharged by digital or digitally empowered high tech. Letting it continue as today cannot be good.
One of the authors of the “pets can be as good as spouses or friends” study is quoted saying:
“If pets improve life satisfaction as much as the study suggests, [the author] called on policymakers to make it easier for people to own them, for example by relaxing regulations that restrict renters’ access to them.”
For an economics professor as that author is, this makes sense, because it increases GDP, or at least doesn’t disturb it. To me, proposals of this kind feel too much as further rejections of the very idea of a society made of people that don’t want to ignore each other. In the long term, it’s an inhuman, suicidal strategy, so I suggest policymakers do the opposite: instead of making it even easier for future pet owners to end up self-sealed into separate realities, just make life easier to cope with, and less lonely, for all humans.
One week ago I read that China is cracking down on AI companions to encourage people to be in actual, real-world relationships. That’s almost the same end goal I’m talking about here, so let me I ask: should we apply the same treatment to Peak Pet?
Not really, I say, and surely not as the first or only measure. Be they pets, chatbots or drugs, “cracking down on companions” that help a human being to isolate himself from all the others cannot work by itself. Even in places where governments can set a policy and stick to it without worrying about elections or public opinion, “cracking down on companions” that make life bearable without first turning the job, housing and education markets upside down is a doomed endeavour.
So maybe policymakers should help people re-learn why and how to like humans first, and make that actually feasible for everybody. That is, they should do the very first things we should all demand now anyway, even if pets didn’t exist at all.
Yes, I do know that organizing a wedding can be one of the worst sources of family feuds, and I consequently understand that making the dog bear the rings may help show to all the human participants at the wedding that both spouses... don’t love any participant more than they love all the others. But still...
Kip was born with a birth defect that means his ribs are crushing his organs. But we will keep him calm and carry on, knowing that life is short
Well not to be all contrarian, but our pets have always been part of the family, all the way back to my own childhood. Though our current petss are both large working breed dogs and wouldn't stand for the treatment you describe; the dog ownership styles you are describing are with what we'd call "toy breeds", though the fault lies with the owners rather than the breeds. Or maybe the fault lies with the high density urban environments those owners are living in, does weird things to people.
Moreover the treatment isn't about treating them like a child, but treating them like the worst sort of spoiled toddler, the kind who are still being pushed in buggies way after they should be walking alongside; the kind you see lying on the floor in the supermarket, hitting the floor in full tantrum mode after being (initially...) denied some unhealthy snack or disposable toy.
So the fault doesn't like with treating dogs like they are family, but with the issues being exhibited by the owners. Who are almost invariably residents of large dense urban environments. Correlation does not equal causation but...