WHAT TO GIVE THE DOG WHO HAS EVERYTHING

WHAT TO GIVE THE DOG WHO HAS EVERYTHING

The following numbers are dated (taken from the 2007 U.S. Pet Ownership & Demographics Sourcebook), but I'm too lazy to look up more recent stats: Even so, these are revealing:

In that year, the top pet was the dog. 37.2 percent of pet-owning households had at least one.
Something in excess of forty-five million people in the United States owned dogs.
Thirty-two million bought Christmas gifts for their pets.
Ten million celebrated their dogs' birthdays.

We can assume the numbers are much larger now. To me, the last two stats are especially significant: thirty-two million + Americans gave Christmas gifts to their pets. Along with children and grandchildren, wives, parents, lovers, etc., thirty-two million people also remembered to shop for Ariadne or Goth or Bucky. They drove somewhere, or walked, or took a bus, or went online to check out appropriate dog-oriented presents. They pondered alternatives, made decisions, and finally bought what they decided would make their dogs “happy.”

Because owners want it so. Just as with buying gifts for others, buying for a dog is both generous and selfish. You are giving something, but getting something, too. Actually, you are getting a number of things: the pleasure of choosing for someone you know, and the expectation of seeing the reaction. With dogs, this expectation leads to the moment when everyone else is shredding paper and feigning surprise and delight at receiving a new tie selected by a teenage grandchild, featuring the unmistakable likeness of Lady Gaga.

Not so the dog. He or she has entered the spirit of the season with unalloyed gusto. Shredding, whimpering, working his head off, he lets nothing stand between him and the task at paw. And it won’t much matter what’s inside. He will snatch it up and prance around the room, parading his new kong or rawhide chew for all to see.

He or she will almost certainly be happy, nothing feigned about it. Grateful, too, and never disappointed, or bored with waiting for it all to be over, so he can get back to texting Sophia, or to playing Grand Theft Auto.

It’s the purity of your dog’s response to life that’s the real reward, the actual gift a dog gives you on holidays and birthdays. Actually, on every day. It’s the lack of ambiguity in a dog’s response--to a raised leash, even to hard eyes staring down following a perfectly innocent encounter with your new slippers.

When all around us is complex and often ambiguous, when so much is gray, we are grateful for someone in our lives who is none of these things. Or we should be.
HERE'S THE BOOK