The Dog Merchants
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“We’re writing the playbook here,” as Stolkey puts it, which, by analogy, makes Brown an interesting new assistant coach working to rehabilitate Hunte’s image. Brown previously handled marketing for a YMCA branch and knew nothing of the dog business, and he joined the Hunte team to help the company open its doors and tell its story—to try to stop the spread of rumors about things like “trenches full of dead dogs” and the physical threats of violence he says Andrew Hunte, now about seventy years old and in failing health, regularly receives.
Brown is especially keen to discuss Hunte’s policy of finding a home for every dog who enters its doors, including those who get returned, by using in-house networks that operate similarly to small-scale nonprofit rescue groups, putting the word out through social media, and matching special-needs dogs with the right owners. Even the returned puppies are great, Brown says—and that includes his own Boxer and Mastiff, one of which got sent back because of asthma, a condition Brown says his family easily controls.
The company also is trying to do its part to help other homeless dogs when possible, Brown says, but it faces resistance because of the political divide between breeders and rescue groups, particularly its adversaries at the HSUS.
As an example, Brown says, after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2005, Hunte packed its climate-controlled trucks full of dog food, water, and veterinary supplies and had them ready to roll from Missouri down to the bayou to help the overflowing animal shelters. “The trucks were loaded,” Brown says, shaking his head at the all-stop order he says the company received from the HSUS coordinator in Louisiana. “He called and said, ‘We don’t want your help.’” (The HSUS did not respond to a request for fair comment about this accusation.)
That dismissive attitude was similar to the one Brown says the company received when it offered to help outfit a shelter in western Missouri, where Hunte thought it could improve kenneling, ventilation, and other systems to prevent the spread of disease. Its overtures there were rebuffed, too, Brown says, and Hunte ended up making a $50,000 donation instead—all the while continuing to be lambasted by animal welfare groups seeking the public’s support.
“It’s a very good motivation for donations to have a bogeyman, somebody to blame,” Brown says. “We’re big, so a lot of times it’s us.”
He says he’s had phones slammed down on him by rescue groups of all kinds after he called with overtures of partnerships. Yes, of course, there’s money to be made in selling Hunte products and kenneling systems to rescue advocates, but to Brown’s way of thinking, Hunte’s years and scope of experience include things that could benefit shelter operations, and thus all dogs, even ones in which Hunte has no financial stake. In Missouri, for instance, why shouldn’t the local shelter have systems just as effectively designed as the ones inside the Petland store Andrew Hunte operates? If the goal is to get dogs into homes, then maybe Hunte has some things it could teach the rescuers about distribution and sales.
Brown also spends a great deal of time sifting through hate mail with subject lines like “Christian devils,” a label that comes from the way Andrew Hunte has intertwined his company with religion. Operations are indeed based in the Bible Belt, and a two-hundred-seat chapel is on site, fully modernized in megachurch style with four projectors, a quartet of discotheque-worthy ceiling-mounted speakers, and at least sixteen spotlights, all pointed at the altar, or stage, where a young pastor with a guitar stands before a backlit cross. Wearing a gray polo shirt, blue jeans, and a hint of stylish beard scruff, he sings religious songs alongside a small band, gives people a place to discuss what’s troubling them, and leads prayers every Thursday from two until three o’clock. Hunte workers may attend what’s known simply as chapel on company time and with full pay.
On this particular Thursday, about forty of them chose to sit for the talk about the Second Commandment: You shall not make for yourself an idol. According to the pastor, it means putting one’s faith in God above all else, and not being distracted by any other religions or primary focuses, be they television or lucky rabbit’s feet or even puppies.
A reading was offered from the New American Standard Bible, Romans 1:22–25, which states:
Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.
The lesson: man is made in God’s image and should strive to honor Him. Animals are not the same. For those who know the true path to salvation or, arguably, to success, it’s paramount to remember that dogs, like everything else, have their rightful place. It’s the natural order of things.
With that in mind, the workers filed out of the chapel, some returning to the kennels, all in a calm and neighborly fashion, ready to meet the demands of puppy buyers for many years to come. It is, after all, consumer purchases that fund every last nickel of Hunte’s success, and every bit of success that everyone else in the supply chain enjoys.
That’s how things have always been when it comes to dogs, since long before Hunte even existed. As America’s mega-distributor of pet store puppies, Hunte may be the current bogeyman, but the core product it’s selling is almost as old as the nation itself—and so is the marketing message that keeps getting so many people to buy in.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARKETING THE MESSAGE
“Salesmanship is limitless.”
—James Cash Penney
Just before eight o’clock Eastern time on the morning of February 14, 2013, many people across America turned on their televisions to watch the news. It was a Thursday, so most were half-listening as they hopped into the shower and got dressed for work, but if theirs were among the hundred million or so homes that received CNN on that day, they likely paused their routine and stood close to the screen for at least a minute to take a better look. Reports about Israeli-Palestinian politics or soldiers at war in Afghanistan may not have piqued their interest, but this particular segment, near the top of the hour, sure did. A table full of media personalities led by anchorwoman Soledad O’Brien was gushing over a little black dog nicknamed Banana Joe.
It was the moment dog-loving Americans tune in for every February, the moment when they stand half-dressed in front of the TV and let their toothbrushes dangle from their mouths while they coo, the moment when, even if they’ve never attended a dog show in their lives, they are invited to fall in love with the newly crowned Westminster-winning royalty dubbed “America’s Dog.”
The first thing many viewers tried to do was pronounce Banana Joe’s breed, Affenpinscher, which doesn’t roll off the tongue like Labrador or Poodle, and which hardly anybody had ever heard of before that week. But now, all over television in a constant barrage of interviews on channel after channel, the rare Affenpinscher suddenly became one of the best-known breeds in the world’s biggest market for dogs. Banana Joe, who was born and bred in the Netherlands at the Tani Kazari kennel, had just won the 137th Westminster Kennel Club best in show title, and he was making the media rounds with his entourage—like any other celebrity with a business message to manufacture.
Westminster had been Joe’s eighty-sixth competition win during the nearly six years he’d been alive, which means he averaged about fourteen dog show wins a year. He’d taken top honors in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Germany. He was a hard-working show dog, to say the least. His owners weren’t on camera with him at CNN; in fact, the dog wasn’t allowed to spend a single day living with anyone but his handler, Ernesto Lara, during periods when he showed, because any undue influence on Joe could interfere with his training, and thus his chances of winning in the ring. The schedule no doubt infringed on possible in-the-flesh breeding times, too, but t
hat was all about to become history. When asked what was next on Joe’s agenda, Lara told the television audience, “Now, I guess, he’s going to have a quiet life, and maybe a lot of girlfriends will come his way.”
Laughter filled the studio, and then O’Brien chimed in—trying to ask a serious question that simply was not part of the message Joe was there to promote.
“I have to imagine that he’s valuable,” she said. “You joke about that, but he’s valuable for breeding, right?”
David Frei, sitting next to Banana Joe with the wide smile of a practiced salesman after nearly a quarter century of representing Westminster, deftly maneuvered around the issue of money and instead answered in a way that made Joe sound like an everyday pooch: “Well, that’s what dog shows are all about, is finding the next generation of healthy, happy dogs and the greatest dogs to put into your breeding program. We want more Joes out there in family homes, sitting on the couch, being loved by everybody.”
With O’Brien’s attempt to interject even a hint of reality having been duly quashed, CNN went to commercial like every other competing network would that week during similar segments, and like so many programs do when covering dog show winners after similar events like Crufts and the FCI World Dog Show in other parts of the globe. To her credit, O’Brien had tried to get at the root of what was actually going on, instead of merely following the “isn’t he adorable” script. Many other popular television hosts couldn’t even see that they were being used as widgets in the purebred-marketing machine.
On ABC World News Now, the report by anchor Diana Perez equated the little black dog with Super Bowl sports heroes as well as beauty pageant queens, even going so far as to interlace a Miss America pageant clip of a red-bikini-clad blonde with shots of purebred show dogs getting manicures and doing Pilates. Wall Street Journal Live called its video coverage, unambiguously, “Faces of the Canine Stars.” When Banana Joe, Lara, and Frei brought their promotional tour to the popular morning talk show The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg introduced the dog with a huge grin, calling him “the amazing Banana Joe,” co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck let Joe drink water from her mug, and co-host Joy Behar quipped, to huge laughs, “The bitches will be coming out of the woodwork.” Co-host Sherri Shepherd asked about personality, giving Lara his cue to tell viewers at home the dog was like “good people,” a wonderful pet. Frei also got his on-camera moment so he could introduce that year’s newly accepted breeds, the Treeing Walker Coonhound and Russell Terrier, in case any viewers had other dog-shopping desires.
Each of these television programs—those under the auspices of news as well as those labeled entertainment—was designed to leave the message firmly planted in viewers’ minds that Banana Joe and all the purebred Affenpinschers like him were great family pets, and that everyone should adore them and go out and buy one. Dog lovers had no idea what they’d been missing all these years with their Cocker Spaniels and Bassett Hounds and—dare anyone say it—mutts.
Affenpinscher madness immediately descended on the tiny Affenpinscher breeding community. Bloomberg Businessweek reported at the time that precisely seven Affenpinscher puppies were for sale in the entire United States, and that only twelve AKC-recommended Affenpinscher breeders existed in all of North America. Getting a puppy from one of them would run a buyer about $2,500, though they could be found with commercial breeders for as little as $400. That pricing wouldn’t last, though, as breeders popped up all over the place trying to cash in on the Westminster win; less than a year later, Affenpinscher puppies would be on websites like PuppyFind.com without registration papers at an asking price of $1,500. Their price had nearly quadrupled in the market, and their presence at puppy farms and small breeding operations alike had blossomed thanks to all of the media attention.
Banana Joe, meanwhile, continued being marketed as a dog who was now going home to his human mom and dad, the happy returning champion of the family, darn near an American hero, just like all purebred dogs could someday be if owners bought the right puppy. But in reality, the only thing that might stay in the United States was Joe’s frozen semen, to be stored for breeding. Joe was co-owned by Zoila “Tina” Truesdale of Attleboro, Massachusetts, whose husband runs the International Canine Semen Bank. Banana Joe had spent only part of his time with the Truesdales since being born from a pairing of Kyleakin Space Cowboy and Bling Bling V Tani Kazari in Holland. Much of Joe’s years in America had been a dedicated schedule of traveling to dog show after dog show with Lara, who lived in Bowmansville, Pennsylvania, a good 350 miles away from the Truesdales. But Joe wasn’t going to Pennsylvania to retire, either; instead, “America’s Dog” was going to the Netherlands, where he had spent the first three years of his life and where he’d now be returned to his co-owner, breeder Mieke Cooijmans, who sees him as a walking piece of art.
“He’s moving to Holland,” William Truesdale told Boston.com amid the media frenzy. “He’s pretty much done all that he can do. The little guy has been around. He’s got a lot of frequent-flyer miles!”
And truth be told, if anyone cared to ask, Banana Joe probably wouldn’t be happy if there were already any other dogs in his new home.
“He isn’t really what we call a player with other dogs, but he’s absolutely fascinated with human beings,” Truesdale told reporters. “He is very, very perky, playful. He’s like a little wind-up toy. He just goes and goes. And, of course, that’s what charms the judges.”
“A little wind-up toy that goes and goes” is not exactly a viable sales pitch when trying to get someone to buy a family pet. Neither is “high mortality rate at birth,” which has long been the case with the Affenpinscher breed. But nobody asked about general problems with purebred standards on the major US television networks that week; the assumption was that Joe was yet another top-of-the-line purebred dog from a top-of-the-line breeder, an assumption that quickly translated into consumer demand. The phone was ringing like Sunday morning church bells inside the home of Jude Daley, president of the Affenpinscher Club of America. She and her colleagues were flooded with requests from would-be Affenpinscher owners, and the calls came more frequently as the dog’s media tour continued. No matter what station dog lovers watched, they were spoon-fed the same message: Affies like cute little Banana Joe were the newest must-have commodity.
The well-honed process of marketing purebreds was so conditioned into Americans’ thinking that it took two, maybe three minutes of airtime to convince viewers of Joe’s greatness, even at eight o’clock in the morning, when they were paying only partial attention and still sipping their first cups of coffee. Heck, a lot of people actually believed that his story was drop-what-you’re-doing, stop-brushing-your-teeth, must-watch news.
It was Thanksgiving weekend in 1996, and Pati Dane was standing outside a South Florida movie theater, holding the leash of a sixty-pound Dalmatian named Shiloh. She’d chosen Shiloh specifically for the day’s outing because the dog was calm and well behaved with children. It was a good thing, too, because as the movie theater doors opened, the families flooded out in a rush after the premiere showings of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians. The kids were on sugar rushes from all the candy and soda, and poor Shiloh was bombarded by the sometimes dangerous exuberance of little hands and faces coming at her without warning—and with excruciatingly loud squealing.
“The kids would come out of the movie theater and run to our booth screaming, ‘Mommy! Mommy! Dalmatian! Dalmatian!’” Dane recalls. “The parents were totally oblivious.”
By the time the parents got to her and Shiloh, Dane had her literature and her talking points from Dalmatian Rescue ready. She knew what had happened about a decade earlier, in 1985, when Disney had rereleased the original 1961 cartoon version of 101 Dalmatians—and AKC registrations for the breed had increased spectacularly, from about eight thousand puppies a year to nearly forty-three thousand. This time around the puppies on the screen weren’t even animated. They were real, and every kid in sight was begging to get one.
Her effort did some good, but she and her colleagues in the Dalmatian rescue community were simply drowned out by the tsunami of marketing that comes with a blockbuster Disney film. By January and February, when Americans were tossing out their used-up Christmas trees and returning unwanted toasters at the shopping malls, Dalmatian rescuers were already seeing the spotted puppies flooding into shelters. People had bought them impulsively, and the reality of dog ownership had set in fast. It had taken only a few weeks for Dane’s worst fears to come true as the movie continued to be shown in city after city. The Humane Society of Boulder, Colorado, saw a 310 percent spike in Dalmatian drop-offs. The Humane Society of Tampa Bay in Florida said its increase was 762 percent. Dane herself received 130 dogs needing new homes—a number that usually took her more than two years to accumulate. The same trend occurred in other parts of the world, too, as the movie was released in additional markets. British Dalmatian Welfare, for one, reported a sharp increase after the film played in the United Kingdom.