Rabid

by Pamela Redmond Satran

  Being a sucker for sappy dog books.

  Being a sucker for sappy dog commercials.

  Dogs and Money

  Last year, Americans spent more than $50 billion on pets, half of that on supplies and vet care and another $20 million on food. The average dog owner spends about $750 a year on vet visits and vitamins, over $300 on food and treats, and nearly $400 on boarding and travel expenses.

  Americans spend twice as much on pet products as they do on cosmetics, and nearly as much as they spend on toys. Three-quarters say they’d go into debt for their pets, and a fifth remember their dogs in their wills.

  And animal spending is nearly recession-proof, with nearly 70 percent of dog owners saying the economy has no effect on their pet spending levels. At the highest end, not only are dog lovers willing to spend more, but there’s also more to spend more on, including the dogs themselves.

  The World’s Most Expensive Dog Products

  How do rich people—or rich dogs—spend all that money? Here’s how:

  Snack: Four ounces of nonpasteurized red salmon caviar made especially for dogs, $50

  Bowl: Puppy de Paris crystal dog bowl set in a gold frame, $14,000

  Dress: Deni Alexander Golden Dream ball gown, $3,000

  At $3.2 million, the most expensive item of dog jewelry in the world, by i Love Dogs Diamonds.

  Jewelry: The Amour Amour necklace from i Love Dogs Diamonds, which contains a 7 carat centerpiece diamond and 1,600 other diamonds hand-set in platinum and white gold on an alligator collar, $3.2 million

  Carrier: Louis Vuitton monogrammed carrier, $1,920, or vintage Le Chien Birkin bag from Hermes, $1,250

  Leash: Fluorescent calfskin dog leash from Balenciaga, $295

  Bed: Royal Cabana linen and suede drapes and your pet’s name written in Swarovski crystals, $6,900

  Bathtub: Claw-footed tub with 46,928 hand-applied Swarovski crystals, $5,500

  Perfume: Les Poochs brand VIP Dog perfume, four ounces for $3,000, or Sexy Beast unisex dog fragrance, $850 including bottle engraved with your dog’s name and hand numbered

  Deni Alexander designed this golden ball gown, which retails for $3,000.

  The World’s Most Expensive Dogs

  Sure, you can get a dog from the shelter or take on a rescue pup for a few hundred dollars or less, but then they wouldn’t be able to . . .

  Well, exactly what do expensive dogs offer that plain old mutts don’t?

  Status, for one thing.

  The current “world’s most expensive dog” is a rare red Tibetan mastiff bought by a Chinese coal baron for a million British pounds—nearly $2 million. The dog, named Big Splash, dines on chicken, beef, and abalone and is considered a bigger status symbol in China than cars or jewelry.

  Tibetan mastiffs, sometimes called lion dogs, are believed to host the souls of nuns and monks who weren’t good enough to be reincarnated as humans or to go to heaven. Genghis Khan reportedly numbered three hundred of the ancient breed among his army.

  Other top-priced dogs may not have the spiritual or status advantages of the Tibetan mastiff, but carry other more practical qualities.

  German shepherd guard dogs bred from special bloodlines by a company called Harrison K-9 Security Services in South Carolina have been sold to the U.S. Navy Seals, the British Special Forces—and a wealthy Minnesota couple who paid $230,000 for the dog’s superior security instincts and skills.

  The South Korean police own seven drug-sniffing dogs cloned at a cost of $100,000 each from an animal with a golden nose and then trained at a further $40,000 per dog.

  The parents of a little girl with highly sensitive life-threatening food allergies paid $20,000 for a specially trained Portuguese water dog who goes everywhere with the child and can sniff out trace elements of dairy, eggs, and peanuts.

  Where there’s money, there’s crime and black market deals.

  In Iran, dogs have become high-fashion status symbols selling for up to $10,000 in under-the-table trading, despite or perhaps because of Islamic laws against dog ownership. Dogs are smuggled into the country and exchanged via wired money and blindfolded deliveries worthy of the international drug trade.

  As the prices of dogs rise, dognappings are also on the increase, up 32 percent in the United States alone from 2010 to 2011. The stolen dogs, if purebred, are sold as pets or, if they don’t have pedigree value, to research labs or dogfighting rings or, in Asia, to restaurants.

  CRAZY? You Can’t Be Too Rich, Too Thin, or Own Too Many Chihuahuas

  A self-proclaimed dog hoarder in Mississippi bought seventy-five purebred dogs and then, after owning up to her problem, donated the animals to the local Humane Society. Would-be adopters lined up hours before opening time at the shelter to get one of the pedigreed animals for mutt prices. The producers of Animal Planet’s Confessions: Animal Hoarding were believed to be seriously bummed.

  The World’s Richest Dogs

  If regular old people are spending more every year on their dogs, the economy be damned, rich people are going totally over the top.

  Consider Britain’s Louise Harris, for instance, who recently spent £20,000—that’s nearly $40,000—on a wedding for her Yorkshire terrier, Lola, which included $1,000 for a wedding planner and $2,000 for flowers.

  A Malaysian businessman spends more than $5,000 a month on his Tibetan mastiffs, which includes an air-conditioned enclosure and two full-time maids.

  But while dogs owned by wealthy dog lovers and celebrities such as Oprah live pampered lives, the animals can become wealthy in their own right after their “parents” die. More than a million people in the United States have made their dogs the primary beneficiaries of their wills, which can mean big money. A self-published book by two attorneys called Fat Cats and Lucky Dogs advises pet owners on how to provide for their animals from beyond the grave.

  Countess Carlotta Liebenstein of Germany left her Alsatian, Gunther III, $106 million when she died in 1992; his successor, Gunther IV, now claims to be the “wealthiest dog in the world” with a $300 million fortune. Gunther reportedly bought Madonna’s Miami mansion and once bid $1,000 at auction on a rare white truffle, though Gunther’s existence has recently been called into question—and really, his website looks pretty cheesy for a dog who’s supposed to be that rich.

  Pet Lounge Studios is the creator of this outdoor dog hammock, perfect for lounging yachtside.

  More easily verified is the $12 million bequest left by the Queen of Mean Leona Helmsley to her Maltese named Trouble, who was hand-fed by the housekeeper and encouraged by Helmsley to literally bite the hand that fed her. Although a judge later knocked the legacy down to $2 million, Trouble died last year in luxury at a Helmsley-owned hotel in Florida.

  Heiress Gail Posner left a $3 million trust fund and her Miami mansion to her three dogs, one of whom wore a $15,000 diamond necklace by Cartier. Posner’s only son contested the will. And back in 1931, another heiress, Ella Wendel, left her poodle Toby Rimes $80 million.

  More recent dogs who inherited big from their famous owners include bull terriers Minter, Juice, and Callum, who received $82,000 in the will of fashion designer owner Alexander McQueen.

  One of the largest private endowments is $300 million to Maddie’s Fund, named for donors Dave and Cheryl Duffield’s miniature schnauzer. The charity’s mission is to save dog and cat lives; caviar dinners and diamond necklaces not necessary.

  Luxury Services for Dogs

  The pup who has everything can get used to being well taken care of, and there are service providers who are only too willing to accommodate—for a price. Among the services you can hire:

  Dog stylist: Dara Foster, “fashionista in chief” of the site pupstyle.com and author of a book of the same name, will style your dog for red carpet events—or just lying around the house.

  Perso
nal trainer: Sure, you’ve heard of dog walkers, but Lindsay Stordahl is a dog runner, available to take your animal for a one-on-one run through the park at her Fargo, North Dakota, base. (So, yes, the upscale dog phenomena have penetrated even to North Dakota.)

  Pet limo: A chauffeured car will drive your dog to the groomer, your country house, the airport.

  Pet airways: That’s right, the airport. This all-pet airways flies animals inside the cabin, with a vet onboard. Recent price for New York to L.A. roundtrip: $2,300.

  Interview coach: Elena Gretch, founder of upmarket training service It’s a Dog’s Life, will prep your dog over the course of six sessions at $175 per for co-op board interviews.

  CRAZY about your dog or just CRAZY

  Buying your dog a faux-fur coat if you live in Alaska.

  Letting your dog wear the diamond necklace your husband gave you for your birthday.

  Choosing the car with the dog-equipped rear compartment.

  Letting your dog ride shotgun, so the two of you can really talk.

  Making provisions in your will for your dog’s care.

  Dog: set for life. Kids: zero.

  The Social Dog

  Almost all—92 percent—of dog owners see their dogs as members of the family. But for many pooch, uh, lovers, it goes much deeper than that. Nearly half of all dogs now sleep in the same bed as their owners, for example, up from a third a decade ago. And almost 40 percent of pet owners have more photos of their pets than of their significant others.

  Whether your dog is your best friend or the love of your life, here are some new places and ways that dogs and their owners are interacting:

  Dog happy hours and cocktail parties. In cities where dogs are allowed in bars, some establishments have started holding dog-friendly happy hours. At the One Bal Harbour hotel in Florida, mascot Lulu Flynn, “daughter” of entertaining expert Lara Shriftman, hosts cocktail parties for human-canine couples.

  Dog-friendly restaurants. Not every place allows dogs in restaurants, but the venues—which include Florida, California, Minnesota, and most parts of Europe—are growing. The Dining Out Growth Act of 2011 allowing dogs to dine at outdoor restaurants passed last year in Maryland. Websites such as bringfido.com and dogfriendly.com list thousands of restaurants around the world that allow dogs. One restaurant in the UK even features a menu just for dogs.

  Church socials. Churches have expanded occasional Blessings of the Animals to include dog-friendly church socials.

  Social networking sites. Dogbook, Facebook’s dog wing, allows dogs and their owners to connect on a wide scale, but locale-specific social networking sites have sprung up, too. Metropup.us is a Los Angeles networking site for dogs and their owners, for example, and thedogdish.com is centered in Oklahoma.

  Dog Meet Ups

  Everybody knows that walking your dog is a good way to meet other people. But in the age of the meet up, there are more organized ways for you and your dog to find your cohort, no matter how specialized that may be. Breedcentric groups abound and other sample meet ups include:

  Brooklyn

  • Supersocial small dogs

  • Adopted dogs of NYC

  • LGBT dog owners

  • Holistic dog care and nutrition

  • Yappy hour—wine lovers and their dogs

  • Financial Fido—Wall St. workers and their dogs

  San Francisco

  • West San Francisco dog-friendly biography book group

  • Muttville senior dog rescue

  • Beaches and bonfires

  • Berkeley Pomeranian lovers

  • Bow-wow misfits

  Chicago

  • West Town pup crawl—outings to dog-friendly bars

  Austin

  • Metaphysical pets

  Boston

  • Snow dogs

  Seattle

  • Doga—yoga with your dog—group

  I’ll have a beer, and for my friend, a Diet Coke.

  Dating Your Dog

  Can your dog help you find love? Three-quarters of women and half of men say they’re more likely to date or marry someone who has a pet. And the new dogcentric dating websites such as AnimalAttraction

  .com or DateMyPet.com make it easier than hanging out in the dog park to meet the right dog owner.

  Features that set these sites apart from regular dating sites are tools for setting up dog playdates, partner searches based on breed, and offline dog-owner events.

  If it’s your dog who’s looking for the date, there’s also an app for that. Mate Select UK Kennel Club helps breeders select mates for their dogs that will optimize the puppy offspring’s health.

  Test Your Doggie Sex IQ

  WARNING: Exercise caution before reading. You can’t unknow this stuff.

  The family dog often provides a child’s first lessons in sex education: “Mommy, why is Fluffy banging himself against the table leg like that?”

  But beyond the basics, there’s so much about dog sex we don’t know—and believe me, may not wanna know.

  Think you’re ready? Think you’ve heard it all?

  Okay, then. Take the following true or false quiz to test your knowledge on dogs and sex.

  1. Two dogs in the same litter can have different fathers. T F

  2. There is a XXX-rated dog website called Zoo Tube. T F

  3. Is your dog lonely? There’s a dog sex doll for that. T F

  4. Two men were arrested recently for using the Internet to find canine sex partners. T F

  5. You can buy a “massager” meant for dogs that’s shaped like a bone.T F

  6. Meat-scented dog condoms were recalled as a choking hazard. T F

  7. Hector the Great Dane is a porn star in Hungary. T F

  8. In six years, one female dog can produce sixty-seven thousand descendants. T F

  9. An animal brothel in Washington State near the Canadian border attracted sex tourists from around the world until it was shut down by authorities in 2005. T F

  10. A woman died from an allergic reaction after having sex with an Alsatian. T F

  Key: All these statements are true.

  CRAZY? Seriously, This Stuff’s Hard to Get

  Ten Great Dane puppies were recently born in Australia using sperm that a dog owner had kept frozen for twenty-one vyears.

  Dog Weddings

  Dogs and weddings are two concepts that until recently didn’t really go together. Now, though, of course they do, in a range of ways. You have your:

  Dog-to-Dog Weddings

  Once upon a time, like a whole half a decade ago, dog-to-dog weddings were Stupid Celebrity Pet Tricks, like the time Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Borat, charged out of the water to disrupt the wedding of Pamela Anderson’s Chihuahua, Luca, to a golden retriever named Star. (And listen, we know what you’re thinking, and we’re not even going to go there.)

  Today, though, you don’t need to be Hollywood royalty to host a doggie wedding of your very own. Pet bridal finery, from veils to tuxes to ugly bridesmaids’ dresses, is easily findable online, and a range of websites will instruct you on how to do everything from design the invitations to book a caterer.

  In lieu of rings, for instance, you might dress the dogs in matching collars, and hosting the affair in an outdoor venue might make, ahem, cleanup after the guests easier. One site cautions that you make sure the wedding couple “get along,” though as with other romantic trends sparked by Hollywood, monogamy may not be strictly required and quickie divorce is always an option.

  One happy couple.

  People-to-People Weddings, with Dogs

  Nearly 20 percent of dog owners want their pets involved in their weddings. One wedding planner, the Wedding Dog, even specializes in weddings that involve canine friends and
family of the happy couple.

  Options? A doggie ring bearer’s harness is available in custom fabric for $65 to $75, depending on size. Special training for your dog to walk down the aisle or sit still for the ceremony. And the wedding cake can even have a topper with your dog included, like the Steampunk sculpture pictured here by Pete Pochylski of Builders Studio, which sells for about $400. (Note: you can get dogs-only wedding cake toppers too.)

  Steampunk wedding cake topper by artist Pete Pochylski of Builders Studio, which sells for about $400.

  Dog-to-People Weddings

  Okay, these don’t happen very often, and when they do, as with so many other awful events, they always seem to involve teeth.

  One Indian boy, for instance, was married to a dog to protect him from animal spirits after a tooth grew out of his gum. Reports didn’t mention whether orthodontia was first considered as a remedy.

  And in Nepal, a seventy-five-year-old man married a dog because of a tradition that requires such nuptials if you regrow teeth after losing them. The man died three days later of unknown causes, though our best guess is that between the new set of teeth and the wedding night he might have been simply freaked out.

  CRAZY about your dog or just CRAZY

  Making friends with other dog owners so that you and your dog can double date.

  Insisting that your dog be included in every dinner invitation, every weekend in the country, everywhere you go, or you’re not interested.

  Using your dog as a wing, er, animal to aid in your quest to find true love.