Feature Article |
How Rover Took Over
By Michael Schaffer
PHILADELPHIANS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN SUCKERS for that doggie in the window.
The city features prominently in Pets in America: A History, University of Delaware professor Katherine C. Grier’s engaging overview of our national relationship with domestic animals. As early as the 1870s, she notes, the Chester County firm of N.P. Boyer and Co. had expanded its trade in imported purebred livestock to include “dogs, fancy rabbits.” By 1900, Dr. J.J. Maher’s Veterinary Hospital for Horses, Dogs, and Small Animals offered a free ambulance service for stricken canines. A string of pet stores along 9th Street would attract customers by piling caged animals outside their doors. Further up the economic ladder, a store called Cugley and Mullen advertised its Market Street emporium as “germ-proof.” The store even provided written guarantees of its animals’ health and (alas, only for birds) their ability to sing.
Just as Cugley and Mullen’s fixation with germs was born of the grimy nature of life in the industrial-era metropolis, so is our contemporary pet culture a product of life in today’s Philadelphia — or as John Edwards might have it, today’s Philadelphias. No less a cultural critic than Murphy himself can discern the two Americas on display during his walk. Close to our home, in the fast-appreciating, professor-heavy Victoriana of University City, the average passerby sees him as sweet and friendly and evocative of the pup Charles Grodin made famous: Beethoven!
Venture a little further afield, though, and a lot of folks suddenly start to see the big guy as not so friendly after all. They venture out of our way as we walk, and more of the calls start referring to filmdom’s second most famous example of his breed: “Uh-oh, it’s Cujo.”
As with so much in the city’s new gilded age, it’s a study in contrasts. On the one hand, one of America’s most obese cities for humans. On the other, the popularity at boutiques like BoneJour of raw dog food, which includes bone and organ in an effort to replicate what Rover might eat if he were hunting for himself back in the wild. On the one hand, a crumbling old park system. On the other, the canine wonderland that is Schuylkill River Park’s dog run, with its snout-level water fountain and separate enclosures for small and big dogs.
On the one hand, a city with almost 140,000 residents who lack health insurance. On the other, Attorney Adrienne Piazza, 30, of Manayunk, pays about $300 a month for veterinary care for 26-pound French bulldog Jackson. The dog has had two eye surgeries, requires antibiotics and steroids for a condition that made his fur fall out and has him constantly itching, and also gets allergy shots. And Piazza suspects he has a vision problem that will require further interventions. Oh, and the dog has, ahem, “food aggression issues.” “We tried to get him trained and it didn’t work,” she says.
But Piazza would never consider giving up the animal her vet calls “the million-dollar dog.” She knows no one would take him, meaning the pooch would be destroyed. A generation back, plenty of animals were sent off to that great dog run in the sky for lesser inconveniences. But now, for folks like Piazza, the dog is family. So she muddles by.
“He’s a walking disaster,” she says. “You just kind of do what you can. Things are getting a little better.”
The city features prominently in Pets in America: A History, University of Delaware professor Katherine C. Grier’s engaging overview of our national relationship with domestic animals. As early as the 1870s, she notes, the Chester County firm of N.P. Boyer and Co. had expanded its trade in imported purebred livestock to include “dogs, fancy rabbits.” By 1900, Dr. J.J. Maher’s Veterinary Hospital for Horses, Dogs, and Small Animals offered a free ambulance service for stricken canines. A string of pet stores along 9th Street would attract customers by piling caged animals outside their doors. Further up the economic ladder, a store called Cugley and Mullen advertised its Market Street emporium as “germ-proof.” The store even provided written guarantees of its animals’ health and (alas, only for birds) their ability to sing.
Just as Cugley and Mullen’s fixation with germs was born of the grimy nature of life in the industrial-era metropolis, so is our contemporary pet culture a product of life in today’s Philadelphia — or as John Edwards might have it, today’s Philadelphias. No less a cultural critic than Murphy himself can discern the two Americas on display during his walk. Close to our home, in the fast-appreciating, professor-heavy Victoriana of University City, the average passerby sees him as sweet and friendly and evocative of the pup Charles Grodin made famous: Beethoven!
Venture a little further afield, though, and a lot of folks suddenly start to see the big guy as not so friendly after all. They venture out of our way as we walk, and more of the calls start referring to filmdom’s second most famous example of his breed: “Uh-oh, it’s Cujo.”
As with so much in the city’s new gilded age, it’s a study in contrasts. On the one hand, one of America’s most obese cities for humans. On the other, the popularity at boutiques like BoneJour of raw dog food, which includes bone and organ in an effort to replicate what Rover might eat if he were hunting for himself back in the wild. On the one hand, a crumbling old park system. On the other, the canine wonderland that is Schuylkill River Park’s dog run, with its snout-level water fountain and separate enclosures for small and big dogs.
On the one hand, a city with almost 140,000 residents who lack health insurance. On the other, Attorney Adrienne Piazza, 30, of Manayunk, pays about $300 a month for veterinary care for 26-pound French bulldog Jackson. The dog has had two eye surgeries, requires antibiotics and steroids for a condition that made his fur fall out and has him constantly itching, and also gets allergy shots. And Piazza suspects he has a vision problem that will require further interventions. Oh, and the dog has, ahem, “food aggression issues.” “We tried to get him trained and it didn’t work,” she says.
But Piazza would never consider giving up the animal her vet calls “the million-dollar dog.” She knows no one would take him, meaning the pooch would be destroyed. A generation back, plenty of animals were sent off to that great dog run in the sky for lesser inconveniences. But now, for folks like Piazza, the dog is family. So she muddles by.
“He’s a walking disaster,” she says. “You just kind of do what you can. Things are getting a little better.”
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