OK - So All Dogs Rule!
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Everyone’s heard a zany pampered-pet story: The dog who only eats home-delivered organic meals, the cat who gets an $18,000 kidney transplants, the pet-sitter who draws a six-figure salary thanks to a neighborhood full of obsessed pet owners. But what does all of this mean, and why is it happening now? Americans spend over $40 billion a year on pets, twice what they did a decade earlier. But the dollars are only one small part of the vast changes in America’s pet kingdom: Dogs have moved from backyard doghouses to their owners’ beds; veterinary practices have evolved from neutering and de-worming factories to corporate medical chains that offer arthroscopic surgeries and prescribe animal antidepressants; simple tennis-ball chew toys have given way to high-tech learning gadgets that promise to entertain a nation of latch-key pets. Man’s best friend has become America’s ersatz child.
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One Nation Under Dog is a voyage through this new world of American pet-keeping—the absurd, the touching, the horrifying, and the comic. I visited with a Chihuahua social networking group in New York, reported on pitched political battles over dog-friendly laws in San Francisco, watched lawyers wrangle over pet lawsuits in Chicago and sat in on pet-loss bereavement sessions in Philadelphia. It turns out the pet boom is about more than plain old over-the-top consumerism. Take a peek at how your pet’s life has changed and you’ll find the modern history of our society—one that covers everything from our ideas about family to our growing social stratification to our long commutes to our endless technological wizardry. Not to mention culture wars, nutritional neuroses, and the rise of globalism.
And, okay, some over-the-top consumerism, too.
One Nation Under Dog shows just how contemporary pets explain contemporary America. And with tail-wagging guides like Jade the Rottweiler, Ben the Beagle, and Murphy the Saint Bernard, the journey through modern society is also a lot of fun.
Author Michael Schaffer has a great website I recommend everyone to visit, there you'll find a link to purchase his book, "One Nation Under Dog,"
You can even upload a picture of your pet
and share it with the world.
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