Chew Toy or Teether?
How the pet industry and the baby industry are merging.
by Andrew Adam Newman
February 5, 2007
While babying your pet may sound kind of cute, treating your baby like a dog is another matter entirely. Put less delicately, feeding your puppy Gerber's baby food because its stomach is sensitive is kind of sweet; feeding your baby Alpo gets you on the evening news.
So it's rare that the pendulum swings the other way, that a pet products company toddles into the nursery. But, as Lisa Lowe can attest, it happens. Lowe is the founder of O.R.E., which for about twelve years made what she calls "feeding accessories" for dogs and cats, including rubber placemats and food bowls. Her inspiration: "My first kid was an English Bull Terrier named Stanley."
When Lowe became pregnant four years ago, she was inspired anew. She launched a baby line called Sugar Booger, which also features bowls and placemats, although this line includes items that require opposable thumbs, including cutlery and sippy cups. "The emotional connection associated with feeding drives both categories because that nurturing aspect is important," Lowe says.
Companies that sell for kids and pets tend to keep the lines distinct, and Lowe understands why. "A pet is a much dirtier 
"People are defining themselves through their pets and their children."animal — dogs are on the ground and some eat their own poop," Lowe says. "We're antiseptic with babies, we don't even breathe on them." Yet Lowe still puts her pets and kids products together in one catalog. "When we put them both in the same catalog, at first we asked, 'Is that bizarre?' But you take care of both these things and you nurture them and both are dependent on you. And it breaks your heart when your dog dies."
Lowe thinks of her pet line as a primer of sorts for the baby line. "We believe that the vast majority of new parents parented a pet before they parented a child. Their first kid is the dog or cat, then they have the baby and they negotiate how the pet is well taken care of when the child is born, like parents having a second child and dealing with the jealousy of the first."
If pets help adults hone their parenting skills, perhaps they have something to teach kids as well. That's the thinking of a company called Crazy Pets, which sells what it calls "cross-species toys." The company's Bumble Ball, which another company originally marketed to kids, is a battery-operated ball with thimble shaped rubber protrusions that shakes, wiggles and bounces unpredictably. If the baby isn't scampering after that with the dog, he can blow bubbles with the Catch-A-Bubble: The bubbles smell like either peanut butter (for dogs) or catnip (for cats). The company also publishes a kids' cookbook to bake treats for cats and dogs.
"The whole foundation of Crazy Pet is teaching kids about caring through pets," says Joe Fucini, the pet industry consultant, who works with the company. "A pet is often the first being that a child learns to share with, and every little increment is a step in learning how to care for others. We position the brand as fostering the bond between children and pets. That's our raison d'etre."
Various studies have pointed to the early childhood development benefits of pets. Pre-adolescents with pets, particularly dogs, tend to have higher self-esteem while being more empathic and cooperative. And according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, thirty-six percent of dog owners think dogs are "good for children, teach responsibility," while twenty-three percent of cat owners do. (On the other hand, more than half of the 4.7 million Americans bitten by dogs each year are under the age of twelve.)
In the end, from a business standpoint, maybe the similarity between kids and dogs is not important. What really matters is the similarity between parents and dog owners. After all, they're the ones who carry the credit cards, and who project their aesthetics and desires onto their charges.
"A baby isn't sitting up in his bouncy seat and saying, 'I want a Bugaboo Stroller instead of a Graco,' any more than a dog asks for coat," says Julia Beck, a consultant whose company, 40 Weeks, advises maternity and baby companies. "People are defining themselves through their pets and their children. What breed of dog you have says a lot about you as a person, and there are certain people who put dogs in coats and certain people who don't."
Both baby and pet product purchases, Beck says, "are about caring for the most beloved creature in your life — and pumping up the adorableness of said creature."
©2007 Andrew Adam Newman and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Andrew Adam Newman is a frequent contributor to The New York Times.
His work has appeared in Salon and on National Public Radio's
Studio
360 with Kurt Andersen. He lives in New York. See more at
andrewadamnewman.com. |
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