The Age of the Pampered Dog

We love our dogs, don’t we? Sure. But is it all getting to be a bit too much?

A case in point: Sam Apple recently wrote a feature appropriately entitled “Creature Comforts” for the Sunday New York Times Magazine. It’s a detailed description of his road trip tour of dog hotels (there really are such things) with his dog Steve. Have you noticed more people are now giving their dogs people names? There’s a reason for that.

Steve is, of course, a goldendoodle. Only a purebred would do. Forget about selecting a mutt. Forget about adopting a rescued dog.

“My plan was to stay with Steve at a string of dog hotels,” Apple wrote. “Staying at dog hotels would take me to the heart of some questions I’d been thinking about a lot. How did humans start catering to the whims of canines rather than the other way around? And what if, somewhere along the way, we all became a little too obsessed with our dogs?”

Apple at least had enough sense to realize that staying with his dog at those hotels rather than dropping him off, as everybody else does, would strike the hotel operators as peculiar. He feared that “as I walked by them, clutching my sleeping bag and rolling suitcase, they all thought I was a total schmuck.”

He wrote that he wanted to tell the hotel staffers “that I was actually on a very serious quest to understand something important about the American condition in the 21st century.” But instead he and Steve proceeded quietly through “the elegantly tiled entrance” of the Dogwood Acres Pet Retreat, which sits on an island in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.

The receptionist informed Apple that the stay would include a luxury suite, cuddle time, group play, a nature walk and a “belly rub tuck-in.” And the website promised “distinctive decor, cable television and a large picture window overlooking an extra-large private outdoor patio.”

Remember, this is for a dog.

After Apple and Steve enjoyed their room for a while, a young woman came in “to give Steve his bedtime belly rub tuck-in.” Apple stood and watched.

At 8 p.m. it was time for “lights out.” Steve got onto his dog cot with the stuffed mallard toy Apple had packed. Steve quickly fell asleep, leaving Apple to look out onto the patio and feel “even schmuckier than before.”

Clearly he had done some research for this story. He reported there are now dog bakeries and ice cream parlors and social clubs. He found a dogs-only cafe in San Francisco that serves “a $75 tasting menu.” He has learned that Americans in 2022 spent $137 billion on their pets. And Americans now spend more than half a billion dollars each year on pet Halloween costumes.

There was an undercurrent of sadness, of loneliness, in Apple’s story. He lives just with Steve and “interacts with many more people on Zoom than in real life. If I need the comfort of another beating heart, the closest one around is inside Steve’s rib cage.”

You begin to see why so many single people need to have pets.

Before Apple and Steve left Dogwood Acres, the staff threw a birthday party for Steve — even though Steve’s birthday was two months away. Other dogs were invited to the party and there was a bubble machine and a tub filled with colorful plastic balls. You wonder how many young humans ever get to enjoy such a party for their birthdays.

The next stop on the Apple-Steve dog hotel tour was the Holiday Barn Pet Resorts outside Richmond, Va. They stayed in a presidential suite. It featured orange-and-white walls, a maritime decor, an antique beer stein and tiny pitchers.

Apple noted that some dog hotels have cameras that can be closely watched by the pet parents. “Emails from concerned owners arrive throughout the night.”

More: “San Francisco’s Pet Camp once received a frantic call from a woman who wanted to know why her dog had come home with an erection. A dog hotel in Pennsylvania once had to make time for a pet parent who insisted on calling in each day to play the kazoo to her dog.”

Apple then stated the obvious: “We have extended our parenting instincts so far, it seems, that the distinction between pets and children has evaporated altogether.”

Apple said that on the morning he and Steve checked out of Holiday Barn, he put Steve in a life jacket and splashed around with him in a bone-shaped swimming pool. Cute.

Their final stop was the Olde Towne Pet Resort in Dulles, Va. The owner told Apple: “It’s like running an acute-care retirement facility. They all have to be taken to the bathroom. We have a med cart. Half of them are on meds.”

The highlights at Olde Towne were a staffer getting down on the floor with Steve and reading him a bedtime story about Clifford the Big Red Dog; a mud bath at the spa; and a blueberry facial.

OK, I’ve got a dog — a mix of Siberian husky, black lab, etc. that my wife and I adopted from a rescue outfit. We dearly love our Jolene, and yes, we pamper her. Jolene sleeps in our bed (down at the other end) and we’re up by 6 a.m. every day to feed her, walk her to the dog park and throw balls for her to fetch so she gets her exercise. Often we take her with us when we drive out to do errands and we regularly visit Books & Co., a friendly used bookstore/cafe where the staff gives her treats. She’s got a great life and she enhances ours. (Our two daughters live 3,000 miles away).

But — a dog hotel? A dog cafe? A dog bakery? Nope. We have a wonderful couple who take care of Jolene in their unpretentious but loving home whenever we leave town. She runs around in the back yard with the other dogs. She loves it there.

No heated swimming pool. No blueberry facials.