What’s in a name: You say tomato, I say companion …
By Gina Spadafori
August 10, 2007
Christie’s still spending her days whimpering in bed with kennel coughwhooping cough and pneumonia, so I guess I have to do all the work around here. … (Geez, you’d think a person could still type with a 103-degree temperature and bone-shaking cough, but some people just aren’t very hardy, I guess.)
(Note to self: Stay away from children’s birthday parties. Can’t afford to catch the plague.)
Many years ago — almost 25 of them, in fact — I started writing a pet-column for The Sacramento Bee, where I was more or less otherwise gainfully employed as a copy editor on the news desk. I was an avid dog-trainer and obedience-trial competitor at the time, and the conversation went something like this:
Editor: We have a hole in this weekend’s paper, because Dr. Always Late With His Column is, well, late with his column.
Me: Hey, are we calling those islands the Falklands or the Malvinas this week? Um … sorry … what did you say?
Editor: You have dogs?
Me: Yes.
Editor: And I understand you train them for stuff?
Me: Uh-huh.
Editor: And you have trophies and ribbons for this?
Me: Yes, a few, but …
Editor: Great. 800 words, 8 a.m. tomorrow.
Me: Wow! My big chance! Thank you, Mr. Editor Sir!
Editor: (muttering) Gosh, I need a drink.
And so it began. My intention of being managing editor of the New York Times (or even The Sacramento Bee) was completely sidetracked when I realized that writing about subjects I utterly and totally adored was a lot more fun and personally rewarding than being in locker rooms with sweaty athletes who didn’t want anyone in there, much less a young woman. (I started out as a sportswriter.) And certainly a lot more fun than writing headlines on stories other people got to write.
I inherited a weekly space in the paper called “Your Pet” from Dr. Always Late With His Column, but soon for reasons I can no longer recall I asked the editor to change it to “Pet Connection.” And that’s what has stuck … through the years at The Bee (I left my job there in ‘96 although they still carry our column), more years in national syndication (Universal Press picked me up that same year), in joining forces to write books with the wonderful Dr. Marty Becker (we combined our two syndicated pet-care columns into the Pet Connection last year, because we love Universal Press) and then adding more people to both the syndicated newspaper feature and the Web site and blog team.
But because I’m still at heart a nerdy copy editor, I have a few things I really care about when it come to writing about pets. The biggest one: Pronouns. We do not refer to animals as “it” or “that” in any bit of writing crossing my computer screen. It’s him, her, who, he or she … and if you don’t know the gender, rewrite the sentence so you don’t have a pronoun issue.
This goes down pretty smoothly with most editors, but now and then — as with the new copy editor on the books coming out next month – I have to get all “because I said so, that’s why, and I don’t give a whit for the Chicago Manual of Style, so there!” And then everyone bows to my will.
Well, something like that. But mostly I get my way on this because I point out that for people who read pet columns and pet books — or, more precisely, people who might buy pet books and newspapers with pet-care columns — pets are family, and you don’t refer to family with the same language you do for a dining-room chair.
But then, there’s that other word.
Pet.
As shown in recent comments here on the blog, ”pet” really sets some people on edge. They think the word is insulting and demeaning, and doesn’t reflect the depth of feeling and the bond that we feel with the animals we whom we share our lives. They prefer “companion animal” and refer to themselves not as “owners” but as “guardians.”
These are non-issues for me, and I’ve never, ever felt the desire to change the name of our syndicated newspaper column (or this, its companion Web site and blog) to Companion Animal Connection or anything else. And I just don’t have a problem with “owning” my “pets” because I know that is, in fact, the relationship we have in the eyes of the law, and that that legal definition gives me and other responsible, animal-loving people the legal ability to care for our animals in the best way possible. (Although in my writing I tend to use “lover,” as in pet-lover, cat-lover, etc., more than “owner,” unless I need to be specific that what I’m writing about absolutely refers to people who have an animal in the home, as opposed to those who care about pets in general.
Why don’t I mind that my pets are “owned” (like “slaves,” to hear PETA decry it)? Simply put, I don’t want my animals to be wards of the state, because I can’t see how that works out particularly well for anyone else, from foster children to seniors who cannot care for themselves. Geez, we can’t even protect the food supply or keep bridges up in this country anymore. And the government is going to take good care of my animals? Phooey!
And what about the people who aren’t taking care of their animals? My friends, we have laws that address that already. Maybe they can and should be strengthened in many areas, but it’s more likely they need to be enforced.
A change in the legal definition of the relationship between me and my animals? No thanks. Or an end to the using “pet” to describe those animals? Not interested.
Besides (as I said the other day, only half-kidding), “pet” fits in headlines.
So what do you think?
You know - if you’re not nice to Christie, she’s gonna come BREATHE on you!
Mwah-hah-hah-hah-ha!
Comment by The OTHER Pat — August 10, 2007 @ 8:08 am
I have had this conversation with English Professors for years (two to be exact…that’s still more than one year…). Of course it doesn’t help me much, they mark the papers and if they want MLA, Chicago Manual, etc. I don’t have much choice- but I still refuse to refer to animals in my writing as objects. Talking them around is much easier if I deal with the younger Profs, or even the TA’s. Animals are part of my family (or they will be in about 10 days, I’m between pets- yay new puppy)and even if I do technically own him it doesn’t mean I love him any less.
I don’t see any problem with the word owner either- I’ve seen first hand what happens to ‘wards of the state’…though technically I suppose it would be province in Canada… as a student teacher in an area with a dense population of Native students and wouldn’t wish that on anyone in my family two legged, or four legged. If thats what it would mean if owner was abolished as a legal status then I’m defiantely a proud animal owner.
Comment by Chanin — August 10, 2007 @ 8:20 am
Pat … I cherish the 90 miles between our houses. And besides, I know Christie is secretly jealous that I get to live in Sacramento!
All San Franciscans are. :)
Comment by Gina Spadafori — August 10, 2007 @ 8:23 am
Now as to your actual *question* - well, two situations come immediately to mind:
1) Vaccination schedules
and
2) Feeding
Most serious dog and cat people are well aware of the current re-examination of the traditional recommendation for yearly vaccinations for cats and dogs. What seems to be emerging as the “new recommendation” is a 3 year schedule of the core vaccines (rotating, if you can find monovalent forms for all of them)and whatever the local law requires for rabies (typically either one or three years).
But that hasn’t happened without some controversy. Let’s pretend for a moment that I don’t “own” my dog but that I am only his “guardian”. And what if - back when all of this was first coming to light - I had decided I was over-vaccinating my pets and wanted to take them off of yearly vaccinations, and the government disagreed? Under some guardianship scenarios, my dog could have been taken away from me and subjected to yearly vaccinations “for his own good” since I was not providing adequate care according to what was the most commonly-followed practice.
Let’s move on to a subject more recently familiar to us here on this blog - what to feed our pets. Again, if you’re only your pet’s “guardian”, what happens when you decide you no longer trust pet food manufacturers and would prefer to prepare your pet’s food yourself?
Oh no! You can’t do that! Heck - we’ve even got Federal officials of the FDA going on record as saying that that’s FAR too difficult for the average citizen to tackle!
See - this scares me. Having the government decide what constitutes acceptable care for my animals isn’t always as cut-and-dried as a person might first think. So exchanging my ownership of my animals for “guardianship” where Big Brother gets to have the final say is a move that I would fight against, and fight hard.
MY animals. MY responsibility. MY decisions!
Comment by The OTHER Pat — August 10, 2007 @ 8:27 am
Mocking the ill is just mean.
Other than that, what Gina said for the reasons The OTHER Pat gave: My dogs. I decide what they eat, how they live, and what medical care they get, because they’re MINE.
Do I feel in some cosmic spiritual sense I “own” them like I own my car? No.
But I am legally their owner and that’s exactly how I want it to stay, because that’s how I can best protect and care for them.
Okay, must go hack up a lung.
Comment by Christie Keith — August 10, 2007 @ 9:16 am
Second and third all the above - yes, I own them, they are my responsibility, I make decisions, but also yes, they are so much more than objects that I find myself saying “mom” and not even feeling foolish to do it. (I’m also grandmom to a bunch of doggies as well.)
Even mom hardly describes the relationship - they are my comfort, my therapists, my companions, all that and more. Every one of them (and at my age there have been many many) has had a piece of my heart and then - when inevitably they depart - they leave me richer and forever grateful for the time we’ve had together.
“It?” someone wants you to use “it” for any animal? Like calling firefighters, nurses, doctors, friends “it”? Like spouses, children, editors “it”? Heck, even the wild visitors around here get pronouns, as in “that bear was back and she sat down in my raspberries again!” (Sad but true.) Thanks Gina (and all the rest of the good writers) and keep fighting for those pronouns.
Comment by Nancy Nielsen — August 10, 2007 @ 9:55 am
Thank you, Gina, for expressing my sentiments exactly.
Comment by Cate — August 10, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
Hey…! I call little babies ‘it.” Kids don’t start to assume human characteristics until they’re eight or so, anyhow. Yes, I teach teenagers ;~)
Christie, this is so totally unreal, but I had whooping cough this summer, too, and you may be hacking up your lungs until Halloween. The 100-day cough, as it’s supposedly called… I cracked a rib. Huge suckage, and the cough is going away just in time for the start of school. Sigh. [cough, cough]
Comment by Luisa — August 10, 2007 @ 9:16 pm
I think you’re giving PETA a bad rap here. I check their website regularly, receive their publications, and I’ve never heard them “decry” the term pet owners. In fact, when I searched their site just now I saw nothing decrying the term, although I did see it used in several instances.
They are, from what I can tell, far more interested in your pet’s welfare than its nomenclature.
Comment by KathyF — August 12, 2007 @ 2:21 am
A quote from Ingrid Newkirk, head of PeTA:
“I don’t use the word ‘pet.’ I think it’s speciesist language. I prefer ‘companion animal.’”
— The Harper’s Forum Book, Jack Hitt, ed., 1989, p.223
Comment by The OTHER Pat — August 12, 2007 @ 5:53 am
Comment by KathyF — August 12, 2007 @ 2:21 am
“They are, from what I can tell, far more interested in your pet’s welfare than its nomenclature.”
You might want to read this:
http://www.petakillsanimals.co.....nimals.cfm
Comment by The OTHER Pat — August 12, 2007 @ 5:56 am
We call the kittens ‘the kids’ and are told that ‘they’re all good kids’. The males are ‘the boys’ and lovable troublemakers. They have their very own cat door and they realize it is just for them since its too small for the humans to use. It leads to their outdoor play area, that looks like a perpetual birthday party. They have 6 litter boxes; including a new one that is HUGE ($20; caused a big fight, lol). I have to drive into town to find their ‘gourmet’ cat food. I tell Dave that it’s not gourmet and that there is much more expensive food that I could buy. Plus then there are their homemade meals, which Dave is also jealous of since they have clams sometimes and He never gets to have clams.
Then there is Junior, talk about what we do for the love of a cat! He sprays, unfortunately… We’d do anything to get him to stop, actually we have been doing everything we can think of: Liquid Prozac, (it tastes like spearmint, terrible stuff!) he inhaled it and foamed at the mouth, he got pneumonia and we got a thousand dollar vet bill…Decided he needed heart meds…acts much better, still spraying. Put together the outdoor play area, complete with door…didn’t matter, still spraying… Tried Lasix, for the placebo effect, seems to help, still spraying… Treated him for infection, just in case, still spraying… Tried the huge litterbox, just for him, didn’t care, still spraying…So now it’s transdermal Prozac. It’s new and only available at a specialty medical supply place on the other side of town. They make it special just for him. It’s more than an hours drive round trip, I got lost, both on the way up there, and then again on the way back. But ‘lo and behold, its working!! He’s not spraying any more!! Dave is not freaking out any more!! Junior is relaxed and happy and his oh so sweet self once again. There is peace and quiet in the house once again!!
We love our cats, they certainly are companions. They are soft and sweet and take the pains of this world away. We shelter them and shower them with love. They give back so much more; we would be lost without their love.
Comment by Peggy (AKA: Big Fat Momma Cat) — August 12, 2007 @ 6:45 am
I agree with you on the pet versus animal companion—it is a non-issue for me as well.
Instead of focusing on moniker changes I think the effort would be better spent on facilitating change on some of the more important issues facing homeless animals, abused animals, and food production critters.
Comment by Diana Guerrero — August 13, 2007 @ 7:30 am
But nomenclature DOES matter. Here - for example - is the AVMA’s take on the ramifications of replacing “owner” with “guardian” - a campaign the AR folks have been working on for a number of years now:
http://www.avma.org/advocacy/s.....ership.asp
If you decide to just skim the page, at least slow down long enough to read the third bullet point under “Society”.
There are a host of other webpages out there as well that point out the issues inherent in the movement to replace “owner” with “guardian”. It’s another “feel-good” strategy with implications that many folks may not have fully stopped to consider. And the fact is that *already existing* welfare laws - IF ENFORCED - are already in place to take care of most of the issues that this proposed nomenclature change is supposedly supposed to address.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — August 13, 2007 @ 9:48 am