pet connection

Just because Valentine’s Day is designed to celebrate romantic love doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate other kinds of meaningful love, notably our pets. Some of us don’t see family members or partners on a daily basis, but we take care of our pets every day.

While chocolate is not an option as a token of affection for pets, toys supply enrichment and mental stimulation. It’s not “just a toy”: toys are the stuff of life. Dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, iguanas, horses, rabbits, and rats all like to play with toys. How we define toys may be too narrow; they don’t have to be something you buy from the pet supply store. My cat Dickens loves to play with the ring that comes from the top of the milk bottle, and he likes to hide in paper bags. Every time I’ve spent actual money on something for him, he ignores it after a day, but he has a persistent fondness for milk bottle rings. My dog Dodger likes to disembowel stuffed toys, much to my dismay (it’s expensive and messy, but he loves it. I hit clearance bins). Ginger mostly watches Dodger play, but she will sometimes join in.

Toy manufacturers recommend interactive toys, in which dogs can make the toy interact with them without any help from you. A boon to dogs whose people work all day, these toys are great, but I think the real definition of an interactive toy is one in which you have to play with your dog. That’s true interaction. Tennis balls are often the best toys of all since you have to toss it (oh joy! Oh boy!). If you’re lucky, you can get a lot of used balls for free or cheap from a tennis club.

Sure, you can buy new toys to celebrate Valentine’s Day — rescued Dodger enjoys his new “adopt ” ball from Planet Dog (rated 5 out of 5 chompers), although he immediately lost Ginger’s raspberry stuffy treat thing by flinging it into the air and now we can’t find it. Ginger never set her mouth on it, poor girl. Dickens has a wildly exciting assortment of two milk bottle rings; maybe I’ll set out a big bag on the floor with some crumpled newspaper in it.

But how do we really tell our pets we love them? Simple: We spend time with them. They thrive on our attention. We interact with our pets, we talk to them, we touch them; some of us whisper sweet nothings into their furry little ears. We sing silly songs to them, we walk and exercise them, we socialize them and make them part of the family. Every day in our busy lives, we prioritize them. We don’t treat them as human children, but we respect them as sentient beings of species we have domesticated and are thus responsible for.

What your pets really want is your time. This Valentine’s Day, remember the four-footers and give them what you have always given them daily, but a bit more: your heart. And maybe some liver.

Image: Dickens loves his freebies.