| A profound change seems to have taken
place in the economic relationship between Americans and their animals. In 1993,
the pet business was a $16 billion field dominated by mom and pop outfits and
independent veterinarians. Today, it is a $ 23 billion empire. Nearly 60 percent of Americans live with one or more animals. More than 30 million have dogs, and 27 million have cats. While the overall number of owners has remained relatively stable since the 1980s, they are spending ever greater amounts on their animals. Signs of the boom are everywhere. On the retail side, superstore chains are covering the country. Americans consider cats and dogs a "part of the family" rather than property, which, legally, at least, they remain. (Being property themselves, for instance, animals cannot legally inherit property in wills, though growing numbers of them are being provided for in estates, and some law firms have developed a specialty in the area. ) The reasons for this metamorphosis from property to person are mysterious. No one seems to know exactly why Americans have changed their views. A decline in warmth among homo sapiens may explain part of the phenomenon, says attorney Lane Gabeler. She says it actually helps the practice by giving her people a softer edge. "People hate lawyers, and we look more human with a dog," Gabeler insists. On the other hand, there are more reasons now to own pets than there were a generation ago. Adults in their 20s and 30s marry and have kids later, leaving more room in their lives to adopt a beast. Medical research has determined that contact with pets can lower blood pressure and fend off heart attacks, so more and more of the elderly have embraced the animal kingdom. The pet industry is confident that the future remains bright. On the health insurance side alone, for example, the market has hardly been scratched. In the United Kingdom, 13 percent of the country's 15 million owners have policies, and in Sweden, 57 percent of 7 million have been insured. But in the United States, with a total of 114 million pets, fewer than 1 percent of pets are covered if they choke on a chicken bone or try to bite the UPS truck driver. So if the bond between people and their creatures truly exists, and if that bond keeps deepening economically as well as emotionally, the next wave of American moguls may well be pet insurance agents rather than Internet pioneers. |