Central bark

[mawilson 2,133]

Tuesday December 5, 2006

Guardian Unlimited

They say the British are excessively fond of their dogs, and I would have

agreed with that rather worn assessment - had I not come to New York.

Over the past few months, the realisation has grown that, as in so many

other things, New Yorkers surpass us so far in the intensity of their obsession

as to make the British love of dogs look quite temperate.

The feeling first cropped up when we came house-hunting back in April.

On several occasions we saw women on the subway carrying lapdogs in

wicker baskets under their arms. The owners would sit trimly, looking

unflustered, bearing their load as casually as if it were a bag of brussels

sprouts while their pets stared wide-eyed at us over the tops of their

mobile kennels.

The thought that this was more than just a passing eccentricity began to

take root several months later, when we moved over here. The Guardian's

New York office is just off Union Square, on the corner of which is an

enormous pet shop that I have taken to visiting just for the hell of it,

having (happily) no pets of my own.

An entire floor of the store is devoted to dogs and cats. It sells every type

of treat ever invented, including natural rawhide strips flavoured with peanut

butter, low-fat organic milk and natural beef snowballs "for special dogs

on special occasions". Then there is the rack of 10 different varieties of

pooper-scooper, my favourite being the Oopsie Poopsie, which works in a

scissor action.

There are doggy diapers for "excitable urination" and incontinence. You

can buy aromatherapy conditioning shampoo with lavender and comfrey,

and French vanilla milk shampoo guaranteed to be tearless. And, of course,

in a town run by the unofficial mayoress, Anna Wintour, there is a full range

of doggy couture, from velvet bow ties to thick woollen winter garments.

In the early days of our New York adventure, I had such a surfeit of energy

that I took to jogging around the local park along with hundreds of super-fit

Brooklynites: if President Bush could do it, then so could I. The habit didn't

last long, but before it faded entirely it did bring me into contact with a wonder

of New York life reserved only for fitness fanatics and dog lovers.

It takes place every morning before 9am in Prospect Park, the glorious rolling

green space that sits at the epicentre of Brooklyn and is second only - though

many Brooklynites would say superior - to Central Park. At that time of day,

it seems as though the entire dog-loving world of the borough has come out to

play. The open fields around the Picnic House swarm with woolly labradors and

sleek greyhounds and their shaggy owners. And the great thing about it is that

there is not a leash in sight - the animals are as nature intended them to be,

wild and running free.

One of the owners who belong to this elite and secretive club, I have recently

learned, is the fashionable novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, who lives a street

away from our house in Park Slope. I know he is one of them because he told

me so, courtesy of a comment article he wrote in the New York Times.

In the article, he makes no attempt to disguise his adoration of George, whom

he describes as a Brooklyn shorthair, and of their daily walks in Prospect Park.

"My morning walk with George is very often the highlight of my day - when I have

my best thoughts, when I most appreciate both nature and the city, and in a

deeper sense, life itself."

The ostensible reason for the Safran Foer article was to protest about a move,

through the board of health, to stop dogs being allowed off the leash in New York

parks between 9pm and 9am. I say ostensible because the fairly obvious subtext

of the piece was that he was so stuck on George that he just wanted to see her

name in print. (The keep-them-leashed move failed, in any case, and George is

still free to run like the wind.)

And that's the last piece of evidence I will produce to support my case that

Americans in general, and New Yorkers in particular, are even more dogtastic

than the British. The Safran Foer article runs to 1,317 words and sprawls over

most of the main comment page of the New York Times, the country's most

influential newspaper. Now, if that isn't obsessive, tell me what is.

Source

[Alex+R 0]

I love that article by J. Safran Foer!

Really, what dog doesn't deserve a full-page ode

[AnaAndDaniel 0]

Dogs are awesome!

Daniel

:energetic:

[Karen_L 1]

Dogs are awesome!

Daniel

:energetic:

They are!

[almaty 19]

i with you on that...