“’For the Dogs’ has a whole new meaning”

Andrew Martin’s article “’For the Dogs’ has a whole new meaning” really opened my eyes to the expenses that people spend on their pets. Really, I had no idea that we were spending $55 billion annually on our pets. If I were to directly respond to Professor Hollars’ question “Were you persuaded of the value of pet luxury items?” Personally, I was not. I’m a “Kibbles n’ Bits” kind of dog owner. The fact that we are spending the vast majority of that $55 billion on expensive food is rather disturbing. Organic food over the last decade has become more and more edible for humans than in the past where you were not instructed by any means that your dog food was edible. There was a brand of dog food mentioned in the article known as “Nummy Tum Tum” that sold organic pumpkin and sweet potatoes for pets, kind of a stretch for dog food don’t you think? The article also mentions how people used to use said dog food for making pumpkin pies, slightly ridiculous if you ask me. All it does is switch the label. I don’t know about you, but at my house, we don’t feed my dog or cat human food because it could make them sick, some human food is even label poisonous to breeds of dogs. What’s the point of calling it dog food when humans are able to eat it, too? There were a variety of questions I was wondering while reading this article, but one in particular was, “If the dog food back then was just fine being Kibbles n’ Bits and people were fine with that, what changed?” And it really is a tricky question, what made peoples’ minds change about what they feed their dog, considering the most accepted thing now is something we never would’ve given our dogs a decade ago – what humans eat.