A Baby Boomer's Best Friend or a Worst Enemy

A Baby Boomer's Best Friend or a Worst Enemy
by Carole Wade, Contributor

January 6, 2003

Guest Contributor Carole Wade With a close eye on a growing senior citizenry, the Pet Food Industry saw an opportunity to increase its billions-of-dollars-a-year revenues. How? By touting the health benefits of owning dogs to aging baby boomers and seniors... and by tricking manufacturers into believing that anything will sell if it has a dog in the advertising.

The big car manufacturers have “gunned” their engines by placing dogs into every commercial. TV ad for an oversized SUV: See a dog. Look at a milk commercial: See a dog. Advertised jeans in magazines: See a dog. Browse through your local newspaper to purchase a rug: See a dog. New York's millions-dollar-an-hour advertising executives, who vote Democratic nine times out of ten, think that every written ad or television commercial needs a dog to sell an item. Article after article allegedly refers to studies that show pet owners are more active and healthy. True? No. Ridiculous? Yes.

Today's seniors are 50 and older. They are younger at heart. They are working women and men. Capturing the word “senior,” the billions-of-dollars-a-year Pet Food Industry saw an opportunity to sell its idea that “dogs” encourage more activity.

Not so. In effect, dogs lock “seniors” in their homes. Dogs restrict “baby boomers” from interacting with friends. Dogs restrict active women and men from the old activities of playing bridge or golf. Why? How does a senior leave the “dog” at home alone? Dogs and the new computer age have actually increased a senior's time to “stay-at-home” and become a “lonely-person.” Interestingly, the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association promotes products that are in the worse interests of seniors. Their association is not a “medical” society. They are in the business of selling multi-million-dollars a year of “pet” supplies.

Dogs do play an important part as “Service Dogs” to all people who need a companion for their limited sight or hearing. Our Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) states that a Service Dog is a great companion. The American Medical Association's physicians promote constant “people” contact for a longer happier life.

Studies which prove that dogs lower a “senior's blood pressure” are paid for by the very rich and powerful Pet Food Industry. The only people getting “richer” -- and living longer and wealthier -- are the executives of the Pet Food Industry whose salaries are in the millions of dollars each year.

The very idea that a “dog” belongs in every home is bad public policy. Dogs do not belong in small apartments. Seniors who choose to rent or purchase a home in a “NO DOG” condominium or apartment building have their freedom of association taken away from them if all buildings admit dogs. The thriving “thugs” of the Pet Food Industry uses our Senators, Congressmen and women, and our State's legislative members wantonly by convincing them that "dogs" somehow belong in a senior's “lifestyle.”

The Pet Food Industry has convinced the ever-growing AARP to promote dogs. There have been reports that the “overblown” AARP’s Legislative Committee members have taken bribes from the Pet Food Industry. California and Florida are the leading States where the AARP lobbies daily on behalf of its organization. The “new” AARP is more focused on its fifty-year-old dues paying member than on its original “elderly” senior.

The Pet Food Industry and its "big" money stepped in from Pet Food Companies to have their unlimited-expense-account-lobbyists visit every elected official with their "blown-up" excuses as to why seniors must have a “dog” for health reasons.

In fact the quality and well being of the lives of thousands of seniors who wish to live in NO DOG apartment buildings and condominiums is being lowered and "stampeded" by the Pet Food Industry's lies.

Katherine Schlaerth, an Associate Professor of Clinical Family Medicine of the University of Southern California School of Medicine, recently attributed deaths to allergic reactions to dogs. In the United States, 10 percent of people are estimated to have dog and cat allergies according to the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Adding urgency to the dog problem, we now endure new terrorist safety guidelines. But, how can we be safe when dog owners use their dogs as "weapons?" And many of these people who use their dogs to express their own “aggression” are the new fifty-year-old “seniors.”

Seniors who live next door to another “senior-with-a-dog” in an apartment building or condominium home has to put up with their neighbor's multiple adopted rescued mixed Rottweiler/Doberman/Pit Bull aggressive, biting, mauling dogs that bark and attack at their front doors. These dog attacks have left seniors terrified. Tragically, these dog encounters lead to the certain death of many elderly persons. Seniors, of all ages, with heart conditions are at harm's risk.

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company released the following dog bite statistics in August of 2001: 800,000 people require medical attention each year from dog bites. Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, German Shepherds, Huskys, Alaskan Malamutes, Doberman Pinschers, Wolf-Dog Hybrids, and Mixed Breeds fatally wound hundreds of men, women, and children yearly.

According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Dr. Jeffrey Sacks, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, states that approximately 4.7 million dog bites per year are reported in the United States. Dog bites are a great health problem for the elderly. The majority of dog bites occur in the vicinity of the dog owner's property.

Added to this is the dog owners' profanity. The new fifty-year-old seniors spout everyday, "My dog will kill you," when they are asked to keep their dogs away from other fifty-year-old seniors, elderly seniors, children, and even infants!

Then, the Pet Food Manufacturers pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into coupons, promotions, and signage in Pet Food Stores to create a mass-movement for more “dog” adoptions. Given this, a study by the Texas Department of Health Study states that dog attacks cost society over $1 Billion dollars a year. Homeowners claims pay out in dog cases millions of dollars each year. More and more insurance companies are refusing to insure “dogs” for baby boomers and seniors.

For years, elderly condominium owners and apartment dwellers --"empty-nesters" they are often called -- pushed hard for dog prohibitions in elevator and high-rise buildings. Older elderly widows -- 80-years old and up -- all share a sheer terror of encounters with dogs in elevators. Well they should, as dogs in small apartments become "caged in" beasts who revert into animal predators when encountering strangers in tiny elevators.

Heart attack survivors in high-rise residences and in nursing homes face the threat of death brought on by sudden episodes of neighbors' dogs barking at odd hours. Unthinking medical practitioners who voice support for seniors to “own” dogs for alleged health reasons never ever once consider the horrible consequences to the neighbors of the dog-owners -- to the people with heart conditions living in the rooms and apartments above, below, and alongside the dogs.

Pet Food Manufacturers underwrite thousands of campaigns and studies. After all, popular dogs today are much much larger -- bigger Pet Food eaters -- than ever before. Gone is the era of toy poodles and Lhasa Apsos. Today, most dogs are so-called "rescued mixed breeds" -- adopted from animal shelters from unknown former owners.

Many are mixes of Rottweilers and Dobermans and Pit Bulls. The billions-dollars-a-year Pet Food Industry mandates for every “senior” to own a dog. They forget how dogs that are caged in small apartments lead only to tragedy. Diane Whipple in San Francisco was unlocking her apartment door while carrying home her groceries when her neighbors' dogs attacked. Her throat was torn apart and her skin was so badly eaten that San Francisco police officers viewing her remains in the hallway needed psychological counseling afterwards.

The senior who reported the incidence to 911 was terrified. She was frozen into fear of the “dogs” -- once again proving seniors should have a right of free association -- in a safe environment -- without the ever-present “dog.” Baby boomers and seniors living in apartments, condominiums, and nursing homes must not be tricked by the conniving trickery of the Pet Food Industry. ***

Photo of Carole Wade furnished by the author

Carole Wade, an essayist, resides in Century City, a suburb of Los Angeles, California. Her commentaries, interviews, and travel articles appear frequently in local and national newspapers and travel magazines.

Ms. Wade grew up in an Irish-American family which immigrated to Virginia in 1845. After Abraham Lincoln declared West Virginia a State on April 20th, 1863, the family continued to purchase land in the western area of the State. During both the Civil War in 1861-65 and the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the family personally fed hundreds of out-of-work families with vegetables from their little “home grown” gardens. Subsequently, the family’s land was sold to Beatrice Foods in 1972.

Her first summer position in 1974, before entering Fairmont State College in West Virginia, was as an office aide in the Executive Office of the President under Richard Nixon. While attending Fairmont State, Ms. Wade was Vice-President of Sigma Kappa Sorority. Today she continues to be active in her Sorority, which was founded on November 9th, 1874, at Colby College in Maine.

In 1999, twenty years after graduating from Fairmont State, Ms. Wade graduated from The Eli Broad Graduate School at the Michigan State University.

Ms. Wade has worked on Team Bush, Rogan for Congress, Los Angeles County Co-Chairperson of the Bill Jones for 2002 Governor campaign, the 1987 Bob Dole Primary Presidential campaign, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Proposition 49 campaign. She is a Governing Board Member of the Republican Coalition (RJC) and an active member of the Golden Circle of the California Republican Party. She is also a member of the Federation of Republican Women, The Richard Nixon Library, and the Republican Lincoln Clubs of Los Angeles County.