Husky News

Niño’s favorite treat is peanut butter whale cookies, so owner Dee Yaeter buys them at a pet bakery as a Christmas gift. Niño, a 10-year-old bilingual Shih-Tzu (his first language is Spanish), also gets two stockings, presents under the tree and gifts from family and friends.

Dog trainer Heather Garre hangs little stockings for her St. Bernard, four border collies, four cats and one bird.

Wellfleet artist Rick Fleury gives his tri-color collie, Graham, a “spa day” of grooming for Christmas — along with a stocking, gifts and a toy self-selected earlier at a pet shop. Graham gives owner Fleury a different dog book each year.

Versions of those holiday celebrations will be happening all over Cape Cod in the next couple of weeks: Local observers say it’s probably harder to find people who don’t include their pets, especially dogs, in the seasonal celebrations.

Some people do feel like Chatham paramedic Kate Hansen, who notes that “every day is Christmas” for her two rescue dogs: “I spoil them rotten.”

But Katarina Boucher says she has seen a definite upward trend in consumers buying holiday pet gifts during the four years in which she’s owned the Cape Cod Dog store in Eastham. She spends the week before Christmas filling bakery boxes with fresh cookies like the ones Niño loves.

Over in Orleans, the Agway store is often nearly sold out of pet toys by the time last-minute shoppers get there.

Boucher believes the reason is “that owners now think of their pets as family members, and ones that give you unconditional love.”

Pets as family

Statistically, her assessment is right on target: A recent American Kennel Club survey reported that 90 percent of dog owners think of their dog as a child or a family member.

“Pets can be an emotional anchor when you’re going through tough times,” says Yaeter, a public health nurse for Visiting Nurse Association and former executive director of Red Cross of Cape Cod, who was just finishing radiation therapy for breast cancer when she adopted Nino. “Clinical studies have shown that being around a pet can reduce blood pressure and alleviate stress and depression. There’s just a happiness about them. No one can make you feel as great as your dog.”

Other reasons for giving pets gifts: “Companies are making products that people actually want,” Boucher says. “And a whole generation of kids has grown up believing that gifts for pets are acceptable. I think there were always closet ‘crazy’ dog people. Now we can be more open about it and not be embarrassed.”

Bob Ericson, a psychotherapist and dog owner in Chatham, says that when it comes to celebrating with your pets, “It’s like anything else. It’s a matter of degree. If dogs are center stage when there are a lot of people around, it can become a problem. And while it’s true that some people may go a tad overboard with their pets, for many, it’s great that they do have pets in their lives.”

But what do the pets think about it all? Boucher doesn’t believe that dogs understand the holidays, but notes: “They do sense the excitement, even more so if you have kids in the house.”

With her miniature pet stockings, Garre, of Tail Waggin’ Dog Training, says she realizes “that I’m doing this more for myself than for my dogs. Dogs are just excited because of the body language and tone of voice of their owners. Still, it’s great fun for me.”

Their own gifts

While Nino has a pretty big Christmas, Moe, a black Lab who’s recognizable around Cotuit as the “oyster” dog, has a more low-key holiday. Along with his wife and 1-year-old daughter, Chris Gargiulo, owner of both Moe and the Cotuit Oyster Company, gives Moe a stocking and a wrapped present under the tree.

“He doesn’t understand wrapping paper,” admits Gargiulo. “We have to assist him.”

Celebrating with your pet doesn’t necessarily mean spending money. Moe’s favorite thing is to play outside if there’s snow on Christmas.

“We’ll build a snowman and let him destroy it,” Gargiulo says. “Moe loves all kinds of balls. So I’ll throw snowballs to him and instead of retrieving them, of course, he just eats them.”

Garre notes that there are other good gifts that cost virtually nothing, and families can encourage their kids to get involved. “Perhaps a sign for the dog crate,” she suggests, “or a picture for or of their dog.”

Children can celebrate the holidays with other types of pets as well. While special food for fish or hamsters could work as a gift, sharing festivities with a cat can be a little more elaborate.

Chris Perry, marketing and membership director at the Lower Cape Cod Community Development Corp., says her 12-year-old son, Aaron Lipman, is her cats’ secret Santa.

“Aaron loves to go shopping with me at PetSmart to choose toys and treats for Bennie and Moose. They each have their own stockings, with their names in glitter, hanging in front of the fireplace. They think it’s fun to see us unwrap their toys, and they pounce on them. After they play for a while, though, they lose interest — it seems to be more the newness of the gift than anything else.”

It’s dogs, though, that seem to bring out the widest variety of celebrations with their humans.

Fleury chooses a “spa day” because “Graham just loves to be groomed and blow-dried. He comes out all fluffy and proud, with a big smile on his face.” And after gifts are received on Christmas Day, Fleury says, “we do the thing that makes us both happiest: We go to the beach!”

Costume time?

Fleury doesn’t have any interest in dressing up Graham, but many owners incorporate costumes into their celebration. Boucher estimates that about half of her customers dress their dog in some way, from a coat to a costume, and notes that two of her own three dogs enjoy dog clothing.

Stacey Henderson, a firefighter/paramedic in Chatham, likes to put Maggie and Max, her two large rescue dogs, in reindeer antlers at Christmas. But, she confesses, “I think they’re mortified by the reindeer ears. They can’t get them off their heads quickly enough, and they’re doubtless thinking ‘I can’t believe she just did that to me.’”

What about those pets who aren’t home at Christmas because their owners are traveling? At Lake Farm Kennel in Orleans, “Santa comes for everyone, both dogs and cats,” says owner Donna Leonard, “whether they’ve been naughty or nice.”

The four Leonard children are allowed to open one present Christmas morning before they go over to the kennel to hand out toys and give the dogs a playtime. Then they go home to open the rest of their presents, then return to give each dog an extra afternoon play-time.

At home, Leonard and her husband’s four dogs, four horses and two cats each get a stocking (with a molasses treat and bag of carrots for the horses). The dogs also get presents under the tree.

Experts consistently warn dog owners not to fall prey to “anthropomorphism” — attributing human behavior or motivation to a dog. And Garre notes that dogs “just don’t have the same reasoning capabilities that we do.”

Still, we all have our own experiences, don’t we? Andrea Labbe, who works at Brewster’s For the Love of the Breed, and whose mother owns the store, has one example.

“Bandit, our Siberian husky, always destroys his toys after a while. The exception is the squirrel he got for Christmas last year,” she says. “He still has it. It’s still in good shape. And the other dogs don’t touch it.”

Doggie gifts

Practical options:

* Rawhide chew toys to keep your dog busy while you’re busy with holiday celebrations
* A new bed, collar or squeaky toy – like a Santa, a snowman or a Hanukkah dreidel
* A bouncy red Kong toy with a special opening for treats
* A bag of treats or box of fresh doggie cookies from such shops as Cape Cod Dog in Eastham, Pampered Pets in Mashpee or Tailwaggers in Provincetown
* A coat or sweater (even pajamas) for dogs that need extra winter insulation
* A gift for the pet owner, like a dog-related photo frame, book, coffee mug, ornament or sweatshirt

Unusual, perhaps over-the-top, options (all under $20)

* A Red Sox baseball hat
* A Christmas bulb toy from Planet Dog that bounces, floats, glows in the dark and rinses clean
* A holiday fleece jacket with a top pocket holding a removable toy
* An unusual toy, such as red “naughty and nice” fleece stars from Cape Cod Dog or www.planetdog.com
* A subscription to Bark magazine (www.bark.com)
* A Bouncy Bone by Premier made of durable nylon with replaceable rawhide rings
* A PetSaver lifejacket for the seagoing dog or a Pet-A-Roo front pack carrier for the landlubber, both from Outward Hound

Sources: Agway in Orleans, Cape Cod Dog in Eastham, For the Love of the Breed in Brewster

What will they think of next?

* SnoreStop for Pets: the natural solution to your dog’s snoring problem (www.snorestop.com)
* Funagle: a board game by Darf that dogs and people play together (503-292-4149 or darfinc.com)
* A holiday gingerbread doghouse (masnax.com)

Source: Cape Cod Times