America: a melting pot indicative of liberty and justice for everyone… and our pets. The American Pet Products Association has estimated that the United States will spend $55 billion on our precious pets this year alone. Much of which will be spent on important things like food, medicine, and veterinarian care. However, over five billion will be spent on “pet services” such as toys, clothes, grooms, and other miscellaneous accessories; and BBC News admits that the pet clothing industry is booming. “At a US retailer like Target you can buy everything from a colorful polo shirt to stegosaurus-themed fancy dress costumes,” according to BCC.  As Halloween approaches, the temptation to wrap your cute pup in a bumblebee or Tinkerbelle costume is increasing, but I encourage you to pause and truly think about how “cute” it really is.

And as if evolution failed to equip these animals with the necessities they need to survive in comfortable, room temperature standards, we now have any imaginable clothing for these animals. This industry provides anything from elegant sweatshirts keeping our puppies extra cozy, to lifejackets keeping them afloat in our backyard pools. These are the “clear benefits” that BBC News declared “practical” for your dogs. I wonder if the 15 million children that die of hunger every year agree with the necessity of these “practicalities.” Next time you go pet shopping, please second guess your desire to spoil an animal that does not understand its own existence, and help the people that are dying from lack of basic needs.

Bloomberg business magazine claims that the industry now offers “$430 indoor potties, $30-an-ounce perfumes, and $225 trench coats” for our four-footed companions. After doing some more research into the pet market, I found some other really useful pet merchandise.  The “Bubble Buddy Flavored Bubbles” for your dog to revel in the bathtub experience, or the “Pawlish Nail Polish for Pets” so your cat can look extra stunning as it hacks up its next hairball, both come highly recommended. And the best of all, retailing at $50, the “Pet’s Eye View Camera” that finally allows you to see what your pet is viewing at all times! This ridiculously useless spending may or may not reflect the current status of the United States economy. Understand that people all across the globe are in desperate need of the money that we mindlessly squander to convenience our pets; pets that fail to understand anything except basic instinctual predispositions. Next time entering a Petsmart, I encourage pet lovers to trot past the clothing aisle, no matter how tempting, and spend the money attempting to benefit an already backwards society.