MODERN LIVING: Oh, for a Dog’s Life

“A dog is nothing more than a four-year-old child with fur,” burbled an adman pursuing a dog-food account. This kind of talk might offend some old-fashioned parents, but the pitchman knew on which side his yummy was sugared. In ten years of more money and suburban living, U.S. dogs have increased 35% to 26 million; more than 40% of U.S. homes have one or more. U.S. consumers now spend more for dog food than baby food. In 1948 they bought less than i billion Ibs.; last year they spent $350 million for 2.1 billion Ibs. In the next five years, the Nielsen service reported, sales are due to rise by 30%.

As a supplement to table scraps, dog owners have bought pet food ever since the late 1920s, when Gaines Meal first sold its dry mix of meat and grain and Ken-L-Ration produced a canned horsemeat mixture. More dogs are fed by the dry foods—Gaines (General Foods), Ralston Purina Dog Chow, Alber’s Friskies (Carnation Co.), Gro-Pup (Kellogg Co.). But more poundage is sold in canned “wet” varieties, which made up 65% of the total dog-food weight bought last year, outsold every canned vegetable, used more tin cans than any other product outside of oil and beer.

High Living. The real upsurge began after World War II, when food prices began to soar, and housewives grew cautious about overbuying. The leftovers got skimpier, were hoarded in the freezer instead of fed to pets. It was also a lot easier and cheaper to open a box or can of dog food. (Dog-food prices have fallen 12% since 1953, although people-food prices have risen 8%.) Into the open market jumped hundreds of small new companies, such as Los Angeles’ Dr. Ross Dog & Cat Food Co., begun by D. B. Lewis, 53, a Tennessean who parlayed a $2,500 food-machinery investment in 1942 into an integrated operation that last year grossed an estimated $15 million.

For big meat packers such as Swift (Pard) and Armour (Dash), who first hesitated out of fear that human customers might object, the market proved richer by the year. They stressed the idea of an unvarying diet with a single inclusive food (mostly beef-based, cereal-fortified), crusaded for better dog nutrition. They had an irrefutable pitch: dogs that once brought stags to bay need a different diet because they are now slothful city dwellers that ride in taxicabs, get taken to fancy French restaurants, loll around hot apartments watching television.

Live Longer. What helped the pitch was new special foods brewed by veterinarians such as Denver’s Dr. Mark L. Morris, 67, who says that half the nation’s dogs have kidney trouble caused by overeating, not of simple canine food but of rich people food not fit for a dog. In proof, Dr. Morris concocted special diets for Seeing Eye dogs, prolonged their lives as much as 30%, a boon to the blind, who no longer have to replace dogs as often. Dr. Morris’ line of prescription foods now sustains almost 50,000 dogs, extends their lives as much as six years. Competitors have sprung up, all selling foods specifically designed for dogs suffering many afflictions of civilization. For overweight dogs Atlas Canine Products, Inc. (a Laddie Boy affiliate) offers Obesodiet, which cuts calories per meal to a Spartan 300. Atlas also has Geriodiet for older dogs, Nephrodiet for kidney sufferers, Protodiet for protein-hungry mothers.

All this has a powerful effect even on the owners of healthy dogs: they tend to associate their pets’ physical conditions with their own. Fat and underexercised themselves, they feel what Manhattan’s McCann-Erickson ad agency calls “a gnawing nutritional anxiety” about their dogs. When Rival accepted this theory, it cut down fat content and upped protein, last year racked up the biggest sales increase (total sales: $12 million) in the business.

Sell Mamma. “But the problem dog food manufacturers still face,” says Rival Executive Vice President Joseph Getlin, “is getting across to the housewife—not the dog—the advantages of a nutritious single food.” Some vets also disagree with the unvarying ration theory, and at least one company (Laddie Boy) is coming out with such varying dishes as whale meat, hash and eggs. But most big canners still insist that the one-dish menu is right; all have big experimental kennels where they constantly check their formulas on kennels of fine dogs. Says Pard Division Head Clarence M. Olson: “If humans could eat one balanced food such as we now feed to our pets, we’d add years to our life and life to our years.”