Pet Demographics – Trends & Possible Truths ... - by Robert M. Thorson

Pet Demographics – Trends & Possible Truths

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“Connecticut’s Not Going For The Dogs”

By Robert M. Thorson * - The Hartford Courant / Opinion (7/24/2013)

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in the world who doesn't own a dog. So let me set the record straight. I'm normal.

According to the best data available, Connecticut ranks 49th out of 50 states in terms of dog ownership, with only 28.3 percent of households owning a dog in 2011. And the trend is down. In 2006, the last year comparable data were available, our state ranked higher, at 47th with an ownership rate of 28.9 percent.

These facts and quotes come from a recent compendium titled "U.S. Pet Ownership & Demographics Sourcebook (2012)," published by the American Veterinary Medical Association to ensure best practices. Founded in 1863, the association represents more than 84,000 veterinarians and acts as a "collective voice for its membership and for the profession." The report was based on a survey of more than 50,000 U.S. households.

In no state does a majority of households own a dog, not even top-ranked Arkansas with 47.9 percent. Ranking dead last among states is Massachusetts, with only 23.6 percent of households owning dogs. The District of Columbia is even lower, with only 13.1 percent of households owning a dog.

Being curious about these numbers, I compared the statistics for dog ownership to the statistics for educational attainment reported by the U.S. Census Bureau. I discovered that Arkansas ranks dead last in terms of educational attainment when measured by the percentage of population with a graduate degree. Only 6.1 percent met the criteria in 2009, the last year for which I could find data. The top-ranked state was Massachusetts, with 16.4 percent. In the District of Columbia, a whopping 28.0 percent of the population had an advanced degree.

These, of course, are statewide averages. There are plenty of dog-owning professionals in the most rural parts of Arkansas, and plenty of non-dog-owning high school dropouts walking the urbanized banks of the Charles River by Harvard and MIT in Cambridge, Mass.

Nevertheless, the correlation between dog ownership and lack of advanced degrees is nearly perfect. Of course everyone knows that correlation and causality are not the same. Darkness doesn't cause sleep any more than dog ownership limits your education, and vice versa. Not being a statistician, social scientist, veterinarian or pet owner, and not wishing to infuriate my readers, I'll disqualify myself from attempting the obvious explanation.

Cats are even more popular than dogs. In top-ranked Vermont, 49.5 percent households own one or more. Dead last is Utah at 24.6 percent. Utah, of course, is a red state: Republican across the board, based on voter registration, the 2012 presidential election, the present governor, the majority of the upper and lower houses, the senior and junior U.S. senators, and the U.S. House delegation. Vermont is a blue state: Democratic across the board, except for Bernie Sanders, the nation's only independent socialist senator.

As before, correlation and causality are not the same. But I can't help speculating that if the cats could vote, we would all be living in a socialist country. And if dogs could vote, they would abolish student loans for graduate school. What does this say about households with both cats and dogs?

The notion of dogs and cats voting isn't that far-fetched because most pets are adults, and more than six out of 10 pet owners "considered their pets to be family members." This fact, reported by the AMVA on the website devoted to the sourcebook, raises the disarming conclusion that these owners must also believe that it's OK to buy and sell members of their family. I see no way around this logic. Do the math. If A=B and B=C, then A=C.

Some owners must also feel OK about lending their family members to help strangers. Consider the now-popular University of Connecticut library program that lends 20 to 25 "stress dogs" to students during final exams week each semester to help relieve their anxiety. This clearly works for some human students. But at what ethical cost to the other species?

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* Robert M. Thorson is a professor of geology at the University of Connecticut's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His column appears in The Courant every other Thursday.

Eight Qualities of Cultured People - by Anton Chekhov

Eight Qualities of Cultured People

by Anton Chekhov *

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    1.    They respect human personality, and therefore they are always kind, gentle, polite, and ready to give in to others. They do not make a row because of a hammer or a lost piece of india-rubber; if they live with anyone they do not regard it as a favour and, going away, they do not say “nobody can live with you.” They forgive noise and cold and dried-up meat and witticisms and the presence of strangers in their homes.

2.    They have sympathy not for beggars and cats alone. Their heart aches for what the eye does not see…. They sit up at night in order to help P…., to pay for brothers at the University, and to buy clothes for their mother.

3.    They respect the property of others, and therefore pay their debts.

4.    They are sincere, and dread lying like fire. They don’t lie even in small things. A lie is insulting to the listener and puts him in a lower position in the eyes of the speaker. They do not pose, they behave in the street as they do at home, they do not show off before their humbler comrades. They are not given to babbling and forcing their uninvited confidences on others. Out of respect for other people’s ears they more often keep silent than talk.

5.    They do not disparage themselves to rouse compassion. They do not play on the strings of other people’s hearts so that they may sigh and make much of them. They do not say “I am misunderstood,” or “I have become second-rate,” because all this is striving after cheap effect, is vulgar, stale, false….

6.    They have no shallow vanity. They do not care for such false diamonds as knowing celebrities, shaking hands with the drunken P., [Translator's Note: Probably Palmin, a minor poet.] listening to the raptures of a stray spectator in a picture show, being renowned in the taverns…. If they do a pennyworth they do not strut about as though they had done a hundred roubles’ worth, and do not brag of having the entry where others are not admitted…. The truly talented always keep in obscurity among the crowd, as far as possible from advertisement…. Even Krylov has said that an empty barrel echoes more loudly than a full one.

7.    If they have a talent they respect it. They sacrifice to it rest, women, wine, vanity…. They are proud of their talent…. Besides, they are fastidious.

8.    They develop the aesthetic feeling in themselves. They cannot go to sleep in their clothes, see cracks full of bugs on the walls, breathe bad air, walk on a floor that has been spat upon, cook their meals over an oil stove. They seek as far as possible to restrain and ennoble the sexual instinct…. What they want in a woman is not a bed-fellow … They do not ask for the cleverness which shows itself in continual lying. They want especially, if they are artists, freshness, elegance, humanity, the capacity for motherhood…. They do not swill vodka at all hours of the day and night, do not sniff at cupboards, for they are not pigs and know they are not. They drink only when they are free, on occasion…. For they want mens sana in corpore sano [a healthy mind in a healthy body].

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* Source: "Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends" - www.brainpickings.org