Holiday Gifts for Pets

Instead, this Hub will be limited to spending on Christmas gifts for pets.

Not so very long ago, Christmas gifts for animals were limited to those, mostly European, children who left a carrot in their shoe the night that St. Nicholas came by on his horse to deliver a St. Nicholas Day gift to the good little boys and girls of the land.

The carrot was a treat for his horse.

There have also been children in the past who would put a bow on a soup bone and place it under the Christmas tree for the family dog or wrap up a small treat for the family dog or cat.

Nowadays it is the adults, not the children, who purchase the majority of the Christmas gifts for pets and total spending in the United States on gifts pets for Christmas alone is huge and growing.

According to a November 8, 2011 AP-Petside.com poll, 51% of the pet owners polled answered yes to the question asking if they planned to buy a gift for their pets this Holiday (holiday referring to the December Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc. holiday gift giving celebrations).

While the yes responses for 2011 were two percentage points below the 53% who answered yes to this question in 2010, on the follow-up question asking Did you purchase a gift for your pet last year? only 50% answered yes.

Based upon the answers to the two questions above, we can probably safely assume that about 50% of the pet owners will buy a gift for their pets during the 2011 holiday season.

The majority of the 1,118 pet owners surveyed by telephone between October 13, 2011 and October 17, 2011 had dogs, with the second largest group being cat owners.

According to the survey, the most popular gift last year for pets was toys, followed by treats or other food. Clothing for the pets was a distant third.

For 2011, the responses by pet owners to their pet giving plans for this holiday season indicated that the percentages of each class of gifts purchased would be about the same as last year.

As far as spending goes, the pet owners surveyed indicated that they spent about $41 on gifts for their pets last holiday season and expect to spend about $46 on gifts for pets during the 2011 holiday season.

Spending $46 on toys for a dog or cat during the Holiday season may seem like a lot to many of us - whatever happened to picking up a stick and playing fetch it with a dog or tossing a cat a ball of yarn?

However, when we consider just the number of dogs and cats owned by people in the United States and multiply that by $46 the numbers for the economy as a whole are staggering.

According to an August 12, 2011 article on the web site of the U.S. Humane Society there are 78.2 million dogs with owners and 86.4 million cats with owners (stray dogs and cats and those in shelters don’t count since there is no one to buy presents for them) in the United States.

Thirty-nine percent of U.S. households own one or more dogs and thirty-three percent of U.S. households own one or more cats.

Adding the number of dogs and cats with owners gives us an owned dog and cat population of 166,600,000. If every one of these dogs and cats gets a $46 gift from their owners this comes to a staggering $757,160,000 worth of Holiday purchases for cats and dogs alone.

Of course not every one of the 166,600,000 dogs and cats will receive a $46 gift. However, the $46 is the average amount that surveys and past data indicate will be spent on holiday gifts for dogs and cats.

Many people, this writer included, will spend much less or nothing. But a number of pet owners will spend considerably more so that, on average, the amount spent on gifts will be about $46 per pet.

While three quarters of a billion dollars worth of holiday gifts for dogs and cats may seem like a lot, it is only about 1.5% of the fifty billion plus dollars that Americans currently on their pets each year for food, medical care and all of the other extras owners feel their pets need.

There has also been an increase in both the number of single adults as well as the number of couples who are childless by choice.

Advances in nutrition and medical care have resulted in people both living longer and being active longer. The post World War II Baby Boom generation in the U.S. has completed their child rearing which means that this large portion of the population is now childless.

In addition to this is the fact that the U.S. Boomer population waited until later in life to begin having families and this has resulted in the children of this generation just now entering full adulthood. Lke their parents, many of these children of Boomers are focusing on careers rather than marriage and children at the moment.

The result is a relative shortage of grandchildren. With few young children or young grandchildren to care for and buy things for it is not unusual that people begin to substitute pets, especially dogs and cats, for the young children that are missing in their lives.

Increasing numbers of people, grown up adult people, are treating pets as members of the family. Pets live inside their owner’s homes, frequently sleep in the same bed with their owner or have their own comfortable bed (no more sleeping in a dog house outside or old carpet in the basement).

For increasing numbers of people, pets have become an integral part of the family and are being treated as such by their owners.

While many of us may consider this elevating of pets to the same level as humans in a family, and spending of over a quarter of a billion dollars on toys to be given as holiday gifts to pets to be excessive, we should remember that pets do add considerably to the quality of life for many people.

Not only do pets themselves bring joy to many humans but the act of pampering and buying of Holiday gifts for their also brings joy to many people.

Giving a gift to a pet is similar to giving a gift to a child, as the motivation for both is the pure joy of giving with no expectation of any type of material gift in return.

As we go into the holiday season many of us will be donating cash and goods to charitable causes which will use them to help make the holidays a little brighter for the less fortunate in our communities.

But we should also remember that our spending on gifts for family, friends and pets translates into jobs that not only reduce the numbers of less fortunate and enable these workers to have the means to buy gifts for their own family, friends and pets.