archive.today • How Owners Are Putting Their Pets on Human Diets - The New York Times

Karl Malone starts his day with a breakfast that includes ashwagandha root and psyllium husk powder. His dinner is always seasoned with ground turmeric, and then he takes his joint supplements. He goes on two brisk walks daily and avoids restaurant food, as his doctor recommended he lose weight.

Karl Malone is a dog — an 11-year-old sandy-brown Australian shepherd mix.

[...]

The market for what the pet-food industry calls "nutritious pet food" — higher-priced products that claim to contain premium or nutritionally enhanced ingredients — is expected to reach $17.9 billion by 2026, according to a report last year by Pet Insight, an independent analytics company. Pet wellness in general has become an even bigger industry, and has spawned a subset of social media influencers and Facebook groups devoted to refining the diets of all kinds of domesticated animals.

This sentence annoyed me: "Vegetarian diets, he said, are not suitable for most cats because they need animal protein, but can be acceptable for dogs." For NYT pet articles are the words obligate carnivore now taboo?

  • DasKarlBarx [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Naming your dog after a black person is incredibly sus.

    Beyond the stupid shit of not understanding animals aren't human, "owning" a black person just don't sit right.

    • inshallah2 [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I was going to say "Maybe she doesn't know anything about sports." But even if that's true - it's still weird that nobody told her.

      • DasKarlBarx [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Yeah like he's a known pedophile, but it's not like "common knowledge" but just the act of naming the dog after him is really getting the alarm bells to go off 🚨🚨

        • inshallah2 [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          People will surely tell her now.

          Ninja edit: The more I think about this - the more improbable it seems that she never learned or she didn't get strong hints. Like if she took him for a walk (or a dog park) and he did something bad and she told him "Karl Malone - stop that!" - somebody might ask her why she named her dog after a black man. Or at least she'd get dirty looks. And we live in a google era - all it would take if for her to take out her phone and google.