There’s more than money in cats and dogs

Oblivious to his own shortcomings, he insisted on telling me just how much Australians were splurging on their pets. He says now that Bunnings has joined the pet business, there’s no telling where it will stop. Apparently Woolworths went and spent $586 million on buying the outfit behind PETstock — and there are more start-ups and chains vying for our attention.

While the human COVID-19 virus gave us pets the increased importance and status we always deserved, inevitably there’s plenty of humans who sense a dollar in the new enthusiasm.

According to The Boss, dog ownership rose by 25 per cent between 2019 and 2022 — but cat ownership grew by 43 per cent. Now more than 70 per cent of Australian households have a pet. So what’s wrong with the other 30 per cent?

Those huge cat numbers aren’t all bad, at least from my point of view. The Boss doesn’t care for cats, on the grounds that they eat a lot of birds and he has to spend half his summer fending off cats from the nesting bee-eaters and kingfishers in the river bank. And ‘fending off’ is a nice way of describing his take-no-prisoners policy.

But I like chasing them, in the absence of rabbits or hares or foxes, although they’re not that easy to run down now my legs are starting to creak. And when I do come back with one in my mouth, The Boss reckons I look like Costa from the gardening show.

So there’s real money in cats and dogs, anyway. Australians parted with around $16 billion last year to look after their pets, which sounds like a lot but it’s nothing compared to buying submarines that won’t be ready for 30 years — how much joy do you get out of that?

I asked The Boss to check out Lyka, the online people who produce nutritious meals for dogs. Lyka has raised around $65 million to speed up its roll-out of gourmet tucker: it produces steamed dog meals with grass-fed meat, veggies and superfoods such as coconut and shitake mushrooms. It only costs about about $5 to $6 a day to feed a 10kg dog.

But The Boss reminded me that I weigh around 44kg; he went online to discover that a week of Lyka meals for me would cost $106 a week, a pittance as far as I’m concerned. But he’s having no part of it: he claims I’m living proof that dogs are actually happy to have exactly the same dry food seven days a week, with a few scraps tossed in.

So I could see I wasn’t getting anywhere — the cheapskate baulks at a mere $15.20 for me a day, even though delivery is free. It would save him the effort of buying those heavy bags of dog food.

“I’m saving up for your next snake bite, torn ligament or broken tooth, General — all or any of which can happen in a month. Standard rations for you!”

Maybe he’ll soften and realise the error of his ways when Greencross arrives in town. Greencross runs the Petbarn brand and claims to offer “an end-to-end wellness experience” for me and my furry friends. This sounds pretty good.

Its chief executive says Greencross sells accessories and food from its 267 stores, but it also runs 165 vet clinics, 23 accident and emergency hospitals, four crematoriums, a pathology lab, 140 puppy schools, 140 grooming salons and 176 dog wash stations.

But it is not here in Shepp. Not yet, anyway. The Boss says I don’t need any of it, which just shows he’s not the new age, sensitive dog owner that I clearly need.

Although he reckons Greencross’s forecast $2 billion in sales and $300 million in profit is a handy margin for end-to-end wellness — and he’s not going to contribute to it. Woof!