Pets

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Hi, everyone. And welcome back to America under the Microscope. 欢迎你又回到闲话美国. Hello, James.  

Hello Lulu. Hi, everyone.

What are we gonna talk about today?

I figured we would talk a little bit about these cute, fuzzy things and many people have in their homes.

We finally get onto the pet topic.

Yeah, I want to know growing up or currently have you had or do you have any pets?

You've been in my home before. You know I have a pet. I have a ginger cat.

Yes. He was sleeping in the other room.

It’s a she. I beg your pardon. It's a lady.

My apologies. I currently have a pet now too.

Really? I didn't know that you got a cat or a dog.

Cat, dog, no! We have a turtle.  

A turtle?

A turtle.

Ok. What can you do with a turtle? Do you walk it?

Mostly just let it play in the water and it eats and sleeps all day.

And what's your turtle’s name?

Depending on the day, it's either Dingo or Henry.

Okay, it’s a fickle turtle. It changes.

Yeah, if any of our audience have small children, they would understand why your pets change names.

So that's your kid, give it two names. Today let's talk about pets and average Americans. First of all, I talked about this with Alan before. British people always strike me as cat lovers. They are more like, for lack of a better word, reserved, 英国人比较好静, 感觉会更喜欢猫.  It always feels to me that Americans are more into dogs.

I know what you mean, I actually thought that too but doing a little research preparing for this episode, I found that there are actually more cats, pet cats than pet dogs in America.

Wow, really?

Not by much, but so there are about 90 million pet dogs in America, and there's about 95 million pet cats.

So roughly the same.

It's pretty close, but slightly more cats. All in all, about 2/3 of Americans have pets.

Would you say that most American families have more than one pet?

Yeah, that would be pretty accurate. So like me growing up, we had lots of dogs. Growing up we had dogs, cats, we had guinea pigs; we even had a fish tank at one point; we had birds and iguanas.

Just out of curiosity, when you have that many pets and obviously you also have siblings, whose responsibility it is to take care of all those pets because there are also little kids to take care of?

Some of these pets we didn't get till we were older like we didn't have an iguana till we were in high school. Like I took care of my dog, I had a dog, my brother took care of his cat, my older brother took care of his Guinea pigs, my mom had her own dog she took care of.  

Even in one family, it's basically you each have your own pet.

Yeah, and the chores that go with it, feeding, cleaning, bathing.

I see I see. Now comes the question, how do Americans get pets? Do you go to pet shops and just buy them?

So there are lots of ways people get pets in America. Yes, there are lots of pet shops. You can buy pets from pet shops and for some that's really your only option like if you want exotic pets like lizards or fish, you kind of go to a pet shop for those. But for cats and dogs, a lot of people get cats and dogs that are just given away. For example, your friends have had babies, they don't want 20 cats.   

Yeah. Its roughly the same here, roughly the same, but people do go to pet shops sometimes. If you go to pet shops, you can still get cats and dogs.

You still can, another common way to get animals in America now is animal shelters.

就是动物救助所, those are the rescues.

Yeah, so these would be rescued or abandoned animals that are available for adoption. Animal shelters aren't usually free. You do have to pay a small fee for the animal, and many animal shelters want to make sure that you are capable of taking care of the animal, but the upside about getting from an animal shelter, the animal shelter will make sure that the animal is fully vaccinated.  

就是有打了疫苗的.

Yeah, so you're not going to get just some sick animal.

But this brings us to the question that especially if you want to get a larger animal like a big dog, do you need to register? Do you need to apply? Because in Beijing for example there are some pretty strict rules.  

Yeah, I’ve seen the posters about, it’s like dogs this size are forbidden and all the other rules. No, in America, we don't have that. We don't register our animals, we don't need to tell our neighbors we have dogs.  

Not at all?

Not at all. We do need to vaccinate them, we do need to get them vaccines, that's for health reasons. But most animal owners do get what we call tags. So like the dog tags on the neck have the address and the…

If they get lost, if they run away.

Some will get chipped. They will put the ID in the skin which can be tracked by a scanner.

有的会被植入芯片,  then they can be tracked. But I'm still on that you don't have to register or there are no rules really about pets in that way. Then what if they are vicious？What if they are these large dogs, 比如说有一些很凶的那种很大的狗what if you own that kind of dogs and then you take it out into public and it bites someone？

If you take your dog out in public and it bites someone, your dog will be put down.

Put down means killed.  

Euthanized, yeas, killed. Because anytime there is an animal attack, so if any time a pet animal attacks another human and bites them that kind of stuff, usually that animal will be taken by where they're called Fish and Game or the police in charge of animals related things, and likely the owner will be charged with a crime, because it's actually assault or reckless endangerment. Because in America if you take your pet in public, it needs to be on a leash. You can’t let them run free, but the whole idea of the vicious animals, vicious dogs, most Americans don't believe that. They believe that the vicious animals are that way because the human made them that way.

So if these animals are loved, they will not attack humans. So that's the idea.

Right, so you give them a good home, take care of them, love them, don't abuse them, don't do mean things to them. Then they're less likely to just attack strangers.

And I think like in many Chinese families now, based on what I've heard, based on what I've observed like in America, pets are often treated as part of the family.

Yeah, they are definitely part of the family. So nowadays people take their pets everywhere. They'll take their dogs and cats with them, many businesses are pet friendly. So you can like if you want to go to the cafe and have a coffee, a lot of them now will let you take your dogs with you.

I think it's happening more often in China as well.

Yeah, I've seen a few places here that allowed that.

But one question though, because sometimes in China especially the more perhaps the traditional way of thinking, people sometimes have especially people who don't really have pets. They have that idea that if you have a very young kid, you shouldn't have animals at home because it's going to harm them.  

I imagine some of our listeners have seen like images online or Tik Tok videos of American children, small children with their dogs.

Their dogs are a few times of their baby’s size.

Yeah, and the dog just snuggle their kids. No, Americans have pets with their babies. Most Americans do not worry about their animals hurting the baby, because at least dogs, when a baby is brought into a home, most dogs will have a pack mentality, it’s like oh, a new member of the pack.

That's like a brother or sister to them essentially. Okay, that's very nice. So that's why you often see pets and children, they're just like really live and play together like brothers and sisters.

There's also some research say that it actually helps children's immune system.

Yeah, I’ve heard that as well.

You're going to play with a dirty dog. You're gonna get sick.

You grow up to be stronger.

You grow up to be a little bit stronger.

I suppose that makes sense. But talking about being sick, in China as a pet owner myself or pet lover, I don't like the word owner. When I take my cat Hiro to vet and to pet hospitals and all that, I just realized how expensive it is. I mean that's only health care, let alone all these places where you can basically like a hairdresser, the grooming places for pets, I am assuming it’s the same in America.

This is no difference in America, health care for pets is very expensive. There is you can buy insurance, but nobody really does unless it's like your animals were really priced animal I guess. So vets are expensive. The medicine to get is expensive if you want to take your dog or cat to be groomed, that's not cheap either. If you wanna go on a trip and you can't take animal, you need some place to put them up.

Yeah, that's called a kennel?

Kenneling, to kennel them. I've seen those places in Beijing now too. Those aren't cheap either.

Yeah. I've also seen some really fancy ones that makes me want to live in those.

Pretty sure, the dog doesn't care that.

I don't think so.

It’s like food, water, bed, toys, I'm ok.

Ok, so, at the end of the basic episode about pet, let's talk about a few terms in English that are related to animals and pets.

The most common term we use is just using lover as in like animal lover, dog lover, cat lover, just describe what kind of pet people prefer. So  animal lover, you love them all.

Cat lover, dog lover, or animal lover.

Me growing up, I was very much a dog lover.

I've always been a cat lover.

I had dogs, I like dogs, if I could have a dog here, I probably would. But I don't think Beijing is the best environment for raising dogs.

No, I don't think so, unless you live in outskirts of Beijing and have a big house.

Sadly, I don’t.

I personally think it's not a good idea and I'm sure a lot of our listeners do have dogs in flats in apartments but I just personally think that perhaps that's not the best idea especially if you have dogs such as Husky 那种拆家的.

Yeah, I have seen those in Beijing. I was like are you insane? That's a dog that likes to run and needs cold weather whereas its’ a little bit cold in Beijing, it's not that cold. The other common term back to our words is furry babies.

Oh, that's so cute. Yeah, we actually say the same, we say毛孩子.

Yeah, furry babies. It's like your children go off to university,  he's like empty nester, we call it empty nester, and you missed your children, so you replace your children with dogs and cats.

Sometimes they get better treatments. When I go to the pet hospital, they would also say a mom, whose mom, whoever’s mom or dad.

They do the same thing in America. They will refer to the pet owners as their moms and dads.

You also hear people say a dog person, or a cat person,  you often see this when people just met, when they are like starting to date, they say, are you a cat person or a dog person?

If you're a cat person, I'm a dog person. I don't think it'll work out. We’re too different.

Yeah, I think that is something that people do say here as well. So James, are you a turtle person? Now that you have a turtle.

Not really, because they're kind of a dull pet. They don't do anything, swims around, eats sometimes he sticks his head out.

I think it's a very philosophical animal if you stare at it long enough. All right that ends our basic episode about pet. Stay tuned for the advanced episode where we are going to dig deeper into the topic talking about some of the more, let's say controversial topics. Thank you James for coming to the studio.

Thank you for having me.

See you next time.

Bye. Everyone.