Does Your Dog Need Fashionable Winter Clothes?

Photo Courtesy: MobilityDog.org

This time of year, even in warm climates like Southern California, we humans occasionally need to bundle up against the cold and wind. But what about your dog? After all, Princess has a permanent fur coat. Does she also need a sweater or vest to help her preserve body heat when it’s frosty outside? Or what if your pooch is endowed with a heavy coat, such as those sported by Huskies and German Shepherds? Do you need to augment nature’s natural parka with a vest or sweater for these breeds?

Breed Makes a Difference

Large dogs, especially heavily coated ones, usually don’t need an extra layer if temperatures stay above freezing and often don’t need a covering garment even below those levels. Nature has seen to their warmth, sometimes with a double coat. Dogs with thinner coats, however, and smaller breeds such as Chihuahuas and Yorkies, benefit from a human-provided extra layer when temperatures become icy.

Photo Courtesy: MobilityDog.org

Pet Fashion as a Statement

It’s one thing to put human-like clothes on your dog to ensure her warmth; it’s quite another to use doggie attire as a statement about fashion (yours and the dog’s). For some dog owners, dressing their pooches satisfies the desire to strengthen the emotional bond between humans and animals. Indeed, some psychologists would contend that, by dressing our dogs as humans, we shrink the hierarchical difference between them and us. We already think of our dogs as part of the family. When we dress them as if they were all but equal to the human family members, we tell the world that the human-animal divide has decreased all the more. We dress our children – why shouldn’t we also dress our dogs?

Clothing and Co-evolution

Regardless of how much we love our dogs, we have historically thought of them as a clearly separate species. Humans are human, and dogs are canines. We can grow emotionally close, but a divide always exists. But what if we start thinking that our dogs share our feelings? That, like us, they get some kind of emotional gratification from the particular form of consumerism that has them strutting down the street in their finest near-human attire?

Again, extending the logic, our mutually experienced desire to be consumers of stylish clothing suggests to some thinkers that complementary evolution has taken us to the point where both species like to “dress for success.”

If You Really Love Me …

Love My Dog, an English purveyor of dog clothing and other accoutrement, wants you to believe that owners who REALLY love their dogs will spend substantial amounts of money to “give their dogs the very best.” This includes dog coats and hand-knitted sweaters made of pure new wool. They want you to believe that dog fashion and its conspicuous consumption make a statement about the strength of the human-dog bond: the more we spend on our dogs, the more clearly we demonstrate how much we love and want to care for them. To be sure, dogs don’t compete among themselves to determine who is most stylish; it’s the humans who compete to see whose pet has the fanciest (and most expensive) outfit and who, therefore, adores their pooch the most.

The Paris Hilton Syndrome

In some cases – a step beyond accessorizing the dog – the dog itself becomes the accessory. The trophy for dog-as-decoration goes to Paris Hilton, whose Chihuahua-in-a-fancy-purse set the standard for objectifying pets. Paradoxically, rather than elevating doghood, turning dogs into little more than fashion geegaws undercuts their status as sentient beings and makes them as disposable as a no-longer stylish Nehru jacket. Taking the next step, people who acquire a lap dog to make a fashion statement are sometimes shocked to discover that they’ve taken responsibility for an animal that has an array of biological and behavioral needs. These, as we know, can sometimes be a burden. Check out your local SPCA shelter sometime and note the number of Chihuahuas abandoned by people who weren’t prepared to care for an actual pet: full-blown Paris Hilton syndrome.

Some Are More Equal ...

Are there dog fashion shows? There are, of course. One example is the Pet Gala, an event featuring dogs dressed in outfits representing some of the most talked-about stars at the Met Gala. The dogs aren’t showing off – the humans are. The message: the best-dressed pooches are superior to their more modestly attired conspecifics.

To paraphrase George Orwell, all dogs are equal, but the (most fashionable) are more equal. Perhaps we should love our pets for what they are and stop making them doll-like objects we dress in costumes. Get your tiny, short-haired pooch a simple, warm sweater for those winter walks, but perhaps eschew the cashmere vest and matching ascot.

For a detailed scholarly discussion of pet fashion and consumerism, see Annamari Vänskä, “’Cause I wuv you!’ Pet dog fashion and emotional consumption,” Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organizations, Vol. 16(4): pp. 75-91, www.ephemerajournal.org.