Not long after throwing her own English Bulldog a princess-themed birthday party, Hayley Mehalco decided to leave her job as an event planner at one of New York's poshest hotels in order to become a full-time party planner for the canine set. In this episode, Annie learns about the ins and outs of Puppy Parties NYC, a business that caters to "dog Instagram socialites," and talks about her own former tendency to roll her eyes at such things. Annie also asks some larger questions about modern pet ownership: Is it okay for people to treat their dogs as ersatz children? Who is the real beneficiary of things like parties for dogs?



Link to Show notes - Puppy Parties NYC - Puppy Parties NYC on Instagram - School For The Dogs on Instagram

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

So in the pet realm, there is this whole category of services that I think tends to make a lot of people roll their eyes. And when I was working as a journalist and releases for these kinds of services would come across my desk, I could always kind of tell when my editor would be interested and a story about one of these things, because it was kind of like there was always room to make fun of things people do for their dogs. And if you keep an eye out for this kind of story about these kinds of services, they almost always have the same lead. It's usually something like “Last Friday afternoon, Bethany got her nails done and then had a ballet lesson and saw her Latin tutor. Bethany is a French Bulldog..”  And there's always this kind of sense to it of like, Oh, we got you, right. You thought we were going to say Bethany was a sophomore at ....Although I always find these leads sort of annoyingly dishonest because usually from the title of the article or the picture, you can tell they're going to be talking about a dog.

So anyway, I am sure I wrote some stories like this, and I think I rolled my eyes just as I assumed my editor would and the reader would. Because I think there is this general underlying assumption, somehow that people who spend money extravagantly on their pets are just ridiculous. And I'm saying all this because my point of view has really changed. Now, I know it's possible. You might be listening to this and you might be thinking well, of course her point of view has changed, she runs a place called School for the Dogs where people spend money needlessly on their dogs, lots of the time. But I think it's actually more than that. You know, eight or nine years ago when I first kind of discovered the world of dog training and realized that it was something that really spoke to me, I started to think how weird it is that there aren't sections in the newspaper devoted to animals in any kind of serious way.

I started to see that dogs could be a hobby that was no better or worse than any other hobby, but that pet ownership really isn't recognized in that way in our society, right? Look at the sections in newspapers, there's a section on sports, there's a section on cooking, there's a section on homes, cars, but if there's any kind of pet section, it has generally been more about showing pictures of cute adoptable animals rather than offering really interesting content on what it means to own a cat or a dog or any other kind of pet and with content that could actually appeal to someone's interest in animal behavior and that kind of thing...

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts

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