It’s clear, we love our dogs.
Nearly half of U.S. households have one, and many owners see pets as part of the family — 51 percent say pets belong “as much as a human member.” Pet ownership keeps generating more and more jobs, from vets to trainers. Schools cannot keep up with the demand for veterinarians.
It all seems part of what Mark Cushing, a lawyer and lobbyist for veterinary issues, calls “the pet revolution”: the more and more privileged place that pets occupy in American society. In his 2020 book, “Pet Nation,” he argues that the internet has caused people to become more lonely, and this has made them focus more intensely on their pets — filling in for human relationships.
I would argue that something different is happening, particularly since the covid lockdown: Loving dogs has become an expression not of loneliness but of how unhappy many Americans are with society and other people.
As a philosopher who studies the relationships between animals, humans and the environment, I believe Americans are turning to dogs because dogs simply offer more satisfying relationships than other people do.
But I also believe that many Americans are expecting their pets to fix their problems.
Dogs over people
During the covid lockdown, many of us struggled with the monotony of spending too much time cooped up with other humans — children, romantic partners, roommates. Meanwhile, relationships with dogs seemed to flourish.
Rescuing shelter animals grew in popularity, and on social media many people celebrated being at home with their pets. Dog content on Instagram and Pinterest now commonly includes hashtags such as #DogsAreBetterThanPeople and #IPreferDogsToPeople.
“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog” appears on merchandise all over e-commerce sites such as Etsy, Amazon and Redbubble.
One 2025 study found that dog owners tend to rate their pets more highly than their human loved ones in several areas such as companionship and support. They also experienced fewer negative interactions with their dogs than with the closest people in their lives, including children, romantic partners and relatives.
The late primatologist Jane Goodall celebrated her 90th birthday with 90 dogs. She stated in an interview that she preferred dogs to chimps because chimps were too much like people.
Fraying fabric
This passion for dogs seems to be growing as America’s social fabric unravels — which began long before the pandemic.
In 1972, 46 percent of Americans said “most people can be trusted.” By 2018, that percentage dropped to 34 percent. Americans report seeing their friends less than they used to, a phenomenon called the “friendship recession,” and avoid having conversations with strangers because they expect the conversation to go badly. People are spending more time at home.
Just over half of U.S. adults ages 25 to 44 — most of them millennials — have at least one pet, 2021 Census data showed. Some cultural commentators argue dogs are especially important for this generation because other traditional markers of stability and adulthood — a mortgage, a child — feel out of reach or simply undesirable.
Amid those pressures, many people turn to the comfort of a pet — but the expectations for what dogs can bring to our lives are becoming increasingly unreasonable.
For some people, dogs are a way to feel loved, to relieve pressures to have kids, to fight the drudgery of their job, to reduce the stress of the rat race and to connect with the outdoors. Some expect pet ownership to improve their physical and mental health.
And it works, to a degree. Some studies have suggested that dog people may be “warmer” and happier than cat people. Interacting with pets can improve your health and may even offer some protection against cognitive decline. Dog-training programs in prisons appear to reduce recidivism rates.
Unreasonable expectations
But expecting that dogs will fill the social and emotional gaps in our lives is actually an obstacle to dogs’ flourishing and human flourishing, as well.
In philosophical terms, we could call this an extractive relationship: Humans are using dogs for their emotional labor, extracting things from them that they cannot get elsewhere or simply no longer wish to. Just like natural resource extraction, extractive relationships eventually become unsustainable.
Cultural theorist Lauren Berlant argued that the present stage of capitalism creates a dynamic called “slow death,” a cycle in which “life building and the attrition of life are indistinguishable.” Keeping up is so exhausting that, to maintain that life, we need to do things that result in our slow degradation: Work becomes drudgery under unsustainable workloads, and the experience of dating suffers under the unhealthy pressure to have a partner.
Similarly, today’s dog culture is leading to unhealthy and unsustainable dynamics. Veterinarians are concerned that the rise of the “fur baby” lifestyle, in which people treat pets like human children, can harm animals, as owners seek unnecessary veterinary care, tests and medications. Pets staying at home alone while owners work suffer from boredom, which can cause chronic psychological distress and health problems. And as the number of pets goes up, many people wind up giving up their animal, overcrowding shelters.
So what should be done? Some philosophers and activists advocate for pet abolition, arguing that treating any animals as property is ethically indefensible.
This is a hard case to make — especially with dog lovers. Dogs are the oldest domesticated animal, evolving alongside humans for as long as 40,000 years and a central piece of the human story. Some scientists argue that dogs made us human, not the other way around.
Perhaps we can reconfigure aspects of home, family and society to be better for dogs and humans alike — more accessible health care, more effective stress management, and higher-quality food, for example, would lead to longer and healthier lives for both. A world more focused on human thriving would be more focused on pets’ thriving, too. But that would make for a very different America than this one.
Margret Grebowicz is distinguished professor of the humanities at Missouri University of Science and Technology, and author of the book “Rescue Me: On Dogs and Their Humans.”
This article was produced in collaboration with The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization.
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