`Now there’s a way pet owners can really show their pets how much they love them,” said Patricia Henderson.
Hmmm. Let’s guess what that could be.
-Allowing the dog to sleep with her head next to yours on the pillow?
-Allowing the cat to use the kids’ sandbox instead of the litter box?
-Watching him raise his leg on the sofa without raising your voice?
-Permitting him to eat anything he finds in any garbage can in the neighborhood?
No, animal lovers, the answer is pet earrings.
And here you were, thinking that the human mind had already created every possible useless pet accessory. Not hardly. Even though U.S. consumers spent more than $21 billion on their pets in 1996, not one cent of that amount went for pet earrings.
No, owners bursting with love for their animals – wondering how on earth they could show their pets how much they love them – had to rely on other, lesser tokens of affection – steak bones and ragged tennis balls, for example – until this month when the pet earrings became available.
The earrings are the creation of Chicagoan Henderson, who describes her coup de foudre, her moment of invention, as follows:
“I was designing jewelry and I sold an ear cuff (to a store in California), and a gentleman (the store owner) from San Francisco calls me and says, `Mrs. Henderson, we just love them (the ear cuffs, which are little things you clip to the side of your ear an inch or two above the lobe) but do you mind if I sell them to men?’ I said, `I don’t care if you sell them to dogs.’ Then it hit me — that there is no dog jewelry!”
Thus began Henderson’s development of a product known as PetGem, which she believes is going to be one of the all-time big sellers in pet accessory history. In a nation where pet-owning households spend more per year on their animals (an average of $366) than they do on dairy products ($306) that could be a huge wad o’ cash.
“When I went to the first pet show, the biggest problem I had was that my (promotional) photos were of dogs, said Henderson. “The cat world was really mad at me.”
The cat people, a touchy group when it comes to dogs, believed — wrongly — that the product had ignored the earring needs of the feline world. Nothing, Henderson assures, could be further from the truth. Cats can wear them too.
Another problem she encountered, one that made her believe that pet earrings are an idea whose time has come, is that when she showed prototypes of her earring line at pet products shows, people tried to steal them right off the display board.
The earrings are currently available in 28 designs, Henderson says, and retail at $7 each (not per pair; that’s for one earring). “I want to retail them for a small enough amount of money so that people would want to buy one a week,” she said. By the way, they are not for pierced pet ears. They clip on.
It is not entirely clear what makes these earrings work that much better than a woman’s standard clip earring, though the pet styles feature a lot of colorful bows not usually found in human earwear. The part that clips on the animal’s hair — or ear itself — is bigger than on traditional human earrings.
“We’re coming up with a birthstone line. Birthstones on dogs are crazy right now,” said Henderson, who is a mother of two sons and a geophysicist. The jewelry, both pet and human, is a sideline. Currently she is in Norway helping look for oil in the North Sea.
“We’re trying to get someone to make a little cat and little puppy with a birthstone in their tummies. And, days of the week (inscribed) `Monday’ through `Sunday.’ Angels are big right now. We’re looking at doggy and cat angels.”
At present, the only way to buy the earrings is by calling the company, Cygany Inc., in Chicago. (The name means “gypsy” in Hungarian. She’s Hungarian.)
Now for the question of whether any self-respecting dog (all right, or cat) will wear the things. The Tribune put the question to Jelly Roll, an 18-month-old Norwich terrier, and the answer was a resounding yes — for precisely 30.7 seconds before she scratched it off and tried to eat it. (The package says the earrings are “not meant for consumption. Always supervise your pet when wearing this ornament.”)
However, a subsequent tryout found that Dinah, a 5-year-old cocker spaniel, happily wore the earring all evening.
“They do wear them, especially the prissy puppies. . . . (But) if you have a dog that will not wear a bow, that dog is not going to wear a PetGem,” said Henderson, who has tried them out on her own dog, a collie-Pomeranian, named Foxey.
“I say, `Foxey, you look so cute,’ and he brightens right up.”
However, “As soon as you stop paying attention to him and telling him it’s cute, he’ll shake it off.”
Henderson expects the majority of her customers to be buying the earrings for somebody else’s pet: “It’s something a friend can give another friend’s animal at one of those doggy birthday parties.”
Yes, there are doggy birthday parties. With gifts.
A survey by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association found that more than 25 percent of dog owners gave their dogs birthday presents in 1996. Incidentally, more than half (57 percent) gave them Christmas presents. Only 11 percent of cat owners think their pet’s birthday merits a gift, though 48 percent come through with a Christmas present. Even a few fish owners (3 percent) give birthday presents to their pets.
Henderson has not even tried to figure out how you’d attach an earring to a fish.
