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Mood Feedback. One qualified and highly sought-after practitioner is Beverly Hills' Dr. Dare Miller, whose celebrity patients have included Ronald Reagan's tricolored collie, the Kirk Douglases' apricot poodle, Katharine Hepburn's German shepherd, and Bob Hope's basset, miniature poodle, schnauzer, Great Dane and Lhasa Apso. The reason most people own dogs, maintains Miller, is "to meet a need for mood feedback. A dog is a mirror, reflecting back what we give him. If we're happy, the dog is happy. If we're sad, the dog is sad." Obviously, many people rely more on pets than on shrinks.
Miller not only treats old dogs for new tics. He also "reconditions" their owners (at $245, in advance, for six 50-minute sessions), which in turn helps their mutts to overcome such neuroses as "anxiety syndrome" (jumping, barking, whining), "psychosexual misorientation" (biting people) and "dominance frustration" (Fido wants to be boss). It is almost impossible, he says, to treat a neurotic dog whose owner is "a thorough cynic. The dog will be a cynic too."*
Another Southern California dog behaviorist, and former associate of Miller's, is Dr. William Campbell, who installs "hyperkinetic" hounds in isolated rooms where they are monitored round the clock by closed-circuit TV and hidden microphones. When a dog acts up, a staffer initiates a remote-control "audio-generator" that emits an ultra-high-frequency signal that relaxes the animal.
The physical health of American pets also has been going to the bowwows —or at least their owners think so. The nation's some 30,000 veterinarians treat pets for allergies and sagging jowls, give them abortions, tonsillectomies, blood transfusions, caesareans, cataract operations and pacemaker hearts, as well as hundreds of thousands of routine injections against rabies and distemper. An Atlanta vet recently operated on a boa constrictor for glaucoma. One animal hospital offers "ovary surgery for nymphomaniac bitches." A growing number of vets are specializing in pet geriatrics, expensively prolonging the lives of cherished animals with drugs and treatment. Laboratories manufacture dozens of different drugs for pets, from amphetamines to contraceptives (one manufacturer is now selling a dog food that includes a canine Pill). "A dog," explains St. Louis Veterinarian Michael Fox, "has a relationship to its owner very similar to that of an infant aged two or three. People should not be surprised if their dog shows signs of jealousy, possessiveness or extreme aggressiveness. Dogs may develop psychosomatic disorders such as asthma, hives, diarrhea, sympathetic limps, even hysterical paralysis."
Of more serious concern to naturalists is the genetic degeneration of many pet species. In the frantic race to keep up with petishism, fast-buck breeding mills are churning out more and more diseased, spavined and moronic beasts.