Nearly half of travelers want your pet out of airplane cabins, survey says

By Jessica Plautz2015-01-02 17:22:58 UTC

La última de éste año. Vi en la red una foto hermosísima de Evita con una mascota q parece la mamá o abuela de Lolita pic.twitter.com/3dNPovET82 — Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) December 31, 2014

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Gary Dahl in 1975 with the Pet Rock, a product that sold for $3.95 and made him a millionaire practically overnight. Credit United Press International

It was a craze to rival the Hula-Hoop, and even less explicable. For a mere three dollars and 95 cents, a consumer could buy ... a rock — a plain, ordinary, egg-shaped rock of the kind one could dig up in almost any backyard.

The wonder of it was, for a few frenzied months in 1975, more than a million consumers did, becoming the proud if slightly abashed owners of Pet Rocks, the fad that Newsweek later called “one of the most ridiculously successful marketing schemes ever.”

Gary Dahl, the man behind that scheme — described variously as a marketing genius and a genial mountebank — died on March 23 at 78. A down-at-the-heels advertising copywriter when he hit on the idea, he originally meant it as a joke. But the concept of a “pet” that required no actual work and no real commitment resonated with the self-indulgent ’70s, and before long a cultural phenomenon was born.

A modern incarnation of “Stone Soup” as stirred by P. T. Barnum, Pet Rocks made Mr. Dahl a millionaire practically overnight. Though the fad ran its course long ago, the phrase “pet rock” endures in the American lexicon, denoting (depending on whether it is uttered with contempt or admiration) a useless entity or a meteoric success.

But despite the boon Pet Rocks brought him, Mr. Dahl came to regret the brainstorm that gave rise to them in the first place.

Mr. Dahl’s brainstorm began, as many do, in a bar.

One night in the mid-’70s, he was having a drink in Los Gatos, the Northern California town where he lived for many years. At the time, he was a freelance copywriter (“that’s another word for being broke,” he later said), living in a small cabin as a self-described “quasi dropout.”

The bar talk turned to pets, and to the onus of feeding, walking and cleaning up after them.

His pet, Mr. Dahl announced in a flash of bibulous inspiration, caused him no such trouble. The reason?

“I have a pet rock,” he explained.

A pet rock, Mr. Dahl quickly realized, might just have legs.

“People are so damn bored, tired of all their problems,” he told People magazine in 1975. “This takes them on a fantasy trip — you might say we’ve packaged a sense of humor.”

He recruited two colleagues as investors, visited a building-supply store and bought a load of smooth Mexican beach stones at about a penny apiece.

The genius was in the packaging. Each Pet Rock came in a cardboard carrying case, complete with air holes, tenderly nestled on a bed of excelsior. Mr. Dahl’s droll masterstroke was his accompanying manual on the care, feeding and house training of Pet Rocks.

“If, when you remove the rock from its box it appears to be excited, place it on some old newspapers,” the manual read. “The rock will know what the paper is for and will require no further instruction. It will remain on the paper until you remove it.”

Pet Rocks hit the marketplace in time for Christmas 1975. They were soon featured on “The Tonight Show” and in a blizzard of newspaper articles. In a matter of months, some 1.5 million rocks were sold.

“I had one phone to each ear,” Mr. Dahl recalled in a 2011 interview. “I taught my P.R. guy to impersonate me so he could also answer my calls.”

Mr. Dahl traded his Honda for a Mercedes and moved into a house with a swimming pool that was larger than his cabin had been.

Gary Ross Dahl was born on Dec. 18, 1936, in Bottineau, N.D., and reared in Spokane, Wash. His mother was a waitress, his father a lumber-mill worker. After studying at what is now Washington State University, the young Mr. Dahl made his way into advertising.

While Pet Rocks were the must-have gift of the 1975 holiday season, they soon went the way of all fads. The idea’s very simplicity proved its undoing: Though Mr. Dahl trademarked the name, there was nothing to stop someone from putting a rock into a box and selling it, and many did. Nor did the spate of auxiliary businesses that sprang up around his creation — the official Bicentennial Pet Rock, inscribed with an American flag; mail-order college degrees for Pet Rocks ($3 for a bachelor’s, $10 for a Ph.D.) — bring him any compensation.

In the late ’70s, Mr. Dahl was sued by his original investors, who claimed they had received too small a share of the profits. A court found in their favor, and he was obliged to pay a six-figure judgment. His later inventions, including the Original Sand Breeding Kit, which let buyers grow their “own desert wasteland,” never matched the success of Pet Rocks.

Mr. Dahl’s first marriage, to Barbara Eisiminger, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Melinda Aucott. His survivors include his third wife, the former Marguerite Wood, who confirmed his death, in Jacksonville, Ore., from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; a sister, Candace Dahl; two children, Christine Nunez and Eric Dahl, from his first marriage; a daughter, Samantha Leighton, from his second; a stepdaughter, Vicki Pershing; and seven grandchildren.

On the proceeds of Pet Rocks, Mr. Dahl opened a saloon and ran a sailboat brokerage before returning to advertising. He was the author of “Advertising for Dummies,” first published in 2001.

Mr. Dahl, a resident most recently of Jacksonville, was also vastly proud of having won, in 2000, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which honors deliberately dreadful prose. (His winning entry began, “The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors.”)

But in the end, it is for the Pet Rock that he will be remembered. Though the rock made him wealthy, it also made him wary, for he was besieged ever after by hordes of would-be inventors, seeking his advice on the next big thing.

“There’s a bizarre lunatic fringe who feel I owe them a living,” Mr. Dahl told The Associated Press in 1988. “Sometimes I look back and wonder if my life wouldn’t have been simpler if I hadn’t done it.”

In his 1915 guide to pets, Alpheus Hyatt Verrill, an American naturalist, lambasted the dog-keeping habits of his day. “There is no excuse for pampering, constant fondling, dressing up in clothing, and other ridiculous customs,” he wrote. Dogs, Verrill insisted, should be treated like the animals they are.

1. Pet Gadgets

2. Canine Communications

3. Dinosaur Chickens and Glowing Beagles

4.  Lovable Robots

Allergies are the sixth leading cause of chronic disease in the U.S. and approximately half of all Americans test positive for at least one of the 10 most common allergens, including cat allergies, according to a profile from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) reports that about 15-30 percent of people with allergies have allergic reactions to cats and dogs. With more than 100 million pets in the United States this leads to high allergy morbidity as people are exposed to animal allergens when visiting friends and family or even in public spaces like schools and offices.

Try a pet which does not cause allergies.

• Allergy & Air - The Best Pets for Allergy Sufferers
• Mother Nature Network - 10 of the best pets for allergy sufferers
• Health - 15 Hypoallergenic Dogs and Cats

In the end, how do you live with a pet allergy without getting rid of your pet? ...

• Give it to someone else and visit now and then.
• Buy a second home for your pet to live in.
• Or the even less popular option, taxidermy.
• Or, you could just take all those drugs and hope your pet doesn't out live you.

Since they work so hard, our barn cats deserve to be treated like other high-performing work animals. I have heard people state opinions about how you shouldn’t feed them much because then they won’t be hungry enough to chase their own dinner! Nonsense! If you want an animal to perform work for you, then you should feed it adequate nutrition so it has the energy and stamina to perform. Cats need a diet that contains quality protein. Living outside, chasing rodents, eating rodents, running from the big dogs, all these activities require strong bodies and lots of energy. Cats are carnivores. They only eat meat. Cats do not need vegetables, sweets, or grain fillers. Cats often do not drink enough water. Feeding the canned cat food in addition to the dry, increases their water intake. In the winter, when bringing warm water to your backyard chickens and dairy goats, make sure you save some for the cats, too. I know my barn cats enjoy a warm drink of water on a freezing cold morning. Try to give the cats a place to eat where they won’t be chased off by livestock entering the barn, or in our case the dog trying to “share” the dinner. We put shelves up in the barn that the cats can access, and we feed the cats on the shelves.

Genpets are advertised online, at a faux web site, that promises allergen-free, child-safe, low-maintenance genetic pets. They look like human-animal hybrids. "While the Genpets hang on the store shelves they are in a form of hibernation. Each Genpet package has a special nutrient feeding tube attached to it, supplying our specially formulated mix and keeping them healthy and asleep," according to a Genpets features section.

Heart and Hands Store on Etsy.