| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Pets in America: A History. By Katherine C. Grier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. vii plus 377 pp. $34.95).
Americans are voracious pet-keepers. Three-fifths of American households have a pet, and nearly half own two or more. Americans keep nearly 17 million birds, 91 million cats, 74 million dogs, 139 million freshwater fish, 10 million saltwater fish, 11 million reptiles, and 18 million other small animals, spending more than $34 billion annually on pet products and veterinary services, twice the amount in 1994.	1
Katherine C. Grier's remarkably well-written, richly research study draws on a wealth of diaries, letters, business records, iconographic evidence, and other sources to provide the first comprehensive history of pet keeping in the United States. Readers will learn that pet keeping is not a new phenomenon: Cats and dogs accompanied Europeans to the American colonies not only as work animals but as companions. By the mid-eighteenth century, colonists had begun to keep birds and rabbits in their homes. Readers will also learn about the shifting popularity of various kinds of pets, as well as the evolution of the pet supply and wholesale animal business.	2
Grier has done an extraordinary job of reconstructing the chronology of pet keeping. We discover that cats were called Puss and parrots Polly as early as the sixteenth century; the international bird trade began in the 1840s; the first packaged pet foods and commercial medicines also appeared in that decade; an aquarium craze took place in the 1850s; and the first dog show took place in the 1860s. Pet toys became popular during the 1920s, and surgical spaying of pets only became common during the 1930s. Especially interesting is Grier's discussion of the proliferation of breeds of dogs and cats. It is noteworthy that until the early 1900s, family dogs consisted of a narrow range of types: spaniels, hounds, setters, pointers, terriers, mastiffs, and bulldogs.	. . .

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