Missoula News

"I wuff you"

Puppy Love on Valentine’s Day

By Jessica Mayrer, 2-14-08

“You Can’t Hurry Love” serenades shoppers from the PA system as a middle-aged woman stops to eye the Pet Smart Valentine’s Day display, overflowing with heart-shaped squeak toys, pink dog beds embroidered with hearts, and sleeveless dresses for the dainty pooch.

Turns out Valentine’s Day is a popular holiday for pet owners.

“People kind of treat their dogs like their kids,” says store manager Jason McCulloch. 

At $6.99, the Loofah Dogs—long, red and furry toy dogs holding a heart that says “I wuff you”—are probably the most popular Valentine’s Day item, McCulloch says. But Valentine’s cards are popular too. They’re designed for pets or people with pugs, terriers Labradors and the rest holding long-stemmed roses.

Valentine’s Day shoppers are often what McCulloch calls “empty nesters,” baby boomers whose children have left home.

“My kids are all gone,” says Mary Kamensky, an administrative officer at the University of Montana. So, she intends to buy Sadie, her three-year-old German Short Hair Pointer, a special Valentine’s Day bone.

“That’s what happens when you get old and crazy and your kids go away,” she says.

Valentine’s Day business is brisk, but the Christmas season is hands down the busiest. “I bought a Santa Suit for my cat,” says employee Shelly Troy. “It was so cute.”

They already have St. Patty’s Day Loofah dog. It hangs by the cash register wearing a top hat and holding a four-leaf clover.

Across town at Go Fetch, an upscale doggie retail boutique, which also offers grooming and dog-walking services, baker Dawn Dodge is up to her elbows in a moist, grainy concoction. An industrial mixer churns flour, honey, molasses, cheese, garlic, parsley and grain into what will soon be frosted heart-shaped doggie biscuits. When the whole grain treats are cooked and frosted, they run $1.50 each.

“I wouldn’t pay that much for a biscuit for my dog. I wouldn’t pay that much for a biscuit for me,” Dodge says.

But she understands the impulse.

“People like to spoil their pets,” she says. “For some people their dog is their baby.”

Doggy birthday cakes are popular too. Go Fetch sells about one a week, says owner Scott Timothy.

Pet portraits, pet strollers (for the dog with bad hips), and pet essences to sooth nerves are available too, depending on your pooch’s preferences.

Or if your budget is tight, perhaps a poem is the way to go—like the one Susan Antonelli wrote to her dog, posted on the Associated Content Website:

My furry, smelly short-legged pal,
You always will be my favorite gal.
You love me unconditionally,
When you get excited you always pee.
I’ll feed you treats and clean up your poo,
Happy furry Valentine’s Day to you.

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