PetKnows

As a former journalism major in college, I was often asked to report on collegiate trends for class assignments. One of my favorites was a piece about pets and college students.

So, I decided to pull up the following story, “You Can’t Buy Pet Love” for a cameo on PetKnows because it serves as a good reminder that only responsible people should take care of animals. More often than not, college students, are not responsible. So feel free to share this story with any young person thinking about getting a pet - make sure they are ready for the added responsibility!

Note: The names are changed, but the stories are true.

“You Can’t Buy Pet Love“

University senior, Leslie, was sitting in Starbucks one evening doing her homework when her phone rang with urgent news.

“Leslie, I have some bad news,” said her roommate.

“Well, what is it?” she said.

“Nigel died.”

“What?! That’s perfect!” Leslie said.

Winter break was only two weeks away and she said that she had no idea how she was going to get her fish, Nigel, home for the holidays. She already expected him dead

“Wait, are you sure he’s dead? If he’s dead he should float,” Leslie said while sitting in the crowded coffee shop.

“Leslie, we just poked him with a pencil and then dragged him up the side of the bowl and he took a nose dive to the bottom of the tank,” her roommate said.

“No, wait, are you sure? He’s just a hard sleeper,” she said with almost believable concern.

“He’s definitely dead.”

“Ok, well take him out of the water and put him in the sink and see if he reacts,” Leslie added.

“He’s in the sink, he’s not moving.”

Nigel, her newly deceased pet, was the third fish to die in the past year under Leslie’s watch. First, it was Amelie, then Sylvan and now Nigel. All three fish cost about $10 to buy and take care of and each had a lifespan of about three months. She decided to keep buying the fish because they were cheap, easy to take care of and added a fun, lively accessory to her college dorm bathroom.

While many college students are still trying to just take care of themselves, a growing population of students wants to see if they have the ability to take care of something else too. Whether it is a nurturing instinct or a way out of boredom, more and more college students these days are finding ways to sneak the furry, fuzzy or fishy roommates into their dorm rooms. More often than not, however, when the initial excitement of having the pet wears off, the creatures are left with a doomed fate.

Candice, another GW student, bought a pet hamster she named Queen Peanut Butter. Queen Peanut Butter was cute, round and fluffy - a perfect mate for a small dorm room. Candice, however, quickly realized that their lifestyles did not work well together. While she thought that the white and brown hamster was cute, she said it was a bad decision to add another living thing to her matchbox size room. She also didn’t realized that hamsters are nocturnal. This posed a problem for Candice, and ultimately Queen Peanut Butter.

“I was a really bad ‘mom’ to my hamster,” she said. “But, it just got so annoying to hear her wheel squeaking all night long.”

Candice said that she contemplated getting rid of Queen Peanut Butter by leaving her in the park. It was in the middle of winter, however, and she said that she didn’t feel very good about leaving the helpless rodent in the cold. So she tried to move the cage into her bathroom, so that she wouldn’t hear the squeaky wheel.

Then, one day, her boyfriend, John, walked into her bathroom and saw the poor hamster curled up in the corner of the cage under some dirty sawdust. He grabbed her out of the cage and took her from the room. Candice raised no objection to the kidnapping and gave Queen Peanut Butter to a new home: the Fraternity House.

“I knew Candice didn’t like it and wanted to it to die,” he said. “So, I took it to try and save it.”

While John said he thought he was doing good by saving the hamster from its neglected existence, life in the fraternity house was not conducive to animals. The frat’s rambunctious activity only further agitated the hamster. Like Candice, he also didn’t realize that hamsters tend to sleep all day and stay up all night.

“It got to the point where I just wasn’t taking care of it because it was so annoying,” he said. “I decided that I was going to bring it to a park and leave it there, but then a friend told me to just bring it back to Petco.”

John said that when he brought it back to the Petco, the store didn’t want the uncared for creature, but a nice lady who owned a snake practically begged him for it.

“It was a little strange giving away the hamster to this lady with a snake,” he said. “We all knew what was going to happen to it, but didn’t really think there was any other option.”

Despite the bad experience with the hamster, John said he still wanted to have a pet to keep him company. After moving out of the fraternity house, he adopted a Calico kitten that he named Mya. The kitten had been found under a dumpster and had been saved by an animal rights group.

“She’s like having a little baby,” he said. “When she was a kitten, she would sleep with me.”

At this particular University, if you lived on campus in a dorm room, pets were illegal. However, busy students who have internships, jobs, and schoolwork and not enough time to socialize turn to cats, dogs, and fish to make their lives a little less lonely.

Carly, a senior at GW, felt that need for companionship two years ago when she bought Pansy, a two and a half pound, tri-colored Yorkshire Terrier. Pansy is referred to as a handbag dog because she fits inside some of the en vogue handbags.

Carly said that even though handbag dogs are a “big fad” right now, she grew up with a lot of dogs and missed having one at school. She got a small dog because she said it is a lot easier to deal with than a big dog.

“I don’t miss home as much,” she said. “So, I guess she’s working.”

Carly calls Pansy her “therapy” dog and said that while it is hard to believe she will have her for another 10 years, she couldn’t imagine life without her.

“I always talk to her like a person, she totally has her own personality,” she said.

Still, Pansy is no ordinary lassie. Carly said that she isn’t like a “real” dog because of her size and because she wears couture sweaters that cost up to $70 each. She also has a neck collar decorated with crystals and she is potty trained, so she can stay inside all day without needing to go for a walk.

“She is kind of a bratty dog. If she’s not in the mood, she’s not going to sit, no matter how many times you ask her.”

Carly said that she has never had any problems with University housing inspections because they are not very thorough in their search for “illegal items.” She said that she can usually just put Pansy in the kitchen sink cabinet and no one ever finds her. She also said that she thinks that perhaps the reason people want to get pets in college is because of the city environment.

“I feel like the city is a weird place because you don’t ever see animals,” she said. “Even people who live in the city don’t really have pets, because there is no grass. Every time I’m out with her, people are always like, ‘Oh my, a dog!”