San Francisco’s Dog Obsession Has Gone Too Far

Photo by Daisy Barringer

The other day, my husband sent me a video of our baby girl chewing on one of her favorite toys. We’re in the teething stage of parenthood, so she will chew on anything and everything these days—sticks, our noses, broken flower pots, the cage she sleeps in at night. 

Raising a puppy has involved a lot more work than I originally thought. Four meals, fifteen potty breaks, and a dozen scratch marks or more per day, to be exact. And that’s not even counting all the time we spend teaching her to sit on command, to come when called, or to not bite her own foot. 

I suppose we could get away with enforcing a lot less discipline with our dog, as most everyone else in San Francisco seems intent on gentle-parenting their pooches. This combined with the fact that the city has literally gone to the dogs (it’s true, there are more dogs than children in SF) is why it’s impossible to take a walk to the park without getting yapped at multiple times by Pomeranians that would be pretty cute if they didn’t want me dead, or why I had to wait for a Cockapoo to get her paws off the counter before I could purchase my Vitamin Water at the convenience store last week. (And yes, I did ask the dog for her pronouns, because I’m not a total monster.) I even have one friend who lets her dog sit in her lap at the dinner table. Another of my friends bakes fresh chicken for every fur baby she dog sits.

The adorable puppy in question. Photo by Natalie Mead

Because I grew up in an era in which dogs were still considered second-class citizens not even worthy of owning toys or toothbrushes, I’d always found it a little difficult to adjust to San Francisco’s canine-centric culture. Puppy socials? Birthday parties? Photoshoots? High-end restaurants? CBD products? Dessert shops? Soon, you’ll even be able to book a ticket for your dog to fly out of SFO on a dog luxury airline. Isn’t it all a bit much? But now that I have a puppy of my own, I find myself Googling things like “Does Andytown give out puppuccinos” (Answer: Yes), marking our puppy’s height each week on our bathroom wall, and dehydrating fresh salmon in the air fryer to use as treats. We’re even in the process of assembling a Spotify playlist of her favorite songs. 

As for puppy socials, we went to our first one last Saturday. A puppy social, for the uninitiated, is a room full of puppies that play with each other. There’s no structure, no training—just a bunch of puppies and a mop for the messes. It’s one of the easiest and most profitable ventures a business owner can undertake in San Francisco, as we were one of twenty families that paid $30 to attend the fifty-minute social. It’s also, hands down, the best way to spend a Saturday morning. I’d never seen so many puppies in one place before, and the amount of cuteness in the room nearly brought me to tears.

Though the puppies were given no instructions about how to socialize, the puppy parents received a crash course from the head trainer. 

“We need to let the puppies figure things out for themselves,” he said. “So, if you hear your puppy yelp or whine, don’t rush to pick them up.”

Our puppy, who we’d just put down on the ground, chose this exact moment to yelp. Loudly.

The author and her dog at Andytown. Photo by Natalie Mead

“Also, and this is important,” he continued, “if you want to take pictures of your puppy while they’re here, don’t force your dog to pose while they’re playing! As some of you may be surprised to discover, puppies don’t care about how many likes you get on your Instagram posts.”

Our first puppy social started with our dog making friends with a handsome, twelve-week-old Golden Retriever named Kevin. I have no idea what Kevin’s mom’s name was, because human names are irrelevant in this context, but we’re definitely a shoo-in for Kevin’s first birthday party. Then, after forty-five minutes of watching a bunch of little fluff balls run circles around the room, a Yellow Lab puppy named Romeo went down the eighteen-inch plastic slide. He was the first to do so successfully—none of the other puppies had been brave enough to attempt it. Everyone cheered when Romeo made it to the bottom. I think he deserves a doggie dessert for that, don’t you?