Pets aren’t just pets any more

Jennifer Vanderau
Cumberland Valley Animal Shelter

(7/2023) I have been what I like to call a television aficionado for many, many decades. I enjoy a good evening spent in front of the old boob tube and have since I was young.

With the development of Netflix and all the other various streaming services, my choices are as varied as the stars in the sky. It’s like a dream or something. I never would have imagined having all these options when I was a kid to watch whenever I wanted.

In fact, when my siblings and I were little, we enjoyed the cartoon G.I. Joe, the Dukes of Hazzard and Knight Rider.

As we grew, our tastes expanded and since we’ve moved onto our own lives, we’ve drifted in our television watching a bit.

Full disclosure, my siblings have way more of a life than I do (boyfriends and babies and such), so their watching has become quite limited.

The point – and I do have one – is I know my way around a channel guide and as a result, see a lot of not only television programs, but commercials.

One of my absolute favorites that I’ve just noticed recently is for the company Chewy. (You wondered how I was going to get this around to animals, didn’t you? Fear not! I’ve been shifting my ramblings around to our four-legged friends for years now. Heh.)

So in this Chewy commercial – and I think it’s for their flea and tick products, although all their commercials with the talking animals are adorable – there’s a family of five sitting around the dinner table.

It’s Mom, Dad, a son, a daughter and a dog – and yes, the dog has a place at the table. She’s actually sitting on a chair and her dog bowl is in front of her on a placemat at the table. The rest of the family is enjoying spaghetti.

As they’re eating their dinner, the family is talking about their accomplishments. The son says he got an A on his book report and the daughter talks about scoring a goal in soccer. The dad tells them both that’s great.

Then the dog, Bailey, chimes in to let the family know that she went for a walk in the woods and didn’t get a single flea or tick on her. Mom and Dad both praise her to high heaven.

The son then says, somewhat under his breath, "I wonder if Bailey ever did a book report."

And Mom says, "Be nice to your sister."

The tag line is "pets aren’t just pets. They’re more."

It was hands down, one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. For years I’ve been talking to people about how pets should be seen as members of the family. If we lived in a world where that were true, animal shelters wouldn’t have so many residents.

Here was a commercial that actually had the family dog sitting at the table in a chair with everyone else. How much clearer could you get?

And I have to do a major shout out to Chewy. That company is so great. I have talked to so many people who are incredibly impressed with them. I remember a volunteer years ago had told me that they ended up sending medication that they had purchased back to Chewy because their dog had passed away. They were shocked to find a condolence letter in the mail a few days later from Chewy.

Chewy is also incredible with their donations to animal shelters and rescues.

When you add to that the adorable commercials they have made that show animals as a real part of the family, it all just does my heart good.

Television can be certainly be a "vast wasteland" as the FCC chairman proclaimed in 1961 – can you imagine what he’d say today? But if you look, you can find not only programs, but also commercials, that have a really good message for the world.

Thank you, Chewy, for all you do for our animals.

Jennifer Vanderau is the Publications and Promotions Consultant for the Cumberland Valley Animal Shelter and can be reached at cvascomm@cvas-pets.org. The shelter accepts both monetary and pet supply donations. For more information, call the shelter at 263-5791 or visit the website www.cvas-pets.org. CVAS also operates a thrift store in Chambersburg. Help support the animals at the shelter by donating to or shopping at the store.