Tracie Bluse Ward
Do you ever wish you could text your pet during the day to see what they’re up to or sneak off for a quick snuggle to help you through the day? For many of us, our pets have become our BPFFs (best pet friends forever). We enjoy a close bond with these sweet, adorable friends and our attachment can be as deep as those we have with the humans in our lives. They bring us unconditional love, heartwarming experiences, and such joy that we could not imagine our lives without them. And when the time comes to say good-bye to one of our cuddly friends, our hearts break and the pain is often overwhelming.
Sound familiar? Or maybe you have a hard time admitting that you have a close relationship with your best pet friend. Perhaps you think it’s quirky to dress your pet in cute outfits, yet you and your BPFF spend every free moment sharing your favorite activities together. Being deeply connected to your pet is not only okay, you’re in great company! You are a member of a growing number of pet lovers from all ages, backgrounds, and cultures that enjoy a wonderful relationship with their pets and we’d like to welcome you to our community.
While nearly 63 percent of U.S. households own one or more pets, a pet statistic that is not often discussed but becomes apparent when you follow pet trends, is the increase in the number of people that identify with being a pet lover versus a pet owner. So what’s the difference?
Being a pet lover seems to be one of those subjective phrases that evoke an emotional response in all types of humans. Few are immune – not even the toughest guy or the most career-minded woman.
Here are some of the tell-tale signs of a true pet lover.
- When speaking about our pets, if you didn’t know better, you would swear we were talking about our kids. In fact, for many pet lovers, their pets are their kids.
- When we are in close proximity to another pet, even if our pet is not with us, our face lights up, we turn to mush, and the conversation quickly shifts to a pet topic.
- We also treat our pets like members of our family, celebrating their birthday, making sure they have a sitter when we’re away, bestowing our love and affection upon them daily, and buying special toys and treats to make them happy.
So while we instinctively know what a pet lover looks and sounds like, how do we define one?
Your Chance to Define Pet Lovers & Win a Custom Pet Story Valued at $160
For the sake of clarity, and in defining the pet lover community for this site, I began a search for a clear definition for pet lovers. To my surprise there wasn’t one in any of the traditional dictionaries. I selected a couple of definitions from similar words that are closely related, but not fully representative of a pet lover. These definitions are quoted from the on-line resource Wikipedia:
A pet is an animal kept for companionship and enjoyment or a household animal, as opposed to livestock, laboratory animals, working animals or sport animals, which are kept for economic reasons.
Animal love or animal friendships are emotions of fondness that lead to bonding with non-human species.
As a pet lover, neither definition seems to work for me. So now I need your help. Please forward your thoughts or a brief phrase that helps create a clear, concise definition for “pet lovers.” We’ll compile your feedback and share the final choices for a vote in the coming months. This is your chance to make history by defining a phrase that could someday be used in popular dictionaries (or perhaps Wikipedia for now). You will also help shape our new on-line community for pet lovers and BPFFs. The winning pet lover definition will be awarded a personalized My Best Pet Friend hardcover story book to help you remember or celebrate your special BPFF (valued at $160)! Contest ends August 1, 2012 so start submitting your definitions now and share a photo of your BPFF.
Pet Lovers Unite
With so much love for our BPFFs, we launched this blog with five goals in mind.
We’re a community of pet lovers sharing:
- the richness of our human-pet bonds
- heartwarming pet stories
- meaningful ways to overcome pet loss
- helpful pet resources and information
- great ways to enrich our best pet friend relationships.
Each week we’ll share one of the My Best Pet Friend stories written by one of our pet lovers as they celebrate or remember their best pet friends forever. We’ll use these heartwarming stories along with your favorite pet stories to provide the weekly theme for our discussion about the wonderful relationships we share with our beloved pets. Simply click on the Sharing with Sydney blog o hear actual pet memorials or celebration stories read to my BPFF, Sydney each week. As an introduction, click on the Hello Sydney video now to meet Sydney, my Aussie-Collie baby we rescued and adopted in 2009.
We’ll also bring you pet experts and helpful resources to enrich your pet relationships. And we’ll provide you with an opportunity to share your pet memorials, experiences, photos, and questions with our pet lover community.
We look forward to creating a meaningful pet lover community with you – one that brings each of us much joy and meaningful content to enrich our best pet friend relationships. See you next week…
Copyright 2012 MyBPFF — All rights reserved.
Tags: Best Pet Friend Forever, BPFF, MyBPFF, Pet Friends, Pet Lover Definition Contest, Pet Lovers, Pet Stories
