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Dogs are the new 'children' in advertising world

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By D.L. Stewart, Contributing Writer Updated 12:22 PM Sunday, July 24, 2011

The central character in a new advertising campaign for a compact sport utility vehicle is a bulldog named Benny.

In television and radio spots, Benny is shown traveling around the Los Angeles area, saying things such as, “Me and my owner Mark are best friends, and with the RAV4 we are a crew!”

Despite this lamentable grammar, Benny is expected to become a big star because, as a marketing professor at New York University explained: “Dogs are the new children.”

Her analogy couldn’t be more perfect.

If there are any living things as self-centered, energy-consuming and less-appreciative than children, it would be dogs.

I’m not, of course, talking about any specific dog who has lived in our house for seven years and has yet to perform one selfless act. And I’m excluding service dogs, who do more to earn their daily kibble than merely wagging their tails and looking cute.

For the most part, though, dogs are children who never will grow up, leave home and support themselves.

They are eternal infants who will not hesitate to wake you at 4 in the morning, complain if they are not the center of attention, or go to the bathroom whenever or wherever the mood strikes them.

Probably the only creatures less self-centered than dogs are cats. But then no one with an ounce of reality in their brain really expects cats to care about anyone other than themselves.

Dogs, on the other paw, have been the subjects of all sorts of romanticized nonsense.

Lassie, for instance, allegedly spent her entire life rescuing exceptionally clumsy children who kept falling into wells.

If our dog came across a child who had fallen into the well, he would look down into it, discover that the kid didn’t have anything edible on him, shrug his shoulders and trot away.

Much has been made of the loyalty dogs are supposed to possess. Perhaps there are such dogs, but ours would deliver state secrets to this country’s enemies if they offered him half a Milk Bone.

And even though they really don’t care all that much about you, you still have to take care of them.

Having a dog means a lifetime of trips to the vet, altered vacation plans because “there’s no one to watch the dog while we’re gone” and restaurant dinners that have to be cut short because “we need to get home and let the dog out.”

Despite all that, my wife totally loves our dog and I guess I do a little bit, too.

But I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to teach him to say, “Me and my owner D.L. are best friends.”

He’d never get past the “me.”

Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.

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