Bathrobes and special menus: Yes, that pooch in NYC probably is better off than you
In cafes, hotels, museums and on planes, it really is a dog’s life.
By Liz Gooch
Once feared as disease-carrying animals, dogs in New York City now enjoy an elevated position.Credit: Dewey Nicks/Trunk Archive/Snapper
Jetlagged and hungry on our first morning after arriving in New York City last year, we headed out early in search of breakfast. Taking a seat in a Manhattan cafe, my kids began whispering and pointing at the only other occupied table, where a young woman was hand-feeding pieces of sourdough to her dining companion. She spoke tenderly, as if on a date with a cherished lover, rather than the tan cavoodle sitting on the chair opposite.
As a waiter brought a bowl of water for the dog and breakfast for us, my kids pondered how their grandparents’ cattle dog, an affectionate black-and-tan kelpie called Digger, would restrain himself with the smell of bacon wafting through the air. Little did we know then just how revered canines are in this concrete jungle. Since then, I’ve seen a dog lick clean a bowl of hummus at a trendy West Village restaurant. I’ve watched waiters balancing piles of plates delicately step around a pair of St Bernards sprawled across the floor. I’ve seen a grey terrier strapped to a guy’s back as he whizzed past on a bike, paws poking out like a newborn’s tiny feet from a baby carrier.
Here, four-legged models strut down footpaths as though they’ve just stepped out of a Fifth Avenue boutique. There was the golden retriever padding along snow-covered streets with purple Crocs on its paws. The German shepherd wearing a black tutu as he sat on guard beside a man sleeping on the street on a frigid winter’s morning. The two tiny terriers wearing matching sunglasses.
Dogs are everywhere in New York City – in handbags, prams, shops, hairdressing salons and bars. This metropolis of 8.4 million people is also home to an estimated 600,000 dogs.
In Manhattan, where more than half of the apartments are studios or one-bedrooms, it feels like you see more canines than kids, more fenced dog parks than slides and swings. Bowls of dog treats sit on coffee shop counters beside the sugar, and there’s a museum dedicated to artwork celebrating man’s best friend.
Dogs in NYC cafes are a common sight, with some having separate menus for them.Credit: Getty Images/Image Source
They’re even in the skies. During a recent flight, a dog in a carry bag, one row in front of me, yapped almost constantly from take-off to landing six hours later. Only one fellow passenger seemed mildly annoyed. I’ve encountered more animosity when flying with a crying baby.
Disclaimer: I’m a dog lover. I’m also a farm girl who grew up in country NSW with cattle dogs who were fed dinner scraps and canned dog food, slept outside, and their grooming routine consisted of a swim in the dam. For my parents’ current dog, Digger, a sausage from the Sunday barbecue is what passes as a treat.
Only when there’s a storm, or when winter nights are especially chilly, does he come inside to warm up in front of the fire. He’ll bravely stand his ground in front of an 800-kilogram bull, but Digger is petrified of thunder. Our dogs have always been much-loved family members but they have little in common with my canine neighbours, who catch the lift in our building, and those in New York where you need to step around yellow puddles on the pavement.
To get a better sense of how the city’s relationship with dogs has evolved over the years, I headed to the New York Historical Society, to check out the Pets and the City exhibition. It charts a radical revolution in how dogs went from being feared, disease-carrying animals to the elevated standing they now enjoy. The exhibit describes how in the 19th century, dogs – along with pigs and cows – roamed the streets of New York, eating scraps, until a cholera epidemic hit in the late 1840s, prompting the city to offer bounties for stray dogs. This, along with fear of rabies, led to dog killers, then dog catchers, plucking canines off the streets.
Flash forward to today and there are cafes with special menus for dogs, where you can host a birthday party for your furry friend, and the New York City Council is considering legislation that will allow people to use their paid sick leave to take care of sick pets. Daycare centres are spread across the city so that owners don’t need to leave their dogs home alone.
Walking up the stairs to the second floor of a building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, you hear the barking before you reach the front counter of Dog Days of NY. As light streams through windows overlooking Broadway on a recent Thursday afternoon, about 30 dogs are playing, from a fluffy white samoyed to golden retrievers, an Australian shepherd and a pint-sized havapoo.
As we chat over the barking, Dean Vogel, one of the owners, tells me there are no restrictions on the size of dogs who can come here but they first undergo a temperament assessment. Staff take the dogs for a walk (and bathroom break) morning and afternoon, but there are two buckets with mops in the room, just in case. “We have accidents all day,” Vogel says.
Dean Vogel with his French mastiff, Daphne.Credit: Liz Gooch
Most of the dogs have done obedience training, but there have been occasions when Vogel has had to tell an owner that it’s just not working out (a conversation that must be akin to that dreaded phone call from childcare after your toddler bites another kid). Some dogs come five days a week. “They have owners who are doctors or lawyers, who are working every day,” says Vogel, a 62-year-old former publishing executive who opened the centre in 2011 with other local pet owners. “I think for a lot of people, it would not be possible to have a dog in the city if they didn’t have daycare.”
Like Australia, New York saw a boom in “pandemic puppies”. Now that more companies are asking people to return to the office, Vogel says there’s been more demand for daycare. “We get a lot of dogs who have separation anxiety,” he says, “and some are high-energy puppies who need a lot of interaction with people and other dogs.” The centre charges $US75 ($115) a day, or $US60 for members.
When he introduces me to his dog, Daphne, I come face to face with a 54-kilogram French mastiff, whose front paws are as high as my shoulders when she rears up on her back legs. Vogel says when he got his first dog, another French mastiff named Daisy, he gained entry to a new community in a city that can be quite isolating. “I live alone; I tell people I could die in my apartment and be there for a week if not for the fact I have a dog,” says Vogel, who has got to know countless local dog owners. “If they don’t see me every day, they would be the first to check what’s going on. That’s a really nice thing.”
He says while outsiders often assume New York is not suitable for dogs, there are actually plenty of opportunities for them to socialise, such as in places like Central Park, where they can roam off-leash during certain hours. “A lot of dogs have weekend houses,” he says, meaning their owners have properties outside the city. “They have the perfect balance. They come back to the city, they see their friends.”
One upmarket hotel advertises “Ruff Service” with a menu crafted by the executive chef.
But Vogel likes to remind owners that their dogs’ needs differ from their own. All the pampering people think they would like for themselves isn’t what dogs want, he says. “They’re not really interested in getting a pedicure.”
For those who do like to indulge their pets, there’s no shortage of options. Some of the city’s most iconic hotels don’t just allow dogs to stay – they offer services to ensure their trip to the Big Apple is one to remember. At The Plaza Hotel, dogs of all sizes can live it up, just like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2. The hotel provides “scrumptious macarons and [a] refreshing bowl of Evian” and matching bathrobes for dogs and their owners as part of its “Pampered Pup Package”. Prices start at $US1200 per night (including the room).
Meanwhile, The Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown advertises “Ruff Service”, which features a menu crafted by the executive chef – and includes a choice of protein, vegetables, rice, house-made peanut-butter cookies and, again, macarons.
A number of city hotels offer special pet packages.Credit: Maggie Marguerite Inc.
In a city where almost every outing means walking past people sleeping on the streets, and where people ride the subway throughout the night to escape the cold, the reverence shown to dogs is perhaps one of the most glaring illustrations of the vast gulf between the well-off and those struggling to get by.
The case of Rosie, a mini goldendoodle who went missing in Central Park in 2023, demonstrates the lengths some New Yorkers will go to for their dogs, and the empathy they can invoke in a city often derided as cut-throat.
After a pet-sitter lost Rosie, her owner didn’t just stick up a few flyers, she launched an intensive search effort, offering a $US6000 reward, enlisting volunteers, and setting up a website to report possible sightings. Then a GoFundMe page raised $US20,000 to help pay for a dog tracker, who came “highly recommended and can employ advanced techniques to track down Rosie”. The page, set up by a friend, said the owner had had to “take time off work to focus on finding Rosie, and the mounting expenses are becoming overwhelming”.
The love many New Yorkers have for their dogs is undeniable. And admiring the countless dogs we see daily has been an unexpected joy of life here, opening the door to conversations with people we’d never normally meet. But we’ll be waiting until we move back home before getting our own. For now, we’ll make do with patting Ginger, the cavoodle who lives down the street, and visiting Digger the kelpie when we head back to the farm.
Digger will never play in a park specially designed for him, never taste a morsel of chef-prepared food or don a bathrobe, never board a plane or be immortalised in the hallowed halls of a museum. But somehow, I think he’s happy jumping in muddy dams, barking at sparrows and woofing down sausages that little hands feed him under the table.
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