Just as few parents would admit that they have a poor relationship with their children, most people think that their relationship with their pets is good, even exemplary. To tell the truth, I thought so too until I stopped to take a look.
Fifteen years on, Jeff Koons's glossy ceramic sculpture Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988) still seems to many an appropriate totem for our celebrity-mad, superficial culture.
Americans are sparing no expense when it comes to their pets. In 1994, pet owners spent a whopping $17 billion on animal products and services. This trend has created a new breed of entrepreneurs.
On December 23, 2003, the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopa disease--was confirmed in the United States. BSE is a prion (a protein-like infectious particle) disease that basically eats holes in the brain tissue of humans and animals who've ingested parts of an animal that was already suffering from a prion disease.
