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Pup fiction and canine couture

By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published March 4, 2005

	BARK Founded: 1998 Circulation: 100,000 Motto: Dog is my co-pilot. Published: Quarterly Web site: www.thebark.com
	NEW YORK DOG Founded: 2004 Circulation: 100,000 Motto: We your dog, we’re only human. Published: Bimonthly Web site: www.thenydog.com

Dogs make us human, Australian aborigines say.

But what kind of humans do they make us?

A look at two magazines devoted to the canine-human relationship suggests that sometimes they make us read about dogs in postmodern short stories, and sometimes they make us buy them pink fuzzy sweaters.

The winter issue of Bark has an interview on living with dogs with eminent novelist Jim Harrison.

The February/March issue of New York Dog has a cover story on the same topic. The interviewee is Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton's sidekick.

Time magazine called Bark "the New Yorker of dog magazines." New York Dog's publisher has compared his book to Cosmopolitan.

But just as there's room at the dog park for every kind of pooch, there's room on the newsstand for all kinds of dog magazines.

Bark was born in Berkeley, Calif., out of the political activism of what editor Claudia Kawczynska calls the modern dog culture.

"It's a different way of living with dogs," she says. "They're becoming integrated with our society, not just our personal lives. With that also go the obligations of responsible dog ownership."

Kawczynska and Cameron Woo, the magazine's creative director and Kawczynska's outside-the-office partner as well, started Bark as an eight-page newsletter in support of a campaign to create a dog park ("We like to call it off-leash recreation") in Berkeley.

From the beginning, Bark got community support and advertising. It also had a literary bent. "We had articles by people we know who write well," Kawczynska says.

The newsletter grew, and about three years later it became a glossy magazine. "When we started it, that wasn't our intention at all," she says. "But we thought, it seems we have something special, so what can we do with it?"

What they have done is publish a handsomely designed magazine that combines practical advice columns, newsy stories about such things as hotel dog concierges and the Mardi Gras Krewe of Barkus, and canine history like a photo essay on a pair of 1920s poodle acrobats with contributions by such literary lights as Rick Bass, Ann Patchett and Augusten Burroughs.

Kawczynska says Bark has established such a reputation that book publishers bring their authors to the magazine. That was the case with Temple Grandin, an animal sciences professor who is autistic. She is the author of the bestseller Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior.

"Her publisher sent us the manuscript," Kawczynska says. "I got to interview her even before Terry Gross did."

New York Dog took a more traditional route to the newsstand. Founder John Ryan was a partner in an Irish company that published a celebrity homes-and-weddings magazine, VIP.

Ryan moved to New York last year and wanted to start a magazine there, says Leslie Padgett, New York Dog's editor.

"One thing he saw that was very different from where he came from was how people here were just crazy about their dogs," Padgett says. "All the attention, the spoiling, the doting. He thought it was just amazing."

The magazine's basis, she says, is the idea that dogs have become part of our families, even substitute children for some people. "We really think of it as a parenting magazine."

Padgett says she signed on as soon as she heard the idea. "I never thought my life would be dressing dogs and taking pictures of them, but it's great."

New York Dog does not have the kind of literary lineup Bark boasts. What it does have is celebrities.

Richie poses with her Pomeranian, Foxy Cleopatra, and Shih Tzu, Honey Child, on the current cover; inside are Joan Rivers (Pekingese, Boston terrier, Yorkie), New York Gov. George Pataki (two Labs) and Tori Spelling (pug).

It also has dog fashion. There's "Bow Vows," a photo spread of chihuahuas in wedding outfits, and a pajama party feature with pups and human models in jammies.

The latter includes a $60 doggy hoodie, a $120 pink pearl-and-sterling silver dog necklace (modeled by a Rottweiler puppy) and a handmade Georgian style dog bed ("contact for pricing").

That's part of New York Dog's emphasis on the "fun part of owning a dog," Padgett says.

"It's what we do for our dogs. We know we're crazy. We celebrate it."

The magazine also offers pages of advice on dog nutrition, holistic health care and training. One unusual feature is dog obituaries, with tributes and photographs.

"We wanted to allow for people to express their love and their feelings for dogs they have lost," Padgett says. The obits have brought a "ton of response" from readers who find them moving.

One of the obituaries is for Rock, a German short-hair pointer. He belonged to Padgett's family in Florida. Her parents also have a Lab, Buck, but she says she doesn't have any dogs in New York.

Kawczynska and Woo have two, both shelter dogs. Bark "founding dog" Nellie is "probably" a border collie-beagle mix, Lenny is border terrier and schnauzer. "He's a terrier, boy," Kawczynska says.

Padgett and Kawczynska say that advertisers are eager to be in their magazines. Both books are fat with ads for organic dog food, custom collars and fancy toys. There are also scads of ads for portrait artists, both painters and photographers, who specialize in dogs.

"They do very well," Kawczynska says.

Bark has always had very stringent policies about what ads it accepts, she says. It checks out products for safety, and it does not accept advertising from dog breeders.

"There's no way to vet them to be sure they're good breeders" rather than puppy mills, she says. "Besides, it goes against our principle of urging people to look at other ways of obtaining dogs," such as adopting them from shelters and rescue groups.

Padgett says New York Dog has no rules against any type of ad, although it does not have breeder ads. "We would certainly promote a good breeder rather than a puppy mill," she says.

Both magazines campaign for spaying and neutering of pets and for adoption from shelters and rescue groups.

They also had something else in common for a while. For several years, Bark has had a regular column called "Rex in the City," a journal about dog ownership by E.M. Harrington.

As Kawczynska writes in her current editor's column, when New York Dog printed a promotional issue, it featured a cover line for something called "Rex in the City." She was not pleased.

Padgett says, "We actually had never seen it in Bark. Before we even had an office, we were saying about the magazine, "It's like Rex in the City.'

"Next thing we know we're getting a call from Bark."

The growling over that seems to have subsided, but Kawczynska calls New York Dog "soooo different from what we do. It's a fashion magazine. It commodifies the dog more than is to my liking.

"But there's room for both of us. The market is there."

- Colette Bancroft can be reached at 727 893-8435 or bancroft@sptimes.com

Founded: 1998

Circulation: 100,000

Motto: Dog is my co-pilot.

Published: Quarterly

Web site: www.thebark.com

Founded: 2004

Circulation: 100,000

Motto: We your dog, we're only human.

Published: Bimonthly

Web site: www.thenydog.com

[Last modified March 3, 2005, 09:35:04]