I threw a birthday party for my Labrador and nobody showed up — here’s what I actually learned about millennial pet trends (and the $300 I wasted)

I spent $47 on a dog-safe "cake" that looked like a pink frosted turd and my own dog wouldn't eat it. There were party hats. I ordered matching bandanas on Etsy for me and Bruno — yes, I wore a bandana — and I stood in my living room at 2pm on a Saturday, surrounded by six empty dog beds and a cheese plate nobody touched, waiting for my friends' dogs to arrive for Bruno's fifth birthday. One person texted "sorry, Cupcake has an upset tummy." Another said "we're at brunch, totally forgot." My cousin sent a picture of her cat in a tiny sombrero and wrote "happy bday Bruno!" I sat on the floor, ate the cheese myself, and Bruno licked his own butt. That was the moment I thought: something is seriously wrong with how we do this pet thing now.

So I'm writing this from the kitchen table with my three rescue dogs underfoot — Mackerel, a 10-year-old mutt who's mostly ears; Grits, a terrier mix I pulled from a hoarding situation in 2019; and Houdini, a 2-year-old husky mix who can open doors and has zero remorse. The build cat, Tilda, is staring at me from the windowsill like I owe her money. She always looks like that.

I've been writing about pets for 14 years. I've fostered over 40 dogs and cats. I worked at a shelter for six years and I dropped out of vet tech school because orgainc chemistry broke my spirit and also my GPA. I'm not a vet, I'm not a behaviorist, I'm just a person who's made basically every mistake you can make with an animal — and I've watched millennial pet culture go from "my dog sleeps on a old towel" to "my dog has a skincare routine and a monthly massage subscription." Some of that shift is great. A lot of it's unhinged. And I've got opinions.

Here's the thing: I'm a millennial too. I get it. Our generation delayed homeownership and having kids and we treat our pets like family members becausse they're. But somewhere along the way we started treating them like tiny, hairy lifestyle accessories and lost the plot on what actually makes them happy. I'm going to walk you through some of the biggest pet lifestyle trends I've seen explode in the last decade — the ones I bought into, the ones I still use, and the ones that made me want to scream into a pillow.

The day I realized my dog's Instagram account had more followers than my own

I made an Instagram for Grits in 2018. It was a joke at first — his face squished like a worried potato, captions written in first-person dog voice — and then it wasn't a joke. By 2020 he had 12,000 followers. I had 300. People sent him free bandanas. A company offered me $150 to post a picture of him with a CBD oil bottle. I had to ask myself some hard questions about self-worth that week.

The pet influencer economy is wild. There are dogs with brand deals, dogs with agents, dogs with trust funds. I know someone who quit her job to manage her cat's Instagram full time. The cat now brings in six figures a year. The cat has never once thanked her.

I'm not going to pretend there's no upside. I connected with rescue groups through that account, I raised money for emergency vet bills, I found adopters. But the performative side of it — the pressure to pose your dog in a $60 seasonal bowtie for engagement, the slow creep of "content" over connection — that wore me down. I'd watch Grits yawn and think "oh crap, that's a good Boomerang." That's a weird relationship to have with your dog.

Petfluencer culture is a trend I'm profoundly ambivalent about. If you're doing it and your dog enjoys the photoshoots and it's funding your rescue work, cool. But when I see a dog wearing an outfit they clearly hatte, eyes in whale position, and the caption says "lol mom made me wear this," I want to throw my phone into a lake.

Let me back up. I sound like a grump. I own a T-shirt that says "I'm only talking to my dog" and I unironically wear it to the groocery store. I'm part of the trend I'm criticizing. Which is why I think I'm qualified to criticize it.

Subscription boxes made me a hoarder of tiny, unchewable toys

I subscribed to a big-name pet box in 2017. Every month a cardboard box would arrive with treats I'd never heard of, a toy that had a squeaker that broke within 12 hours, and a "surprise" item that was usually a shrimp-flavored dental stick my dogs wouldn't touch. I kept accumulating this stuff in a drawer. After six months I had 18 toys my dogs didn't like, and five bags of treats that smelled like low tide.

The idea behind subscription boxes is fine: curated, convenient, fun. The reality — at least in my house — was waste. The toys were often cheaply made and I had a build puppy once rip the ear off a stuffed octopus and swallow it whole. That was a $340 vet visit. Not joking. If you want the full story on that, I wrote about it here — the teething toy that literally shattered into daggers.

These days I just buy the one toy I know my dogs won't destroy in seventeen minutes, which you can read about in this post, and I skip the monthly surprises. But I know people who love 'em, whose dogs wait by the door for the BarkBox delviery guy like he's Santa. To each their own. I just got tired of throwing away shredded, unidentifiable plush.

Pet insurance is the one trend I'll yell about from the rooftops

I didn't have pet insurance for my first dog, who I had in my early twenties. He ate a sock once — a tube soxk, the thick kind — and needed emergency surgery. $2,800. I put it on a credit card with 24% APR and paid it off over three years. I still feel sick thinking about it.

Now every dog that comes through this house is insured, at least for the big stuff. I've used it twice in the last three years for foreign body surgeries (one was a rock, the other was a chunk of a Kong toy — no toy is truly indestructible). Without insurance those would've been $3,000+ each. Instead I paid a $500 deductible and went home.

I know people who arguue that putting the premium into a savings account is smarter. And maybe that works if you're more disciplined than I'm. But when it's 2am and your dog is hunched over and retching and you're trying to decide between the emergency vet and waiting til morning, knowing you'll only have to pay 20% of the bill makes the decision a lot easier. I wrote more about that awful night here, when I found an empty brownie pan at 11pm. That post has everything I wish I'd known.

Pet insurance isn't flashy or Instagrammable. Nobody's posting a flat lay of their Trupanion policy document. But it's the one millennial pet trend I'll defend until I'm hoarse.

The raw feeing rabbit hole I fell into and immediately regretted

Around 2019, a friend of a friend posted in a Facebook group about how switching to raw food cured her dog's allergies, made his coat gleam, and reversed his doggy depression — yes, she claimed doggy depression. I was at a low point with my oldest dog, Mackerel, who had chronic ear infections and was itchy all the time. I thought, "maybe commerical food is garbage." So I dove into the raw feeding world.

I bought a deep freezer on Facebook Marketplace. I joined Facebook groups with names like "Raw Fed & Thriving" whre people posted pictures of their dogs gnawing on duck necks with captions like "look at that dental health!" I bought a book about ancestral diets written by someone whose credentials were, as far as I could tell, "had two dogs and strong opinions." I spent $150 on my first batch of meat, organs, and bone.

Here's what happened: Mackerel's ears got worse. Grits developed diarrhea that looked like mustard and went on for a week. Hoidini, who will eat drywall, refused to eat raw chicken and stared at me like I'd served him a plate of spiders. I was blending liver in my kitchen at 10pm and my house smelled like a slaughterhouse. My cousin came over once and gagged.

I think there are dogs who genuinely thrive on raw. I know people whose dogs didn't die of salmonella and their coats are beautiful. But for my household — with senior dogs, fosters with shot GI tracts, and a husky that eats paper towels off the counter — it was a disaster. I eventually switched to a high-quality commercial food and got Mackerel on a probiotic that actually worked, which I talked about in exhausting detail here. I also spent $300 on probiotics that gave my fostters the runs before finding the $22 bottle I now buy in bulk, which I wrote about here.

The takeaway — if there's one — is that trendy diets aren't one-size-fits-all. And blending liver at midnight is nobody's idea of a good time.

Dog daycare sounded like the solution to all my problems, until the kennel cough outbreak

When I first started fostering, I had this fantasy: I'd drop my dogs at a facility with astroturf and wading pools and they'd frolic all day with furry friends while I wrote peacefully. I toured a place in 2016 that had webcams so you could watch your dog. It looked great. The dogs on the webcam were all happiy sniffing butts. I signed up.

Three weeks later, Houdini came home with a cough that sounded like a goose trapped in a tin can. Kennel cough. Then Grits got it. Then Mackerel. I had three hacking dogs and a $200 vet visit. I also realized Houdini, despite his social nature, was getting overstimulated. He'd come home exhausted but not in the good way — in the "I've been shouting at other dogs for eight hours and now I can't settle" way. He'd pace, pant, drink a gallon of water, and then stare at the wall.

I'm not anti-daycare. Some dogs love it. But the trend of treating daycare like a necessity for every urban dog — as if you're a bad owner if you don't send your dog to "play for the day" — drives me nuts. Some dogs don't want to party all day. Some dogs want to nap in a sunbeam for six hours and then take a walk around the block. I wrote about this over in my post about why your puppy desn't need to meet every damn dog. It's a similar energy.

Now I just hire a dog walker for the days I need covergae, and my dogs are way more balanced for it.

This one time I tied a pet psychic and I'm still embarrassed

Okay, I need to derail us for a minute. I'm embarassed to even type this. In 2020, during lockdown, I was stuck at home with a build dog who had severe separation anxiety — like, ate-a-doorframe anxiety — and I felt desperate. A friend mentioned she'd used an animal communicator (remote, over Zoom) and it had "worked." I said that's ridiculous. Then I booked a session. I paid $90. I sat there with my laptop while a woman named Celeste told me the dog was "frustrated by the lack of fresh air" and "misses a woman with a kind voice." I cried. Then I opened a window and it didn't fix the separation anxiety. What fixed it was months of desensitization training and a lot of patience. But that's a different pst. The point is, I was vulnerable and I spent money on something completely unscientific because the pet industry gave me the option.

Pet psychics, dog yoga (Doga), reiki for cats — these things exist and people spend real money on them. I'm not going to tell you they're all scams because I truly don't know. But I'll say if your dog is suddenly peeing on your bed, maybe check for a UTI before you hire someone to read their aura.

The grooming explosion: why my husky hassn't been bathed in four months and my vet said "that's perfect"

Back on the trend train. There's this obsession with frequent grooming that I see all over social media. Dogs with elaborate haircuts, weekly baths, whitening shampoos, pawdicures. And I get it — a clean dog is nice. But I've watched people over-groom their dogs into skin infections because they thought the dog "smelled like dog" and needed to be shampooed constantly.

I made that mistake with a build husky years ago. I bathed him every week because he was a little misky and I thought I was being a good pet parent. His coat turned into a flaky, greasy disaster and I had to spend months fixing it. I wrote about that disaster here. My current husky mix, Houdini, hasn't had a bath in four months. The vet felt his coat, checked his skin, and said "keep doing what you're doing." I wrote about that too in this post about the real bathing schedule nobody tells you. And when I did bathe a husky and ended up soaked and sore and pretty sure I'd ruined his coat, I put that in this article. It's a series, honestly. I'm a cautionary tale.

Millennial pet culture also brought us the rise of professional mobile groomers who come to your house in a van with a spa inside. Tat's a genuinely useful service. But also we've dog cologne. Dog cologne. I don't know what we're doing.

When I stopped walkiing my dog five miles a day and he was actually happier

Here's a story that I think captures the shift from "doing things for my dog" to "doing things because the internet told me to." I had a build lab who was destroying my house — baseboards, shoes, the arm of my couch. I thought the answer was more exercise. So I walked him five miles a day. Then six. Then eight. He'd still come home and chew things. I wrote about that in this post about walking a build lab eight miles.

Turns out he didn't need more exercise. He needed mental exercise. He needed to learn to settle. He needed enrichment that wasn't just physical exhaustion. When I stopped trying to be the dog mom who hikes and started doing scent work in the house and teaching him "place" on a mat, he stopped chewing my couch. I wrote about that realization in this post. The trend of "a tired dog is a good dog" has some truth but it's been weaponized. Some people are running their dogs ragged because they think anything less is neglect.

Not every dog is a marathon dog. Some are couch potatoes. Some need a 20-minute sniffari and then a nap. It's okay to match your lifestyle to your actual dog, not the dog you see in an REI ad.

All the "pet parent" gear I bouught and secretly hated

I own a dog stroller. I'm not proud of this. I bought it for an elderly build dachshund who couldn't walk more than half a block without hurting, and it helped him see the world, so I'll defend it for him. But I've since watched perfectly healthy young dogs being pushed around in strollers while their owners sip lattes, and I've Opinions. The dog isn't lunch. The dog can walk.

I also own a bakcpack carrier for my cat, which I used exactly twice before she peed in it and we both agreed never again. I've a dog water fountain that filters the H2O like it's a hotel lobby. I've a cooling mat, a heating pad, a puzzle feeding mat shaped like a sunflower. Some of these I got as review samples, some I bought late at night when I was sad and scrolling Instagram.

The gear trend taps into something real: we want our pets to be comfortable. But it also taps into something werd: we're projecting luxury onto animals who are perfectly happy with a cardboard box. I'm not saying throw away your puzzle toys. I love puzzle toys. But I'm saying you don't need the $80 ceramic slow feeder bowl that matches your backsplash. Your dog doesn't care about your backsplash.

Why I finally unsibscribed from every pet trend newsletter and just sat with my dogs

I hit a wall about a year ago. I was scrolling through a pet lifestyle blog — one of the big ones, with perfect lighting and dogs wearing linen bandanas — and I felt exhausted. I was comparing my chaotic, fur-covered house to a curated fantasy and feeling like I was failing my anomals. And I'm the one who writes about pets for a living. Imagine how the average owner feels.

I've three dogs right now who are all snoring in various corners of this room. None of them have Instagram. None of them eat raw. Two of them haven't had a bath in ages. One of them has a bald spot from a hot spot and he looks like a scruffy mess. And they're all healthy. They're happy. They're safe.

After that botched birthday party for Bruno (who, incidentally, was perfectly content to eat his normal kibble and go to sleep by 8pm), I realized I was chasing a lifestyle, not a life. So I strated ignoring the trends. I stopped buying the seasonal accessories. I unsubscribed from the curated boxes. I even deleted Grits' Instagram — okay, I archived it. I'm not a monster. But I stopped posting.

And here's what I noticed: nothing bad happened. My dogs didn't care. My rescue work continued. My connection with my animals actually got better because I wasn't interrupting our interactions to get the perfect shot. I started sitting on the floor just to sit, not to stage a photo. Houdini put his head in my lap and I didn't reach for my phone. It felt oddly revolutionary.

So here's where I land on millennial pet lifestyle trends: take what serves your animal, and leave everything else. Pet insurance? big deal, keep it. A toy subscription? If your dog actually likes the toys, fine. But if you're ordering a monthly box of crap that goes straight into a landfill, maybe rethink. Raw feeding? Worked for some, not for me. Over-grooming? Your dog probably doesn't need it. Social media? If it brings you joy and doesn't stress out your pet, fine. If it's making you feel inadequate, unfollow the golden retrievers in matching pajamas. They're not even real pajamas. They're linen. Nobody needs that.

I'm going to close — wait, I'm not closing. I'm just going to stop typing. There's no conclusion, because trends keep coming and I keep making mistakes and I'll probably buy something dumb again. But maybe I'll be a littke slower to believe it'll make my dog's life better before I check if my dog actually cares. He doesn't. He cares about cheese. And that's the truth I'm holding onto.