The Ethics of Making an Instagram for Your Dog (and Using it for Your Own Profit)

When I started my job at a dog daycare, I was introduced to an aspect of dog handling that I was totally unprepared for, and led to several disciplinary talks between my bosses and me. As a dog owner myself, I thought I would be able to make sure that myself and our canine customers saw the end of the daycare day in one piece. And sure, it was difficult at times: a golden retriever took the strap of my face mask in her mouth and slurped it squarely into her trachea. I was elected to try to get it out because I had the smallest wrists of all of the employees there that day; a chihuahua tried to hop the dog gate that separated the play area from the employee break room in hopes that he could get a bite of my Kit Kat bar. We have chocolate stashed away in too many different places for a building that has dogs in it every single day; even the day that every single dog in the large breed play decided to hump each other at the same time in one large, gyrating ball of fur and snouts and tails, I handled it with grace.

But all of these skills related to keeping the safety and happiness of our dogs was only part of the job. These dogs also had brand images to keep up, and as the employee with access to our daycare’s Instagram, I was the liaison between the two species to do that. One day I forgot to tag a goldendoodle’s Instagram account in our story and my boss pulled me aside. He asked why I didn’t do it.

I said that I didn’t realize that this goldendoodle had an Instagram account.

He countered that with the fact that most of, if not all, of the dogs in our database for daycare had a social media presence.

I said that even if that was true (which it turns out it is!) I didn’t know what this specific goldendoodle’s name was, much less his Instagram handle.

I was told that every dog’s Instagram handle is logged in our daycare database’s profile, sandwiched in between emergency pet parent contacts — we aren’t allowed to call them “owners — ” and their vaccination files. He directed me to the computer to look it up, and while I was doing that, I should think about how I was making the goldendoodle’s parents feel by not acknowledging his social media presence.

I did that, tagged him, and got to meet the woman who ran the Instagram account in person at pickup, wherein she thanked me for shouting out the dog on our page.

If this sounds like a ridiculous, baseless interaction, it actually technically was not. There was a passage in the employee handbook about this exact thing. It reads “All employees will know each dog’s name and Instagram handle, and appropriately tag them in all social media posts. It’s important that the dogs with brand partnerships are able to promote our content as well. And the pet parents love to see it!” Like that last sentence would rationalize, or give any context at all for any of what came before it.

I want to define some terms before I proceed:

Pet Parent — I touched on this earlier, but in layman’s terms this would be known as a “pet owner.” It’s important, though, that they not see their pet as their property, but instead as a living, autonomous being that exists in agreement with every decision made for them. By recontextualizing these ideas, the pet parent can’t feel bad about creating a social media presence for their dog because they’re not exploiting their child, they’re just giving it more friends.

If they don’t have any human children, they will often call themselves “paw-rents” to make sure there’s no confusion about what species their offspring is.

Dogfluencer — The dog itself. It’s the face of the brand that’s run by the well-oiled machine of whichever paw-rent is unemployed. It’s strange, although I will admit that it’s kind of genius. Dogs can’t say slurs and therefore, can never be cancelled. If you’re considering making the leap for your own dog, you need to make sure it hits at least one of the criteria for being a successful dogfluencer:

• Is your dog abnormally cute? Like so cute that people have tried to steal it? Like they’ve bumped you on a walk so you both drop your leashes and they try to run off with your dog without you noticing? Your dog would probably be a very successful dogfluencer.
• If your dog is only average, that’s fine. If you have a special breed, they could still gain a very large following. Frenchies, pugs, and even the Russian hunting dogs with scarily long snouts tend to do very well online. There are strangely eugenic undertones to their reasons for being so popular. They’re literally bred to be owned and wanted by those who can’t afford them. But that could just be my perspective as someone who can’t afford a sphinx cat.
• If your dog doesn’t fit those criteria, there’s still a chance for them to do well online. But they have to be really ugly. Ugly to the point of eliciting pity from any person that sees it. They will immediately follow this dogluencer out of sheer curiosity as to how this ugly little creature goes on. This means multiple scabs, one or no eyes, and wonky teeth at the very least. If your dog is just “cute,” then that’s something you’re just going to have to enjoy for yourself.

Dogstagram — This is the platform that gives the dog personality. This is done through captions in the dog’s voice alongside a picture that is very staged and they look very uncomfortable in. These captions normally read like “mama took this picture while I was sleeping!” or “always so fun with my frenz at the dog park” (the z is imperative), or “I pooped” It gets stranger when the character is brought into Instagram DM’s. More on that later

Dognership — The term for a marketing partnership between a dog and a company that caters to animals. These can be deals with food companies, pet supply stores, or toy brands. Oftentimes the contract has a spot for the paw’s ink print.

Hooman — The term for “humans” that has been adopted en masse by people who give their pets an Internet presence. It serves to remind the audience that the animal is in control of the account. This word is used to deceive and separate the audience from the pet’s parents. It sounds cute, but it cloaks the reality that there is a human behind every post that is making a profit off of the likeness of their pet. And I, personally, find it abrasive.

So what’s the issue with accounts dedicated to harmlessly posting pictures of cute dogs? Well, like anything that emerges as something that could have a popular following, people have found a way to profit off of it. The idea of social clout has been brought into the world of animals.

The idea of Internet engagement being a determining factor in any creature’s trajectory is simply unethical, but at least in the world of humans, it pairs with our self-awareness so we recognize the effects of it. I understand that I didn’t get a brand deal that gives me free Cheetos for the rest of my life because I didn’t go viral as a child for stuffing an ungodly amount of Cheetos into my nose, leading me to be brought on The Ellen Show as a guest to get the attention of the Frito Lays corporation. That is just an unfortunate reality of my life. But a dog doesn’t understand why their friend wears a stylish collar and gets top-grade meat for their dinner while they’re getting walked with a piece of twine and eating wet rice mixed with a packet of Top Ramen. There’s quite literally no way to have a conversation with them about how to look better in photos.

Unfortunately, it has become a necessary evil that the dogfluencers that my store caters to are treated differently than some of the other customers. I have been the tour guide of a few exclusive tours to dogs with more followers than my writing will perhaps ever see in hopes of winning them over enough with our facilities that they choose to bring more of their dogfluencer friends in. It would bring our sales up, but the vicious cycle still continues. There is a very real possibility that a literal content house (room) will be created for the social media famous dogs that want nothing more than to just play with the other, normal ones. But they can’t because their pawrent has too much time on their hands and it has to look nice for an upcoming photoshoot for dog diapers.

This effect trickles into dogstagram accounts, even if they don’t have that many followers. Some dog owners will carry the dog character into direct messages in what I assume is an effort to make their dog sound like a self-made entrepreneur trying to market. In reality, it just throws my work-life balance off when I get messages that read “I hopez I pottied in the right place” when I’m off the clock. Oftentimes, I don’t have the heart to tell them that no, they didn’t.

It’s a line of thinking that originates from what I like to call “The Influencer School of Marketing.” It’s the idea that the better your social media presence is, the more successful you are. One of my old bosses bought twelve thousand Instagram followers and then lamented to me about our lack of sales. It was the most boiled down example of the flaws in this school of thought: Yes, the follower count is higher but they are literally just lines of code combined with randomly pulled images from the Internet. “But number bigger, why no sales?” Well, it’s because you are an idiot who spent the whole month’s budget on optics.

In the end, it’s like that scene in The Day the Earth Stood Stupid, a horror spoof from The Simpsons. The humans of the world are slowly being reduced to nothing more than making animal sounds in hopes of scraping by for their own personal gain. But from an outsider’s perspective they’re just mowing around in the mud looking stupid.

I can only hope that my employer doesn’t see this. But at the same time, it needs to be seen. If we don’t stop this before it’s too late, we may lose sight of what it means to be a dog. It’s our duty as their owners to allow them to keep their carefree energy. And I’m sick of getting texts about their poops.