Virtual pets

Clean-a-dog van

If you go to any of the supermarket chains in NZ, you will find heaps of shelves devoted to pet food and animal care.  And then there are the numerous pet shops with their collection of creatures that can walk, crawl, fly and swim.  Kiwis just love their pets. They're well fed, taken cared of, even go to the vet regularly, and most are pampered too.  Just look at this van parked by the Hamilton Lake---isn't that pampering enough?  As a business, the pet sector is a viable one here.  I'm not just talking about cats and dogs but others like rabbits, fish, birds, horses, and many others.

There's even the SPCA police who goes around the neighbourhood advocating for the pets and ensuring that their rights are observed and protected.  I've seen on television and the newspapers that many have been either fined, charged or apprehended for not taking good care of their animals and pets.

When I was working as an Activities Coordinator at a rest home and the residents had a cat called Rascal, one of my duties and responsibilities was to see to it that the cat would visit the vet every six months.  The visiting was alright but the "capturing" of Rascal a few hours before his appointment was a real challenge.  He was the type that wouldn't want to be caged.

Which brings me now to the subject of this blog---virtual pets.  Recently on television, I saw an advertisement featuring a virtual dog.  There was this young girl, who was showing off and walking her dog.  Everyone she meets made a lot of reaction.  Now, live in New Zealand, a country with vast open spaces and Kiwis are generally pet-lovers.  I wonder how this virtual dog will fare as a product.  How long will its shelf life be?  And how will it compare to thew real thing?  If one was living in Manila, Hong-Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, London, New York or Los Angeles, wherein open spaces are on a premium, I would tend to believe that virtual pets may work out fine.  But here in NZ, well, let's see how far that concept of having a virtual pets goes.