THENEWYORKER, AUGUST 26, 2019 35
Nelson (@nelson.the.pup; 29.2K Insta-
gram followers) skittered toward the bar.
“Biff, do not eat the napkin!” a recent
college graduate named Morgan yelled,
lunging after a sixty-pound ball of white
fluff wearing an avocado-patterned
bandanna. According to Morgan, Biff
(@biffthesamoyed; 34.9K) favors cow
hooves but is an equal-opportunistic
eater. “See this scratch on my face?” Mor-
gan said. “I was eating a bagel in bed,
and all of a sudden he swoops in!”
Cody, a miniature Goldendoodle
wearing a bucket hat and a backpack
(@codycuddlebug; 39.5K; bio: #Fluffy-
NotFat), crashed into a table. “He’s any
party’s resident drunk uncle,” his owner,
Anj, said. “But I don’t give my dog al-
cohol.” She does cook breakfast for Cody
on weekends. She pulled up photos.
“This one is of the Good Boy Chal-
lenge. You leave the food”—fried eggs,
for instance, with dog doughnuts from
Maison de pawZ—“and then you wait.
It’s like the marshmallow test for dogs.”
Posts like that one led to Cody being
cast in a Dyson social-media campaign.
“They gave us—him—a vacuum cleaner!”
Anj said.
Another attendee was a red Maltese-
poodle mix named Agador (@pooch-
ofnyc; 143K). “On social, he’s referred to
as ‘the Bob Ross of dogs,’ ” Agador’s
owner, Allan, said, noting the pet’s
humidity-defying bouffant. “In Europe,
they call him Jeff Lynne, from Electric
Light Orchestra.” Allan carries a spe-
cial Japanese comb, for on-the-spot re-
poufing. “The first thing people want
to do is touch his hair,” he said.
Agador has worked with Katy Perry,
to promote her single “Bon Appétit”
(“I’m a five-star Michelin/A Kobe flown
in / You want what I’m cwooking, boy”),
and has appeared in ads for Google and
A.T. & T. Most of his meals are a med-
ley of Instant Pot-steamed vegetables
and boiled Trader Joe’s chicken, but a
visit to the Petco kitchen had generated
positive reviews.
The furry V.I.P.s lost their cool as
waiters at the restaurant—which offers
a forty-two-dollar grilled rib eye for pa-
trons’ dogs—spooned out variously col-
ored mush into bowls on the floor: New
Zealand venison and squash; wild Alaskan
cod and sweet potato; turkey and whole-
wheat macaroni. Whether or not Just-
FoodforDogs’ claims, such as a “healthy,1
BARKSANDBITES
LITTLE KIBBLE
T
here was a loud altercation at the
hostess station the other evening
at the Wilson, a New American restau-
rant on West Twenty-seventh Street. An
impatient patron in an orange gingham
shirt started whining—typical. Then he
commenced yelping.
“Nelson! Sit!” Lauren, the owner of
the Chihuahua-Shih Tzu mix (per a DNA
test), commanded. She was the dog’s plus-
one for an event billed as a dinner “pawty,”
thrown by JustFoodforDogs, a Califor-
nia-based company selling “freshly pre-
pared meals made from human-grade in-
gredients.” (“It is food for dogs ... not
dog food!”) The company recently made
its first major foray into New York City—
an exhibition kitchen, inside the Petco
in Union Square, that aims to produce
one ton of food a day—and was hoping
to get some of the city’s fussed-over
pooches hooked.
“He loves raw and organic food and
single-ingredient treats,” Lauren said, as
soft, shiny coat, abundant energy, bright-
ness in the eyes, good muscle tone, little
to no ‘doggie odor,’ well-formed stool,”
would prove true remained to be seen.
Finally, it was time for the humans
to be fed. The company’s founder, Shawn
Buckley, a serial entrepreneur who wore
a blazer and jeans, said a few words about
the perils of kibble—“there’s nothing
natural about a little brown pellet”—as
lamb meatballs, falafel waffles, and Brus-
sels-sprout tacos were passed. “There was
a time when dry food was appropriate—
when dogs were on the farm or left out-
side in doghouses,” he said. “But we live
in a world now where the D. Hotel is a
hundred bucks a night to put your dog
up!” He bemoaned the staying power of
“Big Kibble.” He didn’t get his first dog,
a black Lab named Simon, until he was
thirty-eight, at the urging of his ex-
fiancée, who is now his publicist. “My
current dog is Marty, who is a three-
legged Chihuahua,” he said. Marty is not
on social media. “I can’t imagine why
anybody would want to know about me
or my dog or where I had dinner, with
pictures of my dessert,” Buckley said.
Agador’s “brother” Fred (@littlefred-
dietinkles; 34.2K) was still peckish. He
spotted a scrap of human food and
lurched toward it, sending a loaded plate
smashing to the floor. “Ain’t Too Proud
to Beg” played through speakers.
JustFoodforDogs is facing a branding
challenge: it has branched out into the
cat-food game. “We started with three
cat-food recipes, and two we never even
brought to market,” Buckley said. “They’ll
like something for a while, and then they’ll
stop liking it. Cats are so difficult.”
—Emma Allenrunoff valve sometimes spews toxic water
near beaches), Warren drove his black
Mercedes past landscaping trucks and
children bicycling in tennis whites, and
parked on Pond Lane. He made a quick
visit to the former property of Pyrrhus
Concer, a freed slave who became a
prominent whaler in the eighteen-for-
ties; Warren is hoping to renovate the
site with help from the Southampton
African American Museum. Also on his
weekend schedule were a hospital fund-
raiser and a footrace benefitting an or-
ganization called Hope for Depression.
He crossed the street to inspect the
scum on Lake Agawam. Last year, the
level of blue-green algae (cyanobacte-
ria) was three thousand times the thresh-
old allowed by the E.P.A. In 2012, a Jack
Russell terrier died after splashing in
the stuff in East Hampton’s Georgica
Pond. Warren spotted a little girl in a
summer dress perched at the water’s
edge. “That is a potentially dangerous
situation,” he said.
—Bob Morris