PAN-EUROPEAN STUDY FINDS THAT BRITISH PETS HAVE CHEWED THEIR WAY THROUGH £358 MILLION ‘DOG AND BONES’ IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS
- Study finds that Europe’s cats and dogs have chewed their way through more than £1.5 billion worth of hand-held gadgets in the last five years
- Britain’s pets ring up the biggest buffet bill, crunching on an incredible £358 million worth of tech since 2010
- Danish dogs and cats are the most ‘pawsimonious’, biting on a mere £10 million worth of gadgets in five years
It might be envy at being displaced as ‘man’s best friend’ by gadgets but Europe’s dogs – and cats – are making it abundantly clear who they think their owners should pay more attention to. In the last five years, Poodles, Alsatians, Burmese cats and British Bulldogs have munched their way through more than £1.5 billion worth of phones, tablets and laptops according to a pan-European study by SquareTrade.
British pets alone have gnarled their way through £358 million in hi-tech gadgetry in the last five years, topping the league table. Fourteen percent of UK homes have had technology damaged by their pets.
The findings in detail:
- Pets mistaking their owners’ devices for chew toys caused the most accidents.
- Pets with overactive paws and wagging tails also caused damage by knocking devices off tables, spilling liquids on them, and stepping or jumping on them.
- Owners with overweight pets have to be particularly careful, as they are statistically more likely to cause an accident.
- Those with both a cat and a dog are in for double the trouble, as they are 85 percent more likely to cause an accident.
“Pet owners are wasting extraordinary amounts of money on repairing phones, tablets and other handheld devices that have inadvertently become luxury doggy chews,” said Kevin Gillan, European managing director for SquareTrade. “The rhyming slang for phone in Britain is ‘dog and bone’ and part of me wonders whether our pets might be picking up on this a bit literally – at our cost.
“Pets have the same range of emotions that their owners do. Just as often as they are happy, they can be jealous, bored or angry,” said Arden Moore, certified dog and cat behaviourist and world-renowned pet expert. “While pet owners may be tempted to pick up their electronic devices the moment they get home, it’s important to give their furry friends just as much attention – or pet hijinks can become the norm.”
