Here’s a pet peeve of mine: Why are pets and their issues always remanded to the same periodical vicinity as great recipes and fancy decorating ideas? For example, it’s the very girly Home and Design section of The Miami Herald that prints my 400 words every week. And it’s the same for most papers across the nation—one step shy of the funny pages and always unnecessarily nestled among the classified section’s numerous folds.

How insulting, thinks this budding columnist (who apparently doesn’t know enough not to criticize equine dentition). Well, at least this section tends to be in living color, I muse (rendering my byline visage in all shades of newsprint candy colors).

For its occasional exception to this rule, I give The Wall Street Journal its well-deserved kudos. It occasionally has the guts to print newsworthy articles on the business of pet healthcare in prime periodical real estate. Yesterday's Journal even ran a front-page story on an entrepreneur raising rabbits for feline consumption. Sure, it was below the fold in that column we usually associate with their daily version of “News of the Weird,” but it’s on the front page nonetheless.

The New York Times often does pets some justice, too (though more often than not these pieces end up in the fluff sections, as in last week’s SundayStyles story on the drooping referral rate at AMC). A significant pet food recall article once made it in The Week in Review—but that’s a rare thing, indeed.

It’s hard to believe that a $40 Billion industry could be so relegated to the dregs of newsworthiness. At least Vick’s recent debacle has raised the profile of animal-centric news over the past couple of weeks. (I guess celebrity trash talking and sports trumps the insignificance of pets in this case.)

This week was truly spectacular, though. Apart from the Vick thing and some more botulism-related pet food mentions, we saw the New England Journal of Medicine see fit to print a pet piece. An “essay” they called it, diluting its importance (even I agree was necessary to label it “Warning: marginal triviality here” given the anecdotal nature of the story, but still).

And finally, as if they knew this post was in the works, The Miami Herald devoted a significant slice of its front page today to a story on a pet-rental service out of California. Candy, for sure, but here again the front-page placement says something about the power of pets.

Perhaps I revel in my profession’s relevance to popular culture (and consequently to news in general) to an unrealistic degree. Still, I look forward to the day when my column can at least run alongside the cosmetic surgeon’s column in the Health section. Sigh…