6 Great Products For Making Your Pet Hate You

6 Pet Plastic Surgery

So you underwent plastic surgery and are slowly coming to the realization that it wasn't your slightly longer than average toes that were making you unhappy. You could keep picking at the scab on your soul with even more plastic surgery, or you could realize that nothing you do to the outside of your body will fix what's bothering you ... because the problem is clearly your dog Rex's stupid looking face.

Cosmetic surgery for pets is becoming more and more readily available, and people who own dogs and silently weep themselves to sleep at night are jumping at the opportunity. In some cases, the surgery is medically warranted, due to infections in the wrinkles of melty-faced dogs, and breathing problems due to pug noses. Of course, these are often the exact wrinkles and smushy noses that have been artificially bred into the creatures for maximum cuteness. For instance, this sharpe's face looked like rumpled up laundry because humans thought it would be cute, and then those same humans had to operate on his face upon realizing that there's a reason evolution didn't invent Pound Puppies.

And then there are the times when the breed doesn't live up to the cosmetic features they're bred for, and they need to be fixed up so the neighbors will stop looking down on you. For instance, your Doberman's ears aren't as perky as you'd hoped? That's nothing a head clampin' can't fix:

And then there are the procedures that are really difficult to justify. Namely, stuff like cosmetic facelifts and nose jobs, testicle implants and freaking Botox and Metacril injections. The origins of the trend can be traced back to the insanely competitive dog show circuit, where rumors of surgical appearance enhancement by certain owners have existed for years.

One puppy was facing the end of his show career due to a drooping ear, which would have been tragic for his creepy owner and absolutely nobody else. And then a vet in Brazil injected its ear with so much wrinkle remover that it stood straight up again. And everyone who wasn't the dog, and didn't have a soul, lived happily ever after.

Some veterinarians have started openly advocating and advertising pet plastic surgery as totally safe and worth it, and information has started spreading even outside the usual suspects thanks to media coverage.

And that, dear reader, is how we came to live in a world where tummy tucks for cats are a thing (WARNING: Video offers definitive proof that we live in a horrible world).

5 Make Up and Spas

As PETA is fond of reminding us, cosmetics and animals have a rather strained relationship. So it might surprise you to learn that cosmetics for animals are a booming business. Misguided pet owners can find perfectly ordinary pet shampoos, conditioners and other basics of dog grooming.

And then you find the corrector lipstick ...

... and nose dye ...

... to give your pets' nose and lips that extra black color that nobody but you will ever notice.

In case you think that webpage has to be a front for some secret animal testing conspiracy, there are plenty of others that offer stuff that's even stupider than that. For instance, Pawlish is a pet nail polish that must have been invented by a taxidermist, since that's the only way you're going to get an animal to sit still while you delicately paint its tender claws.

So now your pet is covered in pink nail polish because she wouldn't sit still while you stuffed cotton balls between her toes, and you're none too eager to clean her up since you've just been mauled by an animal with poisonous wet paint on her nails.

Fortunately, there are pet spas that will clean her up for you. Because the only thing your beloved pet likes more than strangers is strangers who try to give them baths. If you really want to show her what happens to bad kitties, there's the Japanese Washmatic-Kan, which is apparently aimed at pet owners who are tired of trying to get their pets to sit still on the roof of the car while sending it through the automated car wash. To get an idea of how pets feel about this innovation, combine your pet's heart stopping fear of vacuum cleaners and being left alone, and multiply it by the sound it makes when you try to give it a bath. Or you can just watch this cat turn into an insane hurricane the second the machine starts.

Good news for justifiably pissed-off cats everywhere: another version of the machine is making rounds in Europe that has a washing/drying program that lasts half an hour.

4 Fur Dyes

Nothing here is photoshopped. In fact, using fur dyes to transform pets into the stars of rejected Trapper Keepers is apparently huge in China. And while Westerners gawk in horror at Asia's more liberal stance toward eating dogs and cats, it turns out that's just because pets aren't that cute when deep fried. When it comes to potentially adorable pet abuse, it turns out we're much more forgiving, judging from all the different colors of pet fur dye being marketed as a "trendy new way to get your pet noticed."

And it is abuse. Pet dyeing is difficult and dangerous as hell. Veterinarians tend to strongly advise against home dyeing, because CTFA approved, completely safe dyes are so rare that they aren't actually available in America. Part of the problem is that it's difficult to get animals not to lick the foreign substance their trusted caregivers just rubbed all over their bodies. And one lick later, well, you'd better have the vet who told you not to do it in the first place on speed dial.

Even if your pet manages to survive your attempt to turn them "Magic Purple," you might get them jumped at the dog park, since bright colors are essentially nature's prison tattoos. According to animal behavioral expert Clara Guest, it's very possible that vivid, unnatural coloring affects the way other animals react to them. In nature, bright colors and color patterns often naturally evolve to communicate certain messages to other animals. For instance, many poisonous snakes are believed to be brightly colored to warn predators not to fuck with them. While it may make your dog look like a pussy to humans, as far as the other dogs at the dog park are concerned, your dog just rolled into San Quentin with a chest full of white power tats.

3 Tattoos

Not every pet has fur to dye. This presents a challenge to certain pet owners, who know they can't just settle for boring old animal clothing to suit their pet pimping needs. Fortunately, enterprising souls in Russia solved that dilemma in the most ridiculous way possible.

That is not paint, nor is it a henna tattoo. That is an adult Sphinx cat with a chest tat bigger than its own head. Proportionally, it's bigger than what you're likely to see in most biker bars, and it's far from an isolated incident.

Farm animals and larger pets -- mainly dogs -- have been given identification tats for ages. But those are usually done with this little plier-like apparatus:

... while decorative tattoos use the same two-coil tattoo machines used on 300 lb. bikers.

If you've ever gotten a tattoo, you know that when it's in action, that thing is a buzzing, prickling horror that can make a grown man cry long before he realizes how fast he'll grow out of his Grateful Dead phase. Of course, that's not really a fair comparison since the percentage of your cat's body that's having ink permanently stabbed into it is far greater than anything you, or most bikers, would be able to handle.

It's not surprising that a large colored piece can hurt well after the animal wakes up. Giving your pet a tattoo that big is basically like subjecting it to major surgery, complete with the aches and itching of the healing process. Oh, and they also use the same potentially allergy inducing inks your vet doesn't want you putting in their hair, because of how sensitive animal skin can be. But surely it'll be OK when stabbed under its skin.

The tattoo fad goes beyond cats and dogs, though. Look no further than New York for tattooed goldfish of all things, imported straight from Singapore.

The fish have been tattooed with simple designs using that same human tattoo gun, which is the rough size equivalent of a human getting tattooed with a harpoon.

Businesses have noticed the pet tattoo trend and are trying like hell to make it profitable in one way or another. There is, in fact, an actual payday loan company right here in the U.S.A. that offers its loans with an inbuilt stipulation to shave parts of your pet and tattoo it with the company logo of their choice.

2 Messing With Their Senses

We can take their dignity, but the one thing our pets will always have on us are their keen animal senses. Fortunately, the senses are mostly invisible verbs, so there's no clear way for pet owners to dye them hot pink and pack them full of plastic testicles. Doesn't matter. We've found a way to mess with them.

Take for instance the dog's superpowered sense of smell. The reason dogs sniff around so much when we take them on walks is that their sense of smell can detect who was doing what in these parts over the course of weeks. Unlike any of our senses, a dog's nose lets it sense across time. Imagine how badass it would be if you could hear stuff echoing around your neighborhood days after it happened.

Now imagine if you could do that, but were forced to carry around a giant boombox all the time because your deaf caretakers didn't like the sounds you made. Now you know how dogs must feel when we make them wear dog perfume. Despite the aggressive stupidity of that concept, there are many, many varieties of dog perfume, including one that people are apparently willing to pay $60 for called "Sexy Beast," to a large variety of $6 dog perfumes that are probably just left over Drakar Noir from the early '90s. There appears to be a thriving industry in making sure our pets smell like a middle school dance while robbing them of the one thing they do better than us.

Dogs and cats are pretty tactile creatures, so if you want to pretty much render them oblivious to the world around them, you can give them the full Sex and the City treatment: outfit it with pet shoes to go with its perfume. Pet shoes are exactly what it says on the box: tiny little dog ballerina slippers some people make their dogs wear so they don't mess up the floor after those pesky "walks." Just look at this video to see how much the dogs love that shit:

Haha! His only sense of firm ground under his paws is robbed from him, and he's running like an idiot. Next let's blindfold the kids and make them run around in the backyard!

1 Piercings

At first glance, piercings on pets seem kind of stupid, but by no means as bad as some of the other stuff out there. After all, everyone's seen those plastic earmark things on cattle, and they don't seem the worse for wear. Then you take a second glance, and the madness unfolds.

See, unlike most other items on this list, this is something there are absolutely no professionals for. The few that have tried to offer pro pet piercing services have (understandably) been browbeaten to oblivion. Pet piercers are a DIY community, and holy shit there seems to be a lot of them. Since they appear to be naturally ashamed, no actual figures on the amount of hobbyists exist, but the world's largest online body modification community BMEzine used to maintain huge gallery of "modified" pets. BMEzine.com, a site dedicated to bragging about drilling holes in your body, was pretty uncomfortable with pet piercing, and have since taken the whole thing down. And it's not hard to see why.

For instance, take the dog groomer who took up manufacturing "gothic kittens" as a hobby. She did this by giving the animals multiple piercings with a 14-gauge cattle needle and tying their tails with elastic bands to stem the blood flow so the tail would fall off. Then she tried to sell them on eBay.

She ended up in court and was found all kinds of guilty, and the kittens were taken to a new home.

No such luck for this poor fish whose owner gave him a lower lip stud because quote, "I was bored, and the fish was at the shop. It all started out as a joke, but it looked cool and it never affected him adversely. So I just left it in."

Not to enter zoological debates with a clear professional, but how the hell does piercing a fish not affect it adversely? Lip piercing is how humans catch fish.

Pauli Poisuo is a member of the Wordplague writers community. Go say hi on their forums or take a peek at his blog.

For more on why we should be worried about animals killing us, check out 7 Terrifying Creatures You'll Never See Coming and 7 Terrifying Prehistoric Creatures (That Are Still Around).