A new poll by a Web site called Petside.com has discovered something interesting.

More than half of American pet owners view their animals as full family members.

It seems dog owners are the most prone toward this. For example, half feed their pets human food, while only 40 percent of cat owners do.

This is not to say that cat owners don’t embrace pets as family. Most do. Being kindhearted, I would never break it to them that the feeling is not mutual. As we all know, cats look down on humans as an inferior species. I have never understood why people own creatures who have contempt for them.

Though now that I think about it, I’m in no position to point fingers.

The truth is that even for dog owners, the Petside.com survey doesn’t go far enough. We don’t simply treat our animals like family. It’s worse than that.

We are subservient to them.

My family is a good example.

We have a dog that cost $25 or so from the pound. You would think this would leave him feeling humbled and us feeling in charge. It did not.

JJ, as we named him, was placed in the kitchen his first night with a pet-gate blocking him. That’s as it should be, but he would not tolerate this.

He made a loud fuss until he was allowed out. Then he walked to the master bedroom and climbed onto the bed. We had stopped letting our children do this years ago. We did not stop the new dog.

He later took to lying down on my side of the mattress with his head on the pillow, like a human. When I ordered him to move, he did not. So I tried to shove him. His response was to growl angrily. This continues to be his response to this day. There have been nights when I sleep on a narrow part of the mattress while he sprawls like the king. I supposedly have a bigger brain than the dog, but it doesn’t occur to me that something is terribly wrong with this.

He behaves the same way when I leave him in a parked car. He promptly curls up on the driver’s seat and needs to be shoved off it when I return. If two people are in the front seats, he will walk from the back onto the console with his nose far enough forward to double as a hood ornament.

Put simply, he does not know his place. I am aware this is my fault. But as an American pet owner, I am subservient.

Of course, family dogs are most entitled around food. Most have a sixth sense about who is the easiest chump at the table. That would be me. He will sit by my setting at dinner and sometimes prop himself to full height on my chair. Then he looks me in the eye like a Third World orphan, incredulous that I would not share. So I do. I do it so often, and with such compliance, he is now adept at eating chicken off a fork. Once, at the sidewalk tables at Haruki, I fed him with chopsticks. It turns out he likes both shumai and gyoza dipped in Teryaki sauce.

Rather than being grateful, he is finicky. If I feed him the rest of a turkey sandwich, he will spit out the lettuce, leaving it for me to clean up. Apparently, I don’t see anything wrong with this.

There are even more embarrassing areas where the family treats the dog like a human. He feels entitled to go on every trip, whether to CVS or Florida. If he sees suitcases brought down, he will jump in the car and not leave until bodily carried out. At this point, one of us will sit down with him and for several minutes, explain that we are sorry, but we are going on vacation for a few days, and will be back soon. There is no evidence that he understands full English sentences, but we feel bound to explain our bad behavior anyway. Or maybe he does understand, because often, he will look at us as if to say, “I’m disappointed in you.” This makes us feel guilty until we return, which is his intent.

In short, the dog routinely plays us like cheap banjos. If someone gives him a walk, he will shortly thereafter pigeonhole some other family member and pace by the door as if he needs to go out, and we will buy it, only to later find it was a scam. Upon returning from the walk, he will bolt into nearby woods as if he has identified a threat. There’s never anything there. It’s his fraudulent way of being able to stay outside. We buy this, too.

As I do in most areas of neurotic behavior, I blame my parents. I recall car trips as a child where the family lab was allowed to lie on the third seat of the station wagon while two of us kids sat on the floor. Who does that?

I suppose American pet owners do.

I have got to head home now.

It is almost dinner time.

I hope the dog lets me have some.

mpatinkin@projo.com