An interview with Pet Rock creator, Gary Dahl from the May 2006 Jacksonville Review by then Publisher, Carolyn Kingsnorth
Remember the Pet Rock? This cultural icon of the 1970s still ranks as the fastest-selling and most publicized novelty gift product in retailing history. It came packaged in a cardboard miniature pet carrying case, complete with air holes, and was accompanied by a training manual.
Over thousands of book chapters, magazine articles, newspaper accounts, and radio and television segments have featured the Pet Rock story. However, according to the Pet Rock’s creator, Applegate resident Gary Dahl, “Nearly every one of them has gotten it wrong.
“You see, I wasn’t selling rocks. Who in their right mind would pay good money to buy a plain beach pebble, a pebble available by the countless trillions absolutely free? The product never was about selling rocks; I was selling books. The Care and Training of Your Pet Rock, a three-inch by four-inch, 36 page spoof of a dog training manual, was the product, not the rock which happened to tag along with it. This important bit of information—important to me at least—is something which has been overlooked, or misunderstood, or ignored.”
In fact, the product originally started as a book idea, the by-product of an afternoon of libation and camaraderie with a few of the regulars in a Los Gatos, California, bar and restaurant called The Grog and Sirloin. In the course of a conversation about exorbitant vet bills and the rising cost of pet food, Dahl found himself proclaiming that he didn’t have any problems paying for the care and feeding of animals since the only pet he owned was…dramatic pause…“a Pet Rock.
“This got a huge laugh from a very jaded group, so I was encouraged to expand upon the story, to say that when I told my Pet Rock to ‘stay,’ it stayed practically forever. And, when I commanded it to ‘sit,’ it would sit until the cows came home.”
The other guys quickly picked up on the absurd notion of owning a Pet Rock. “They began to get creative and to expand upon the humor by tossing out ways to teach a Pet Rock to ‘roll over’—on the side of a hill, of course; to teach it to ‘attack’—pick it up and throw it at someone you don’t like; and to ‘fetch’—throw a stick then throw the Pet Rock, but don’t expect the rock to bring back the stick for a long time.”
Over the course of the next two months, Dahl turned the afternoon’s inspiration into a very funny satire of a dog training manual. However, as he began visiting bookstores and talking to people about what it might take to get the book into print, Dahl came face to face with literary reality.
“An author might have the greatest book idea since War and Peace, but without the help of a literary agent, or the sale of the manuscript to a major publisher, that book has very little chance of ever seeing the retail shelf. Not to mention the sad fact that the average shelf life of the average paperback book can be measured in weeks—if you can get it onto the shelf in the first place.”
So Dahl looked for another way to package his idea. However, it was only when he was rereading his manuscript a few weeks later that inspiration came to him. He had written a chapter on selecting the perfect rock: “One must be very cautious in choosing the perfect rock—a rock which will be a pleasure to own and become a faithful, loyal companion—before embarking upon the rigorous training schedule outlined in this book.”
Dahl recalls, “There it was. There was my ticket to the retail market, the perfect way to ‘sell’ the absurdity of owning a Pet Rock. I would select their rocks for them. I’d create a fresh, new product, devise a unique way to package my book, along with an actual rock, so I could skip over the bookstores completely and market the whole enchilada through gift and stationery stores.”
And, as they say, the rest is history.
Dahl has now retired after a 40 year career as an award-winning copywriter, creative director, and advertising agency owner. He did eventually get a book into print—Advertising for Dummies, published in 2001 as part of the popular For Dummies series.
In 2000, he also won the Grand Prize in the annual rotten writing award, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This San Jose State University contest for bad fiction is named after the minor Victoria author who wrote the infamous “It was a dark and stormy night…” Dahl defeated over 8,000 other entries with the following:
“The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off land’s end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded men falling asleep in their pints.”
When asked what he’s doing for an encore, Dahl responds, “Not a damn thing. I get up each morning, and look out at my 28 acres in the Applegate, and say, ‘I don’t deserve this—it’s so beautiful.’ I’m trying to get used to being retired. I’m learning there’s Pacific Time, Pacific Daylight Time, and then there’s Oregon Time.”