The young beagle on our cover is the seventh animal to achieve that distinction without being accompanied by its owner. The earlier covers sported race horses and canine celebrities. This week's dog is a relative nobody who symbolizes America's exploding pet population, the subject of our cover story. For those involved, the story has been a labor of love. For, like millions of Americans, many TIME staffers own creatures ranging from dogs and cats to exotic breeds of tropical fish and reptiles.

Senior Writer Michael Demarest, author of the cover story, developed an affinity for animals on his father's farm in Essex, England, and has since owned a Dalmatian, a fox terrier, three bassets, one Great Pyrenees and a pride of kittens. Modern Living Reporter-Researcher Audrey Ball shares an unlikely menagerie with her daughter Tracy, 8: their tabby, Leslie, five delicious goldfish and two tantalizing white mice. Other pet owners include Managing Editor Henry Grunwald, whose wire-haired terrier Bravo resembles Asta in the Thin Man movies of the '30s; Assistant Managing Editor Richard Seamon, who is putting his nine-week-old Labrador through basic training; and Zookeeper-Essayist Stefan Kanfer, who rooms with two mice, five turtles and two cats somewhere in Tarrytown, N.Y. Reporter-Researcher Mary Themo, while getting together the pictures of pets that accompany the story, took time off to shop for a Christmas pet for her daughter Tracy, 7.

Among the more outlandish guests in TIME homes are a toad, Pierrot, kept by Deputy Chief of Correspondents Benjamin Cate's children, two raccoons belonging to Senior Editor Marshall Loeb's daughter, Margaret, and Picture Editor John Durniak's boa constrictor, Charlie. Legends about TIME pets breed like rabbits. Show Business Secretary Esther Nichols' parakeet, Rosebud, is said to have been rescued from an attempted suicide after diving from a fifth-floor window overlooking Madison Avenue, while Copy Desk Assistant Judith Paul's late Chihuahua-terrier crossbreed, Cookie, was known to hunt bees, crack walnuts and eat corn on the cob.

Not all TIME staffers own or even like pets.

Many settle for fondling telephones, and some get bored at the mere mention of puppies or kittens. Others, like Business Writer James Grant, just grow wistful. "I used to have pets," Grant explains mistily, "but they all got married."

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