‘90s FAMILY : Animal Attraction : They don’t complain, criticize or argue with you. And they love you <i> unconditionally</i> . No wonder so many people consider their pets part of the family.

Norm was uneasy about having 12-year-old Skoshi, his Yorkshire terrier, admitted to the hospital last October. But he realized it was the best thing for her.

Skoshi had a collapsed trachea. And when she got excited--which was whenever she was around Norm--she would have a horrendous coughing fit and find it difficult to breathe. If Skoshi were to get better, Norm knew, it was best that she be hospitalized and have no contact with him.

But despite the precautions, Skoshi didn’t get better. When Norm was told that she had died, he was thrown into despair. “I was inconsolable,” he said. “The tears were just unstoppable.”

Skoshi had been a member of the family since she was 6 weeks old. Rather than have her cremated, Norm, a 55-year-old Los Angeles resident, opted for an open-casket funeral at Sophie’s Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas.

On the day of the interment, Norm and his significant other gathered up Weebee, their 7-year-old sheep dog-Maltese mix, and Tango, a 5-year-old Pomeranian-poodle mix, and drove to the cemetery.

“We went into this little chapel. A woman brought out a tiny casket. Skoshi was in the casket,” Norm said. “She looked like she was just curled up sleeping.

“We each had written a letter telling Skoshi how much we loved her,” Norm said. “We put the letters in the casket next to her body. We put a favorite toy of hers in the casket. Then my partner brought each of the dogs over to see her.”

Five months have passed since the burial, but the family is still in mourning. “I still get a lump in my throat,” Norm said. “We have no children, the pets are really our kids.”

For those who don’t have a pet around the house, the idea of comparing an animal to a human family member may seem strange. But Norm is hardly alone in his strong feelings.

“People take their pets on vacations, they brush their teeth. They treat them, in a sense, like surrogate children,” said Diane Kelley, a Los Angeles-area psychologist who runs a pet-loss support group. “Love is love, it’s not just limited to those with two feet.”

If actions are an indicator, there’s a whole lot of loving going on between pet owners and their pets.

According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Assn.’s 1994 National Survey of Pet Owners, 62% of dog owners in this country buy their pets gifts for Christmas, 21% for their birthdays and 4% for Valentine’s Day. About half of all cat owners, more than one-third of bird owners, one-third of owners of various small animals, and more than one-tenth of reptile and fish owners also give their pets gifts for Christmas.

The survey estimated that 52.8 million American household have at least one pet. Experts say one of the primary reasons the humans in these households bond so closely with the non-humans--despite the occasional lapse in house training--is the unconditional love they receive.

“A cat or dog is with you through good times and bad times,” Kelley said. “People don’t have that fear of rejection with pets. They know they are going to be accepted so they are more accepting themselves. Relationships with pets last 12 to 14 years--that’s more than many marriages.”

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Marjorie Padorr, a clinical hypnotherapist in Westwood and Encino who specializes in helping people grieve for a pet, said the human-pet bond can form faster and ultimately be stronger than the human-human bond.

“Like a mother and a child, this little helpless thing needs you. You become very important. It gives people--especially the elderly, children and shut-ins--a wonderful sense of self-esteem,” she said. “Any time you love, nurture and emotionally invest in something, a very strong bond is created.”

And unlike human-to-human relationships, a pet doesn’t complain, criticize, argue or offer other negative feedback.

“Basically, they look up to you. They don’t care if you’re ugly or beautiful,” Padorr said. “Everything people judge you by, an animal doesn’t judge you by. They don’t care whether you’re rich or poor. Sometimes animals give more love than a human. It’s the strongest bond since time immemorial.”

Most studies of pets and their owners have dealt with the mental and physical health benefits of having a pet. Pets have been shown to lower stress, blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and decrease the risk of heart attack--in addition to improving mental well-being and curbing loneliness in humans.

But some research has been conducted with the aim of understanding the emotional bond between people and their pets.

Of 62 pet owners questioned in an early 1980s survey, published in the book “New Perspectives on Our Lives With Companion Animals” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 44% said the family pet received the most favorable attention in the family, and 8% said they felt closer to the pet than to any of the human family members.

In another study, this one reported in the 1989 “Journal of Mental Health Counseling” (Sage Periodicals Press), people were asked to draw separate pictures of themselves, their dogs and human members of their family. Thirty-eight percent drew themselves closer in distance to the dogs than to any of the people.

And according to the Washington, D.C.-based Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, about half of the pet-owning adults and 70% of the adolescents contacted in a survey said they confided in their animals.

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So what does this all mean?

“It says that people feel very comfortable with animals, that the animals are very significant to them,” said Lynette Hart, director of the Center for Animals in Society at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “A cynical way of looking at it would be to say that it shows that people have become disaffected with humans and that they trust animals more. But I don’t think you have to be cynical when you consider the amount of involvement and the extent of involvement people have with animals as compared to other family members.”

Over the past seven years, Hart and her UC Davis colleagues have studied the role animals play in society--how they serve as a go-between for human-to-human interaction.

“People are more friendly to the person who has an animal,” she said. “Someone using a wheelchair will be treated in a much more friendly way if they have a dog. If a person is walking a dog, people are more likely to talk to him. And what they talk about is the dog.”

Hart said animals can serve as a buffer for people who would otherwise have little social contact.

“I don’t feel that people are choosing the animal (over humans), and that if they got rid of the animal they would be closer to other people,” she said. “If you’re having a relationship with an animal, it’s going to be a magnet for other people to come near you.”

But as with most things, moderation may be important. Kelley and Padorr said a pet owner can, indeed, become too close to a pet. It’s a small percentage of people, they said, but it happens.

“If you stop seeing other people and dote on the animal, yes it can go too far,” Kelley said. “If you don’t have anything else in your life, if the whole focus has been on the pet, that’s the criteria.”

Padorr said the overwhelming majority of people can have strong connections with both pets and humans.

“In a healthy relationship, one does not supplant the other,” she said. “In fact, it is said that people who are capable of loving animals are more capable of loving humans, because they are unselfish.”

Joanne Grauer, a Burbank minister who counsels pet owners, said the reason for the strong bond between pet and owner is not all that difficult to explain.

“We gravitate toward what understands us the most, what gives us the most love,” she said. “An animal is part of the family as soon as it is in your house. . . . If you give them one tiny bit of love, they give you a hundredfold back.”