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Pets

Dog Food: The costs and benefits of making your own

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Cassie, the Little Dog, turns up her dainty nose at Science Diet’s best lamb and rice kibble. Won’t touch packaged doggy treats. Doesn’t think much of ultrapremium canned food, either, though she’ll gag down a few bites. After three days of hunger strike, she’d already lost about two pounds—a lot when you weigh 23 pounds.

At first I thought she was off her feed because of the stress of being dumped in the Humane Society shelter, a place as wild as a nineteenth-century madhouse, then yanked out by a strange woman, fussed over by the woman’s friends and relatives, dragged to two vets, sickened by bordetella, and dosed up with antibiotics and cough medicine. Concerned because she was eating almost nothing, last night I fixed her a dish of the same kind of food I cooked for Anna and Walt during the last year’s Chinese pet food scare: half a piece of steak grilled for my own dinner, a few spoonsful of boiled rice, some spinach, and some peas.

She inhaled the stuff and begged for more.

Makin’ It

Hot dang! Dollars to donuts, this dog has been eating real food. That would explain her perfect coat and teeth in such excellent condition it surprised both vets. It also would explain why she didn’t get the doggywobbles despite the stress and the changing food. When dogs eat real food, their tastes are catholic and versatile, and diversity in their diet does not trigger gastritis and diarrhea. Possibly her humans fed her the BARF diet: raw meat and bones. This is somewhat risky, given that pathogens are pathogens, whether they’re attacking people or dogs, and raw meat is full of pathogens. BARF is probably the most popular of the do-it-yourself dog feeding projects, though, and so chances are good this is what she ate.

A little undergraduate coursework in microbiology has left me unwilling to ingest raw meat or to feed it to a domestic mammal. So my idea of homemade dog food is a combination of meat cooked rare to medium (well-done for poultry or pork), starch, and veggies. If you cook your own meals rather than eating out all the time, it’s no problem to put a little extra on the stove for the dog.

Why Feed Dogs Real Food?

Commercial dog food, whether kibble, semi-moist, or canned, is not food. It’s no more food than is junk food for humans. The fact that you can swallow something doesn’t make it food. For a dog to spend its entire life eating kibble is about like a person starting in on hot dogs and dry packaged cereal in infancy and having nothing else to eat for the rest of his or her life. Think of that.

Dogs are not evolved to eat bizarre chemicals. Dogs have lived with humans and have eaten what humans eat for thousands and thousands of years. Commercial packaged or canned dog food came into being in the early part of the 20th century. DNA testing suggests dogs moved into human camps about 15,000 years ago. But in a scant 60 years, we’ve allowed merchandisers and a compliant veterinary industry to convince us that dogs can’t survive on “people food.” Really: does this make sense? If dogs can’t thrive on real food, how did they manage to survive for the 14,940 years before manufacturers started peddling fake food for dogs?

When I switched Anna and Walter over to real food during the 2007 scare, the improvement in their vigor and health was striking. Both 12 years old at the time, they each were showing signs of age. Before long, their coats looked great, they had more energy, their dog breath disappeared. Their dog mounds became more compact and normal-looking, and instead of having to collect upwards of a dozen giant mounds a day, I found myself picking up only a couple. It was clear as day that both dogs thrived when no kibble crossed their bristly lips.

Feeding two 90-pound dogs, however, meant cranking 28 pounds a week out of my kitchen. It wasn’t hard, but it could be messy, especially if I tried to cook an entire week’s worth in a single day. When, after several months, Walt started to lose weight drastically, I thought he wasn’t getting enough nutrition and switched both animals back to commercial food. This assumption was wrong: he was wasting away with an aggressive cancer, which soon ended his life. By then, though, Anna was obediently eating Trader Joe’s kibble, and so I took the path of least resistance and kept her on it.

To feed real food to this little dog, though, would be pretty easy. According to the instructions on the 13.5-ounce can of premium dog food I brought home, she should have about one can a day-less than a pound. By my own rule of thumb-daily ration = 2% of body weight-she should have about a half-pound of real food each day. That’s a little scanty, though a full pound may be a little much. It’s easy to schlep her to a vet’s office to be weighed, and that’s how you figure out how much to feed: follow the animal’s weight for a while and adjust the ration accordingly. The amount I made Sunday evening, which started with a cup of rice to which, after it was cooked, were added meat and a few vegetables, fed her for three meals.

After her second little feast, Cassie perked up considerably. She’s been tearing down the hall after her toys and boldly exploring the house and yard. The cough has subsided and she evidently feels much better.

So…how much does this cost?

Well, I’ll have to admit that preparing real food for two dogs as big as small horses was not cheap: a dog the size of a German shepherd or a male greyhound requires 14 pounds of food a week, of which five to seven pounds should be high-quality meat. Kibble doped with a small amount of meat or broth (the only way you can get a dog to eat that stuff) costs significantly less.

However, a home-made diet for a small dog like Cassie is cost-effective. In the first place, one will save a lot on vet bills if one is not forcing the animal to eat feed that is suspect at best and toxic at worst. But in the second place, the small amount such a dog eats costs no more than the best quality dog food you can get.

One can of Precise chicken dog food set me back $2.99; it will feed Cassie for just one day. A small bag of Science Diet and a bag of inedible dog treats rang up a $16 bill at PetSmart.

I returned the PetSmart foodoid—one thing you have to give to that outfit is that they will take back opened packages of dry dog food if your dog won’t eat it—collecting my sixteen bucks. Then I headed for Sprouts, where for $7.88 I got a package of hamburger (on sale for $1.99 a pound), a package of chicken, a bag of bulk converted rice, and some veggies.

Okay. That’s half of what I paid for the Science Diet and dog treats, all of which was going from the package to the dog bowl to the garbage. No matter what I put on the kibble, the dog flat wouldn’t eat it, and of course whatever I put on it quickly spoiled in the summer heat. So any money spent on the stuff effectively was tossed into the trash.

The hamburger, rice, and vegetables produced four days’ worth of Cassie food: that’s eight generous servings. For around five or six bucks, since the rice and veggies will go a lot further than that and I still have the chicken to convert into more dog food.

Once she’s over the kennel cough, I can occasionally substitute cottage cheese for meat, which will cut that cost, as will buying cheaper cuts of meat and having them ground or picking up meat at a better price elsewhere (at Safeway hamburger was selling for $1.70 a pound, but I learned of this after I was done driving through 112-degree heat). So, I expect I can feed her for a week for something between eight and ten bucks.

While this is high compared to dry dog food-which, bear in mind, isn’t food-it’s cheap compared to three dollars a can! One can whose ingredients resemble what I would cook lasts the dog for one day: that would be $21 a week, plus 8.3% tax. In Arizona, I pay no sales tax on human food.

From an early FaM post on making your own dog food:

How do you make dog food?

It’s pretty easy. Remember, over the past 15,000 years, dogs have evolved to eat what people eat. Like their wild ancestors, they’re nonobligate carnivores: this means they’re primarily meat-eaters but also can and do eat a fair amount of vegetable matter. Wolves have been observed scarfing berries and fruit, and you no doubt have watched your own dog munch things like cauliflower and popcorn.

The trick is to feed real food. By that I mean things that would be real food for humans, too: not junk food.

Real meat.

Real vegetables.

Unadulterated sources of starch.

Not junk food. Not hot dogs or leftover Big Macs or ice cream or pizza or peanut butter or any thing that comes in a can or a plastic microwavable package or as a mix to which you just add water. That leaves the entire world of real food:

Meat. Fresh or frozen veggies. Brown rice, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, yams, even real potatoes. Cottage cheese, yoghurt, and eggs are OK, too.

What’s not OK to feed dogs, in addition to junk food, are the following items:

  • 1. Onions (toxic; onion causes a life-threatening form of anemia in dogs)
  • 2. Garlic (ditto, no matter what people say about adding it for flavoring)
  • 3. Chocolate (poisonous to dogs)
  • 4. Corn (one of the most common allergens in dogs)
  • 5. Avocado
  • 6. Raw egg white (cooked is OK)
  • 7. Raw salmon (cooked is OK)
  • 8. Grapes
  • 9. Added sugar
  • 10. Added salt

About 30% to 40% of each portion should consist of high-quality protein: meat, eggs, or cheese. The rest of the ingredients should be divided about fifty-fifty between a source of starch (such as rice, oatmeal, potato, or sweet potato) and a wide variety of vegetables. Each serving should ideally contain both a green and a yellow or orange vegetable. Dogs can eat almost any vegetable except plants in the onion family (onions, leeks, chives, shallots, garlic), corn, and avocado.

Cook but do not overcook the meat; only chicken and pork should be well-done all the way through. Cook the starch; if the veggies are frozen, add them to the hot freshly cooked starch item to defrost them and cool the grain or potato. Mix in the meat. If the meat is a solid piece baked or grilled (as opposed to ground meat), cut it into small pieces before adding it to the rest of the food. Add a little olive oil or lard for coat quality and calories. Toss in a doggy vitamin-available inexpensively at Trader Joe’s—and you have dog food that more than exceeds ideal.

Take it easy with fish. Like corn, fish is a common dog allergen. And take note that this diet is for dogs only, not for cats, which are obligatory carnivores.

If you cook like that for your dog, the pooch likely will be eating better than you do.

Veterinary bills will drop to almost nil. Ear infections—often a manifestation of food allergies—will subside or disappear. Backyard cleanup will be hugely easier. Your dog’s coat and teeth will be healthier. And the dog will love you.

Ultimately, this is highly cost-effective. If your dog is healthier, any extra amount you spend on purchasing real food is recouped many times over in savings on the most costly item of pet ownership: veterinary bills. And if your dog lives longer, obviously you will spend less on pets, because over the long term you will have to buy fewer of them.

2 Comments left on iWeb site

!wanda

Do you really need to take her to a vet to weigh her?You could put her in a box and weigh her on a human scale.

I wonder why people who had evidently been taking such good care of her left her.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 – 03:55 PM

vh

One of my eccentricities is that I don’t own a scale. Throughout my life, my weight has been very stable, never varying more than a pound or two from a set point, and so a scale is redundant and something else for me to find a place for.

Also it’s easier to get a dog on a scale with a large platform, such as veterinarians have. Vets generally allow you to walk in and weigh your dog for free.

The whole issue of why Cassie’s humans dumped her at a shelter gets curiouser and curiouser. It’s now developing that she DOESN’T bark much. She may yap for couple of minutes after I leave, but she quickly settles down. No matter when I come back—whether it’s just five or ten minutes later or several hours later—she’s quiet.

It’s clear she was a child’s pet. At the moment, my neighbor’s nieces and nephews are playing in the pool next door. When Cassie went outside, she heard their voices and SO wanted to get over there and play with them. In their paperwork, the previous owners said they had a seven-year-old daughter. So that means they got rid of their little girl’s little dog. It almost sounds abusive, doesn’t it?

The only thing I can figure is maybe they lost their home and were too embarrassed to discuss that with strangers, so they made up an excuse instead of admitting to a catastrophic financial crisis. There’s apparently more to the story than “dog barks.”

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 – 04:40 PM

Humane Society Offers Deals! Frugalist pleased

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Never in my entire life, which as you know began during the Cretaceous Period, have I ever walked into a veterinarian’s office and managed to escape without some sort of charge. Until today.

Even the Wonderful New Vet zinged me $7.50 after the “free” introductory visit for Cassie the Pembroke Welsh Corgi: charge for setting up records. Right. But the Humane Society, where last Friday I scored the nifty Little Dog, promises that you can take your adopted pet to any VCA animal hospital for a free check-up and two weeks’ worth of free care for several ailments typically picked up in animal shelters. I figured this would be about as “free” as WNV’s “free” service; maybe more so. But nay!

As expected, Cassie began to show signs of kennel cough last night. Few dogs get out of a crowded animal shelter without kennel cough, an extremely contagious bacterial disease that can bundle with it a virus or two and maybe another bacterium. While this ailment can spirit your pet away (and it can be zoonotic-that is, contagious to humans-under rare circumstances), it’s usually not very serious. It’s a lot less serious and a lot more easily dealt with if you attack it at the first sign of doggy di$comfort. Oh. $orry. Make that “discomfort.” Doggy discomfort.

Well, Humane Society clients have five days in which make an appointment to take advantage of the two-week “warranty” period, so I called this morning and to my amazement got an appointment mid-afternoon. The luncheon on today’s schedule, thank God, got moved to Wednesday (don’t ask!). This allowed me to race out to campus, actually get some work done, and race back in time to appear chez the corporate veterinarian at the appointed moment.

Dr. Brad Walker and his brand-new sidekick, Dr. Rebecca Baciak, a freshly minted young veterinarian awaiting her state boards, examined the pooch, opined that a case of kennel cough indeed very likely was a-brewing, and forked over not one but two prescription meds.
Total cost of their services and meds: $87.50
Total cost to moi: $0.00

Yesh. Not even a “records fee.”

They suggested testing her little rabbit pellets for worms but allowed as how waiting until payday would do no harm. If done within 14 days of the adoption, the fecal test could be done on the Humane Society’s dime, too. And of course they want to get the dog on heartworm meds, a lifetime pharmaceutical that other vets have advised is unnecessary in my part of town. Big Pharma’s tentacles are everywhere: in your doctor’s office, in your shrink’s office, in your dentist’s office, and in your veterinarian’s office.

That notwithstanding, I liked this guy, a former large-animal vet from the Midwest who had shifted gears to small animals. The place was clean and he projected an air of experience and competence. It struck me that Doc Walker would be a mighty fine mentor for a young veterinarian at the start of her career.

So, kudos to the Humane Society for cooking up these freebies.

But a caveat: as I write this, I just got a telephone solicitation from VCA, which obtained my phone number from the Humane Society. That, I could do without.

Reviews of VCA shops range from very positive through mixed to negative, with many complaints about high prices and at least one allegation of questionable billing practices.

Wonderful New Vet’s statement doesn’t itemize the amount she would have charged for Cassie’s free Humane Society Exam, but only lists it as a write-off at $0.00. How that works, I don’t know: it could be a lagniappe, or it could be that her office has a less elaborate deal with the Humane Society. Her first examination of Anna H. Banana came to $278, but it included an X-ray of a very sick, very large dog, a lengthy consultation, and fistfuls of high-powered meds. Remember, at the end I was giving Anna 11 pills a day, four doses of eyedrops a day, and smearing two ointments on her four times a day. So no comparison is possible.

Any outfit that asks me, as the VCA folks did, what my “baby’s” name is arouses my suspicions. The Humane Society’s paperwork folder is labeled “New Pet Parenting Guide.” This is the sort of sentimentality the pet industry fosters to persuade you to part with lots and lots of your money. I figure an old guy who used to run a practice for farm animals probably knows better. But hey! The man has gotta make a living.

Remember this mantra, no matter how cute, valiant, or smart your dog or cat:
It’s a dog!
It’s a cat!
It’s not your kid!

Adopt a dog or cat from the Humane Society. If you’re smart and lucky, you’ll get good deals all the way around. But bear in mind: caveat emptor.
3 Comments left on iWeb site

Squeezenickel

Don’t forget to factor in the cost of transporting Cassie to the “free” vet for this treatment of follow-ups.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 – 06:22 AM

BeThisWay

I got the same deal with VCA when we got our dog through the Humane Society.I went back to our regular vet afterwards.

I know you don’t think dogs are human, but you never met my Jonah.Now my current dog, Phoebe, is a dog.Definitely.

😉

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 – 01:24 PM

vh

True enough. On the other hand, I don’t deny that dogs are sentient, feeling beings.

I’ve had dogs all my adult life, and during that fairly lengthy time, I’ve had one that I would classify as “great”: a German shepherd who came to live with us when her humans divorced. She saved my son’s life, saved me from a rapist, chased a cat burglar out of our house, drove off a man who came up to me and my son waving a machete in the neighborhood park, knew who belonged where, demonstrated that she could make decisions based on facts and judgment (not an exaggeration!), and was generally a mellow and wonderful friend.

Most dogs are mellow and wonderful, given half a chance. All my other dogs have been good dogs, but only Greta was truly a great dog.

Decision Made! Dog scored!

by

Meet Cassie:

Cassie is a two-year-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi. I found her at the Humane Society, among the woebegone cast-off, lost, and abused mutts. She looked like she’d been immaculately cared for — her long hair was clean and perfectly groomed. What an amazing little dog!

It’s hard to believe you could find a relatively rare, apparently pure-bred pooch in the Humane Society shelter, but lo! there she was. Her picture had been posted for nine hours when I found it online, and I was at the door the next morning when the place opened. Eight people had already inquired about her.

Here are the advantages of adopting an adult dog from a rescue organization:

  • You get around the various puppy stages that entail destroying the carpets with excreta, unearthing the flowerbeds, and shredding the furniture.
  • If you’re lucky, the dog is already obedience trained.
  • You can see what the dog will look like when it’s grown up.
  • For $50 (make that $25 if you’re over 65 years old!), the Humane Society gives you the dog, throws in a cheesy collar and leash, neuters the dog, updates all its vaccinations, and treats the animal for fleas and ticks. You also get a free veterinarian’s check-up and five weeks of free care for common ailments picked up in kennels.
  • And you do the planet a favor by taking in an unwanted dog that’s already here rather than bringing yet another puppy into our overpopulated world.
  • Financially, adopting a grown dog represents a large savings, because dogs cost you the most when they’re puppies and when they’re old codgers.

The reason her humans gave for getting rid of her was that she barked. Apparently they were in the habit of keeping her in the house all the time they were home and then when they left, locking her outside.

Well, you’d bark, too, if you were locked out of your home in 100-degree heat.

We’ll return to that issue in a moment. Meanwhile, what a difference between a 23-pound dog and an 85-pound dog!

She eats 1 1/3 cups of dog food a day, barely a mouthful for a Ger-shep. She’s a dainty little eater and drinker, never slopping food and water onto the floor. That means the water dish can be in the house instead of on the back porch, and she only needs one bowl of water. In the backyard, instead of mounds she deposits pellets. Like a rabbit!

She doesn’t go on the furniture — won’t even go on a seat in the car. She did want to get into the bed with me last night, but finally settled for a nest on the soft rug next to the bed. She’s not interested in the pool and apparently doesn’t much like to get wet.

So we went for a doggy-walk this morning, down to the park. This exercise revealed a number of amazements.

Item: We don’t try to bring down vehicles by their oil pans. Anna’s atavistic psyche regarded cars and trucks as buffalo and mastodons, and she craved to chase them down and grab them.

Item: We’re not interested in yanking the Park Service’s lawn sprinklers out of the ground.

Item: We don’t even want to plunge into the flying (untreated!) irrigation water and frolic around in it. We will cross the street to avoid getting the stuff on our elegant fur.

Item: We like dogs. We do not trick them into a false sense of confidence by grinning and wagging at them before going for their jugulars.

Item: The human needs to find its old Sierra cup so we can have a drink of water en route.

Item: We can slip our collar. Yipe!

Item: But if we do, we don’t go very far.

Now about the barking issue:

The pound was a madhouse. Reports that people are abandoning their dogs as they’re evicted from their foreclosed homes are not exaggerated. The shelter was overflowing with dogs, most of them barking, yelping, and screaming nonstop, and it was jammed with prospective dog owners. But Cassie was absolutely silent.

When she was taken out of the dog run, she remained quiet and very calm.

“That dog doesn’t appear to be a barker,” I said to the volunteer.

“Sometimes people lie about the reason for turning in a dog,” she said.

Hm. Why do I doubt it?

Here’s why: Cassie is a Velcro dog. She wants to be with the human at all times. She doesn’t want the human out of her sight.

Cute, endearing . . . and not a good sign! Velcroing is never a good sign in dogs. It means the dog is uncomfortable in one way or another, either physically or psychologically. In the case of dogs that bark nonstop or rip up the furniture when the humans leave, it reflects canine separation anxiety.

It’s a sign of bad habits on the part of the dog’s humans: doting on the dog, carrying on with lots of cooing and petting when you leave, carrying on with lots of excited fawning when you come back in the house, failing to persuade the dog that it has to do something for you to obtain what it wants. I’m not suggesting you abuse or be cold to a dog; merely that you have to behave as though you’re the head of the pack and you expect the rest of the pack to believe you’ll be back when you leave. And not to act like ninnies who will bring predators to the den by yipping and whining while you’re out bringing down a mastodon.

I tried walking out the front door last night, and indeed, Cassie started yipping about 30 seconds after I shut the door. Stupidly, I’d left the side gate locked, and so I couldn’t walk around the house and come in another door. Walking back in the same door after she had begun to vocalize meant, of course, that I rewarded the vocalizing. Argh!

But this morning I took the opportunity to close the door behind me on the way into the garage, walk away from the door, and then walk back and open it before she could start to make any noises. And I locked her out of the bathroom when I went to the john without creating a fuss.

Then I started some sit-down-stay training, a crucial skill for the process of helping the dog get past this sort of behavior. It looks like someone trained her to sit, but the trick is remembered fuzzily. She will go down, but she’s so submissive she wants to roll over when you try to coax her into the “down” position. And “stay”? Surely you jest!

So, there’s some hope here. If a dog can be gently relieved of separation anxiety, it takes about two months of steady, consistent training. This could be a challenge, because I have to go to work.

However, because my house is on a third of an acre, she can bark herself stupid inside the house and not disturb the neighbors. I will alert my closest neighbor Sally, though, and tell her to let me know if the dog makes her crazy. If push comes to shove, I can take Cassie with me to the office (ah, the joys of working at a university in an office where your dean can’t see you!) until I can take some vacation time to focus on this matter.

So, we join the Queen of England and the House of Windsor in our admiration for these funny little dogs. Just call me Betty! Or “Your Majesty” will suffice.
Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday’s post!

2 Comments left on iWeb site

Pinchnickel

That dawg has a sly look about it, as though already aware of a favorite air conditioning vent.Which part of the dawg carries the rear forward?

Saturday, June 14, 2008 – 12:33 PM

Mrs. Micah

Aww! She’s adorable!! And she sounds like a real sweetheart, if clingy. Good luck with the whole desensitizing training. 🙂

Sunday, June 15, 2008 – 05:55 AM

How do you make a long-term decision rationally?

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What strategies do you use when you need to make a decision that will affect your finances and lifestyle for years? Possibly for the rest of your life?

They may be huge decisions: Should we have a baby? Should we adopt a child? Should we move Mom into the spare room or pay to put her up in a life-care community? These are moves that will change your life permanently.

They may be decisions that, while still big ones, can be reversed or won’t necessarily last forever: Should I buy a car? Should I rent or buy housing? Should I quit my job and go back to school to finish a degree?

Or they may be smaller decisions that, while they won’t change the course of your life, will affect your finances for months or even a year or so: Should we get that new Play-Station? Maybe we should buy a $5,000 wide-screen HDTV and subscribe to cable when regular broadcasting goes off the air? Should I lend my weird cousin a couple thousand bucks to start a business, money that he’ll probably never repay?

Thinking through the costs and consequences of decisions like these takes some strategizing. And I must say, strategize as I might, I’m never perfect at arriving at the “right” decision, whatever that might be. Often I end up just going with my gut instinct.

Today, for example, I’ve discovered the Humane Society has a beautiful little Pembroke Welsh Corgi up for adoption, two years old, female, spayed…perfect! The Corgi is one of several breeds I’ve considered as a likely candidate for a new doggy roommate. They’re relatively small—about 25 to 40 pounds. And although they do shed, they’re generally sound, very smart, and because they’re herding dogs, they have a German shepherd-like disposition. They also have a big dog voice in a small dog body, a consideration for a woman who lives alone in an inner-city neighborhood.

When I consider the pro’s and cons of adopting another dog, I end up listening to a schizophrenic conversation between the Voice of Rationality and the Elf of Whim:

Rationality: You don’t need another dog. You need an engineer to fix the trolley that you’ve slipped!

Whim: Engineers can’t fix a broken heart. And as soon as that engineer has fixed the trolley, he’s outta here. I need some company, and at my age, you can be sure it’s not going to come with two legs.

Rationality: Moron! You spent $21,000 on Anna and Walt! Think of your pocketbook.

Whim: I spent it because I could afford it. You shouldn’t let your cheapskate instincts limit your life.

Rationality: The floors are clean. They’ve been clean for two solid weeks! You don’t even have to vacuum the darn things—you just dustmop and run the steam cleaner. There’s no dogsh** in the backyard to clean up every single day. The Burglar Portal is sealed shut. Corgis shed doghair dunes, just like Ger-sheps, and they track in mud that has to be scoured off the floor! Do you really want to do that again?

Whim: Uhm…well, no.

Rationality: You’re finally free—FREE, I tell you!—to go someplace on vacation! Do you really want to spend the rest of your life vacationing in the backyard?

Whim: Doesn’t much matter. I’ve seen the world and don’t need to see it again.

Rationality: What do you need a dog for?

Whim: To keep me company. To alert me if someone comes around.

Rationality: Join a club. Get a burglar alarm.

Whim: <<sob!>>

Rationality: Okay, okay. List the pro’s of getting a dog.

Whim: Companionship. Something alive to come home to. Rescue a nice dog. Walking burglar deterrent. Entertainment value. Maybe I will stop crying every day.

Rationality: Ducky. Now list the cons.

Whim: Expense, expense, expense, and expense. Dog dunes to clean up every day. Twice-a-day feeding. Filthy floors to scrub on hands and knees. Daily yard cleanup. Risk of dog drowning in pool. Possible excavation of landscaping. Restriction of activities—have to be home to feed dog, can’t travel without extra hassle and expense.

Rationality: I just can’t see a rational trade-off here.

Whim: Who are you, Mr. Spock?

Rationality: Have you thought of adopting a tribble?

The problem with making lists of pro’s and cons is that it’s very difficult to assign weight to subjective elements in the list. In this case, for example: What, really, is a dog’s companionship worth? How much, really, does having a dog limit your life and your ability to meet other people? How much, really, do you care about that?

Do you have any strategies that actually work when it comes to making decisions that involve both financial and subjective considerations?

Friday, June 13, 2008

5 Comments

Mrs. Micah

No tribbles. Ever! Wait…maybe just one would work, maybe it’s when there are 2 that problems start. But I think tribbles just might reproduce asexually.

Maybe while you’re still recovering from the loss you could spend a little time at an animal shelter? Volunteer or somesuch? It might make you want a puppy even more (in which case you could get to know the dog a bit) or you it might give you just enough. Or help your rational side emphasize the downsides.

Friday, June 13, 2008 – 02:13 PM

Debbie M

Oh, sure, I make the lists.And they are both the same length.

Then I weight each item on the list, and the two lists still total the same amount.

At this point I decide that either decision would probably be okay.

Another strategy is to think of the worst-case-scenarios for both actions.Or at least worst-case imaginably likely scenarios.For example, if you get a dog, it could be all sweetness and light during the interview, but once you get it home it shreds everything and is always escaping and biting someone.Or maybe you turn out not to enjoy the companionship of that particular dog after all.(Not: the dog could really be an illegal alien in disguise and since you saved it, it’s now going to destroy the planet.)

And if you don’t get the dog, you will always be unhappy and bitter, unable to make connections with anyone, and you get fired and kicked out of your house and die … oh, wait, I am exaggerating again.

And you can think of other ways to handle your concerns (like your “Join a club.Get a burglar alarm.” response)

You can think of ways to minimize the probable and possible negatives of both decisions, like start a pet savings account or brainstorm ways to find companionship.

I’m wondering if calling one point of view Rationality and one Whim is a hint for you.One could also argue that continuing having a dog is rational and suddenly deciding this is the time to go dog-free is a whim!

Good luck.

Friday, June 13, 2008 – 02:17 PM

andyjean

Hey there. I’m a believer in having a dog. The trick is to get the right dog. You’ve got other comments already with good advice on the list making. My only additional advice is that you need to start your list from true zero. When you made your list you were already focused on a specific dog so you are already locked into some of the cons. Think about starting over from the point of view that you will manage the cons any way you can, including choosing a breed of dog that will eliminate some of them, and then figure out ways to minimize the rest.

I had to go through the same process two years ago. When my baby girl wanted a puppy for her graduation, I was against it. My list of cons was very similar to yours. I know I’m not going to stay on top of cleaning up dog hair every day, and I’m not willing to live with it. Most of the year there is nobody at my house for 10 hours a day. That’s no life for a young thing. I also knew we couldn’t stand the chewing, puddling puppy phase. I also had concerns about traveling with a dog, how it would behave in public and whether it would trash my car. The list got long, but my baby wanted a puppy and all my reasons for denying her were selfish.

So for months I secretly researched dog breeds, finally settling on a miniature schnauzer. They don’t shed. Not at all. The breed also met my size requirements and had a decent reputation for health, temperament and activity level. With the breed picked out, I started looking for the right dog. I didn’t get far before I realized I had to define what was right for us. Based on past experience, I knew we needed a dog with a temperament midway between total alpha and trembling submissive. Instead of a new puppy, we needed one that was four to six months old. At that age they can stand more alone time, and if you get one that is socialized properly, lots of the bad puppy stuff is over.

As baby girl’s graduation date neared, I scoured pet ads, rescue organization postings, talked to local veterinary assistants, and tried every other possible source looking for leads. Then I went and actually saw all the pups I found in the right age range. It was hard to walk away from some, but I knew it was best in the long run to pass on the timid and the hyper, no matter how cute they were. With four weeks to go, I found the perfect little five month old male. His family had to let him go because they discovered their son had a pet allergy. Because I could see the dog with the family in their home while we visited, I could tell that there was a very good chance that he had the right temperament and had been well socialized. They were even willing to give the puppy a temporary home with the child’s grandmother until my daughter’s graduation day so that once he joined our family, she would be home with him all day every day for three months. That way he’d be even older before he had to face a 10 hour stretch without his family.

All the work and waiting paid off. We can’t imagine being without the little guy, and he is almost no trouble at all. The key is that I held out for the right dog even though it took four months to find him. The rest of the cons on my list have been easy too. He was mostly trained from the start and has practically trained himself ever since. The house stays cleaner than I imagined it could be with an inside dog. Keeping him clipped every month ($35/mo for me and well worth it) means he doesn’t drag leaves and crud into the house. I manage the muddy paws by keeping the doggy door locked on rainy days and meeting him at the door with a towel every time I let him in. I feed him outrageously expensive food made from human-grade ingredients with no cheap fillers and low on potential allergens. I’m fine with the expense because I know it will pay off in less pooper scooping and stave off expensive degenerative diseases. Now that he’s fully grown, he eats once a day in the morning before I leave for work. I feed him just enough to keep him trim and limit snacks and treats the rest of the day. Feeding him last thing before I leave helps to minimize the separation anxiety. It also means that I can run errands after work or go out with friends without worrying about him home alone wondering where his dinner is. When we go on a trip without him he goes to a doggy daycare. On the financial side, yes, we spend money owning a dog, but we’ve got it to spend and there is no question that having him improves our quality of life.

Wow, that was long. Sorry. I’ll be stepping off my soapbox now, except for one last thought – Walt and Anna gave you lots of good blog material. Are you really ready to give that up?

Friday, June 13, 2008 – 03:37 PM

Bret Frohlich

I learned about worst-case-scenario decision making a while back and it has changed my life for the better.Now, I can make quick well-reasoned decisions and I feel confident, even if it doesn’t turn out perfect.

Before, I used pros-and-cons decision making and it always left me with a nagging doubt, even if everything turned out OK in the end.

If you want the dog, then just get it.Life is too short to deprive yourself of the companionship.My friend had a Corgi and she loved it.Me, I love my aging German Shepherd.She sheds a lot, but nobdody jumps in my backyard.

Friday, June 13, 2008 – 11:13 PM

vh

I like the “worst-case” approach. It cuts through a lot of dithering…and listing pro’s and cons certainly does lend itself to dithering.

Finally I decided in favor of getting the little dog (see the next day’s post for a photo). It may be dumb…but what’s the worst that can happen? She’ll chew up $3,000 worth of leather furniture, bark until the neighbors call their lawyers, and end up back at the Humane Society. Hey…how could I turn her down?

Saturday, June 14, 2008 – 09:24 AM

How I spent $48,346.36 on my dogs

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You read that right: one German shepherd and one greyhound cost me, all told, about $48,346 over thirteen years.

How many times have I said on this blog that the cost of pet ownership is beyond the means of the average single middle-class earner? The instant you say any such thing, you run the risk of being excoriated by passionate animal lovers, who argue that adoration of a furry friend is soooo worth it, and who imply or say outright that there’s something obscenely cruel, materialistic, and downright sacrilegious in suggesting otherwise.

I’ve always based those remarks on a general sense that I was spending too darn much on the dogs, particularly on the shepherd, and that the vet had me helping to make payments on a Porsche. Though one swift Quicken report suggested I’d spent something in excess of $18,000 on dog care, I never really looked hard at it.

Well, last night in a moment of idleness I ran a Quicken report on the category “Dog” and dated it back to October, 1995, when I bought Anna as an eight-week-old puppy. Walt came along seven years later and lived with us just over five years, from March 2001 until he died of cancer in September 2007.

Between October 1995 and June 1, 2008, when I sent the new vet flowers for kindness above and beyond the call of duty after she put Anna down, I posted $20,515.44 in Quicken’s “Dog” category. Feeling agog at that? Check out the figures here. This accounts for food, veterinary bills, endless medications for the shepherd, training, construction of a dog run (huge rip-off by a guy who ran a short length of chain-link fencing between the house and a block wall and then charged over $435 for the job), toys, dog beds, collars, leashes, and the like.

But that’s not all.

It doesn’t count the $635 that I paid to install a “security” dog door in a wall, supposedly near-impermeable to burglars when deadbolted shut, at the time I moved into my present house: $20,515.44 plus $635 = $21,150.44. I carried that as a capital improvement, so it wasn’t picked up in Quicken’s category report for “Dog.” Nor does it include the several hundred dollars in meat, vegetables, and starches I bought at grocery stores during the Great Chinese Dog Food Scare, charges that got lumped in with “groceries.” For our purposes, we’ll have to write off that cost—it was relatively minimal, anyway, compared to the next one.

Oh, yes. There’s more.

As a young dog, Anna was extremely vocal. A vocal German shepherd is a loud German shepherd.

I was driving a Toyota Camry at the time. It was a very nice car, only about seven years old and running exceptionally well. When I would put Anna in the back seat, she would become very excited and emit a loud, constant “are we there yet?” stream of yaps. Better yet, she would position her head so that her muzzle was right next to my ear, between my head and the driver’s-side window, and she would SCREAM every inch of the way between Point A and Point B. Nothing, including tying her to the seat belts with a special and wildly complicated doggy car harness, would ameliorate this. When I would drive her to the vet or to a hiking trail, I would get out of the car with my ears ringing and literally hurting.

I realized that if I didn’t do something about that, it was going to damage my hearing. No amount of training—and I’m pretty good at training large dogs, folks—did anything to shut her up. The only strategy that worked at all was to open the rear passenger’s side window so she would stick her head outside to scream. But that put her at risk, to say nothing of creating quite a distraction for fellow drivers.

Finally, I decided to buy a larger vehicle. But instead of trading in my perfectly good Camry, as a normal person with even a smattering of IQ points would do, I gave it to my son, whose junker was falling apart like the Minister’s One-Hoss Shay. He took it to San Francisco, where he was living at the time. There he parked it on the street, where a teenaged girl came along at a fast clip and rammed it, full bore, into the back of another car, crumpling it like a beer can. Of which she no doubt had plenty in her own car.

The car I bought to replace mine was a Toyota Sienna, a minivan large enough to pen the dog in the back so that at least she couldn’t shriek directly into my ear. This worked to save my hearing, but it did nothing good for my bank account. The Sienna cost me $27,195.92 (not counting the vastly increased cost of registration over the next several years and the cost of increased gas consumption).

Think of that: $27,195.92 + $21,150.44 = $48,346.36.

That is what Anna and Walt cost me, approximately. Yes. That’s $3,718.95 a year, or $391.91 a month.

If I had kept the Camry for ten years, as planned, and then bought a similar vehicle, the cost out of my pocket would have been around $10,000 to $15,000. And had I put $391.91 a month into savings over 13 years, that 48 grand (plus interest!) added to my other funds would have plumped up my retirement savings to the point where there would be no discussion of my working to the age of 70. No, indeed, my friends: I would be retired today, yea verily, even as we scribble.

Except for the Dog Chariot, most of these costs came in more or less affordable, not-very-noticeable chunks. The $21,150 represents the gradual accrual of expenses such as food and veterinary care, plus the usual doggy gear one picks up at PetSmart.

The pet industry has evolved into a huge cash cow whose primary purpose is to separate animal lovers from their money. And, as anyone who thinks objectively about it can see, it’s very successful at that. Too bad we can’t all think clearly while we’re in the process of letting ourselves be sheared.

5 Comments left on iWeb site

BeThisWay

Uh huh.I spent a very ugly amount on my dear departed Jonah.My current dog is costing far, far less.I hope it stays that way!

So, are you getting another dog?

Tuesday, June 3, 2008 – 08:26 AM

vh

Right now the greyhound people have a gorgeous little fawn female up for adoption, ohhh so pretty and I do love greyhounds….

But no, snap out of that!!!!

LOL! Probably not for a while. I think I need to decompress from dog ownership. As much as I miss Anna H. Banana and Walt the Greyhound, gee…it’s nice to have the floors clean. It’s sorta neat to have my old, still viable area rugs back on the floor in the living room and family room, and to have a soft rug on the floor next to the bed that’s not full of dog hair or wadded up and shanghaied for use as a dog pillow. It’s amazing not to be up to my elbows in grease every morning, trying to slip pills down a dog’s throat and cutting up chicken to persuade the dog to eat its food. It’s a relief not to be quietly wondering what kinds of adulterants lurk in commercial dog food (and did they give Walt cancer?). And wow! No daily dog poop patrol…

Most likely I’ll wait two or three months and then give in. You’ve gotta have a dog. Don’t you?

Tuesday, June 3, 2008 – 09:08 AM

Mrs. Micah

Wow. Micah and I may have a dog since we’re probably not going to have kids. But like a kid I want to be sure that we can handle it financially before we take the plunge. I don’t think we could have both…

Tuesday, June 3, 2008 – 05:36 PM

Mike

Thats amazing! just under $400 a month, although i think you are a little hard on them allocating the full cost of the car to the dogs, surely you got other benefits from having a larger car? The <a href=”http://www.nationalpayday.com/education/need_money/I_need_money.asp%22%3Ecosts%3C/a%3E associated with pets is still extremely high, Just the basics Vet+Food+toys+time cost families lots of money.

Thursday, June 5, 2008 – 01:35 PM

vh

On maybe two or three occasions, the van came in handy for hauling materials from Home Depot and the brickyard. In general, though, the Camry would have been a better ride: cheaper, classier, and on budget. I could have rented a pickup to haul junk for a lot less than the cost of a Toyota Sienna.

Thursday, June 5, 2008 – 08:00 PM

R.I.P. Anna H. Banana

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This morning I finally had to give up the fight and take Anna on her final chariot ride to the vet. She was in so much pain, it just wasn’t right to continue trying to keep her going.

Even when I’d made up my mind and SDXB helped me get her there, I still wasn’t sure…maybe if the pressure sores were what hurt so much, maybe there was something else to try. The vet, Dr. Brooke Hoppe, examined the sore spots carefully. When she manipulated them, the dog evinced no discomfort at all—didn’t blink an eye.

Dr. Hoppe said the large sore on her right hip was not a pressure sore and that there really was no sign of infection in it. She concluded that it was a patch of somewhat inflamed skin, and that handling it did not cause any pain. That was why Anna could lay on the hard floor on top of it—because that was not what hurt. Ditto the elbow pain: her elbow patches were just the usual calluses. One had been a bit abraded, but it was not a pressure sore.

The pain was not on the skin: it was bone-deep. Her spine was effectively calcified into an inflexible rod, and her hips were becoming deformed from the arthritis and probably, too, late-stage dysplasia. She could no longer sit at all, and to lay down she had to cantilever herself halfway there and then slide to the floor with a thud. The hair on her hocks was dirty and worn where she’d had to slide to a down position. Dr. Hoppe said there were a couple of other painkillers we could try, since the Tramadol was doing little or nothing for her. But it was unlikely they would help much, and if they did, the effort would be strictly palliative: there was nothing we could do for the condition of her bones.

So, it was time.

It’s going to be pretty lonely around this place. While I was vacuuming out the double-sided dog door preparatory to sealing it into its burglar-proof mode, I looked up and expected to see Anna standing in the door to the room, where she would be watching me whenever I indulged any such behavior. And throwing away poor old worn-out Toy was pretty hard.

But on the other hand… Now I can go out of town for a weekend. I haven’t even made a day trip in longer than I can remember, or visited my friends on the far west side, because I’ve had to be back here by six o’clock to feed and medicate the dog. I have exactly no one who can be imposed upon to come over here and feed the dog twice a day and medicate her upwards of six times a day. By the time the end finally dragged around, I was giving her 16 pills a day, smearing two different ointments on her twice a day, and administering four eyedrops every day. No one is gunna do that so I can take off for Flagstaff or Santa Fe. Now I don’t have to scour dog poop out of the porous CoolDecking around the pool-almost every day!-and now I can take down the jury-rigged fence that kept her from falling in the drink. Now I can trade in the gas-guzzling Dog Chariot for a more fuel-efficient car. Now when I clean the house, it will stay clean for a few days. And now that I don’t need a big fenced yard, I can sell my house and move someplace smaller and easier to care for.

It’s amazing to think that dog has been with me through several major phases of my life. When I brought her home as a puppy, I was solidly middle-aged. Now I’m old. That was part of the dilemma about putting her to sleep. Hey! My bones ache, too—my back aches when I get up, and my shoulders hurt and my neck hurts, but I’m not ready to shuffle off this mortal coil because of it. Why should anyone think she would be? But I have to allow, I can get up, which she could barely manage.

Now what? On the one hand, I think no more dogs!!!!! On the other, it’s hard to imagine being without a doggy companion. I’ve had dogs—big ones, shepherds and retrievers and a dobe and a greyhound—all my adult life. If I get another dog, it can’t be another 85-pounder. It will have to be small enough that I can pick it up to get it into the car if it’s sick or hurt, small enough that I can pick it up to take it out of harm’s way (oh! the aggressive off-the-leash curs Anna and I engaged!). Since I don’t much care for little yappers, I can’t imagine what kind of dog that would be.

So for the nonce I’m done imagining.

I probably won’t post tomorrow. The rest of this weekend will be spent in a cleaning frenzy.

Later!