Coffee heat rising

Pets

Twelve ways to save money on your dog

by

DCP_13631. Adopt an adult dog.

A grown-up that has already learned to live with humans will save you on furniture and landscaping repair, carpet cleaning, and training. And someone else has paid for spaying or neutering.

2. Choose a breed that is not on the homeowner insurer’s list of breeds that trigger higher premiums.

Avoid German shepherds, Rottweilers, pit bulls, doberman pinschers, chows, huskies, and other dogs with a reputation for unpredictability.

3. Learn to obedience-train your dog in low-cost community classes. Practice obedience training frequently, so the dog will come when called and stop when ordered.

These skills may save your dog from costly accidents or animal attacks, to say nothing of making your own life a lot more pleasant.

4. Keep your dog secured inside a yard with a sturdy, escape-proof fence (not on a tie-out!). When walking outside the yard with your dog, keep the dog on a leash at all times.

This keeps your dog safe from accidents and fights with other dogs and helps protect you and passers-by from dog bites. And that keeps your wallet safe from veterinarians’ and lawyers’ bites.

5. Exercise your dog regularly.

6. Restrict immunizations to those that are absolutely necessary.

Some shots given once a year are really needed only once every two or three years.

7. Learn to give shots yourself.

Vaccines can be purchased at feed stores and online.

8. If you live in an area where there are no mosquitoes, don’t give your dog heartworm meds. If you can’t avoid the monthly worming treatment, purchase Heartgard at Costco, where it’s much cheaper than at most veterinary offices.

9. Read the labels on dog food.

Do not feed your dog corn or corn products: at best, they’re indigestible; many dogs are allergic to corn. Dogs often manifest allergies as ear infections, a direct route for cash to flow from your wallet to your veterinarian’s pocket.

Note what’s in premium dog food and then look for similar formulas in less expensive varieties. For example, Trader Joe’s lamb and rice dog kibble is similar to much pricier premium brands. Also, feed and tack stores often sell premium kibbles at a significant discount from the prices in pet stores.

10. Learn to groom the dog yourself.

Invest in clippers for dogs that need fancy trim jobs and a Dremel to file down heavy claws.

11. Keep your dog’s teeth clean with dental-cleaning dog chews or by brushing the teeth.

12. Abstain from cosmetic surgery such as docking ears, which is cruel and unnecessary.

How Much Is That Doggie in the Window: The cost of owning a pet

by

Out of idle curiosity, I ran a Quicken category report for the past 12 years and restricted the categories to one: “Dog.”

According to Quicken, to date I’ve shelled out $8,217 for the privilege of owning a dog—well, for five of those 12 years, two dogs. That doesn’t cover everything. For the first few years of Anna’s residence with me, I didn’t break out every food and toy and miscellaneous expense for the pooch.

And it doesn’t count the leather chair that had to be rebuilt after Anna chewed an arm off it (that was when SDXB started calling her “the thousand-dollar-a-day dog”). Or the carpets that had to be replaced after a long, slow house-training. Or the van I bought to carry her around after she developed a habit of placing her muzzle next to my ear and screaming until my eardrums hurt every time I put her in the car. The Camry I replaced with the gas-guzzling Sienna had at least another five years on it, and it was a great deal more fuel-efficient than the Dog Chariot. If you calculated in the cost of the replacement flooring (all tile) and the larger vehicle and the cost of running said larger vehicle, you’d be looking at, oh, say, another ten grand. That would bring us to something like $18,000 for the pleasure of 12 years of dog company.

Well, it doesn’t match the cost of raising a child. Yet.

But the next time you gaze into two limpid pools of puppy-love eyes, think: this is not a minor undertaking! Bringing a pet into your life is expensive. Vet bills (which can take your breath away-my last bill was $450!) are just barely the half of it. Over time the combined costs can add up to something very, very large.

Would all that money have gone into savings? Probably not. It likely would have been diddled away on living expenses. I do have to say, though, that if I hadn’t had that $450 vet bill, the larder would have been quite a bit fuller in the month I had to pay it. Yes. It would have been nice not to have to go hungry, or to raid retirement savings, to pay for the cost of owning a dog.

Anna is very elderly and frail. She won’t last much longer, alas. It makes me very sad. I can hardly imagine what my life will be like without a furry companion.

Still, when I contemplate the possibility of adopting another dog after she’s gone, I have to ask myself: can I afford another $18,000? Or even $8,217? When I’m 70-something and scraping by on Social Security, will I be able to take care of a dog?

I don’t think so. In fact, the cost of pet ownership is rapidly moving beyond the means of the average middle-class American. At one point, I estimated that a single person would need an annual income of at least $80,000 to own a dog without having to tighten her belt now and then. Possibly a two-earner household could afford an animal more comfortably. But for single middle-class earners, dogs are about on the order of horses: an indulgence for the wealthy.

How much do you spend on your pets? Do you think this is affordable in today’s economy?

Chicken soup for dog-lovers

by

Anna H. Banana is looking a little peppier today, after having been off her feed for quite a while. The other day it occurred to me that if chicken soup is Jewish penicillin for people, maybe it would perk up another mammalian species. So I took a few chicken thighs out of the freezer, which I happened to have in lifetime-supply quantities thanks to a bargain purchase, tossed them in a saucepan and covered with water, and added a little salt and a little sugar, and simmered.

Sugar and salt, because she was so peakèd she wasn’t even drinking much water. Suspecting she was getting dehydrated, I wanted to slip her a dose of electrolytes. The beauty of chicken thighs for making a small amount of broth is that they have only one large bone. Getting the cooked meat off is easy—no dodging splintery little bones and sinews.

After an hour or so, I dipped a couple of cups of broth and meat into the dog bowl, stirred in a few ice cubes to cool it to a temperature on the high side of lukewarm, and served it up to the aged Queen of the Galaxy.

She inhaled the stuff! After a couple more meals like that, she began to eat her regular food again, especially if it was made soupy by the addition of lots of broth.

Discovery: Dogs like chicken soup.

Discovery: Dogs like their food warm. Try zapping a little dog food (not kibble) in the micro until it’s warm but not hot. Works.

Discovery: Dogs that hate kibble will eat it if it’s floating in broth.

Normally I don’t feed her much kibble, but if I’m broke or under the weather myself so that I can’t buy or prepare two pounds of food a day for Her Dogship, we don’t have much choice. She’s a lot more likely to eat it if it’s drowned in chicken, lamb, or beef broth.

Chicken broth is easy to make, with thighs, legs, or wings or with bones and carcasses from several meals stashed in the freezer until you’re ready to cook. Just cover them with water, bring to a boil, and turn down the heat to a slow simmer. Pour the cooked broth through a strainer to remove bones. Just now a big pot with three carcasses and bones saved from cut-rate beef roasts that were converted into hamburger is bubbling away on the stove. You can sometimes get lamb necks on sale—dogs really like lamb. There’s only one caveat, and it’s important:

Do not add onions!

Onions are toxic to dogs. Onions themselves are especially bad, but all members of the onion family (garlic, shallots, little green onions, chives) can do the job on your dog. They cause a kind of anemia that can kill the animal—I can testify to this, because I put some onions in meat I was feeding and almost did in two ninety-pound dogs. The smaller the dog, the more vulnerable it is to onion toxicity. For this reason, it’s not a good idea to dose your dog’s food with canned chicken or beef broth, which almost always contains onion.

To make a tastier broth for human purposes, brown some chopped onion, celery, and carrot (any or all) in another pan. Add some garlic if desired and then dip a portion of the broth into the pan. Simmer for an hour or more. Strain into a clean bowl, pressing juices out of vegetables. Et voilà! Dog joy and chicken soup for humans from one set of bones.

pets, dog food recipes, recipes