Coffee heat rising

Throwing money in the trash

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Nope. That is not a metaphor.

Yesterday I was at a certain dear person’s home, where I spotted a shiny new penny on the floor. When I picked it up and handed it to him, he carried it over to the kitchen trash can and threw it out.

Eeek!

I’ve heard that some people think pennies are so worthless they’re litter, but never watched anyone actually do that. When I remarked on this, he said the copper in the coin is worth more than the coin itself. I suggested he drop them in a can and take them to the bank now and again to be converted into paper money.

“Do you do that?” he asked.

“Sure. One time I took my change to the bank and got ten bucks back.”

“How long did it take to accumulate that much?”

Ahem! “Well, quite a while.”

Point made, in his book.

But well, no. I don’t think so. In what way is letting a container of loose change collect dust eliciting any effort? It just sits there, not asking you to do any work while it quietly accumulates cash. In a way, it’s (chortle!) passive income!

I have two containers. One holds pennies and dimes and one holds nickels, quarters, and the occasional piece of paper money that comes my way. Because I no longer carry cash (I use a credit card to make all transactions electronic), I no longer accumulate much loose change. But back in the day when I did use analog money, I would keep the amount of change I had to haul around to a minimum by depositing all but a few pieces in the change collection a couple times a week. Then every few months, while I was sitting in front of the television in the evening I would organize them into those paper rolls you get for free at the bank or credit union. At my convenience, I would carry them to the bank to convert to paper money or simply deposit them in savings.
A penny saved is a penny earned!

The Personal Finance Confession Project: Do as I say…

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Yesterday Be This Way issued a challenge to confess our financial sins, and I have a big one. It involves huge stupidity, vast hypocrisy, and unfathomable mystery. It goes like this:

All the time I was married-25 years, give or take a few months-I earnestly advised women friends whose marriages were stressed that they must establish their own credit, have credit cards and bank accounts in their own names, understand where their money came from and where it went, know how it was invested and why, and keep property that they had when they came in to the union sole and separate.

Meanwhile, during the entire time I was dispensing these edifying lectures, I had no clue about my own marriage’s finances. Not one single clue.

We did not have a budget, because my husband felt that was for poor people. He took charge of the finances and kept charge of them. Credit card in my own name? Not a chance! I carried a fistful of joint cards in my purse. Bank account of my own? N/A. I had no idea what was in our joint checking account, no idea if we even had a savings account or if we did, what it contained. I knew he had a pension fund through his firm, only because the law required employers that offered pension funds for some employees to provide them for all employees, and I knew he borrowed against it with some frequency. But I did not know how much he was contributing to the fund or how much it had accrued.

Nor did I have any idea that we were up to our hairlines in debt. I charged up a $200 silk shirt (in 1991, that was a lot to spend on one piece of clothing), never realizing that my husband couldn’t pay the credit card bills and was making only minimum payments on the $30,000 we had racked up on the plastic. Operating as though it was his job to earn the money (he made something over 10 grand a month) and mine to spend it, I insisted that we buy a new Toyota Land Cruiser, little knowing we were sinking into a million dollars worth of debt.

When I inherited $40,000 from an aunt, a nagging feeling that one day I might want to fly the coop pushed me to keep the money separate from the community property. When I asked what I should do with such a large chunk of cash, he had me talk with his personal banker, who advised me to put it in one-week CDs!

Think of that. It sat in those things for a good year, rolling over once a week and earning nothing, because I didn’t know any better.

By the time I decided to leave, he had paid the million dollars of debt down to three-quarters of a million. That was when I learned he had two bank accounts and a credit card in his name only, about which I knew nothing. I had no credit in my own name-after the divorce, my favorite department store would do business with me on a cash basis only (which may have been for the best). I hadn’t handled a checking or savings account in 25 years, not since we were married. I imagined I could make a living as a freelance writer (!), and that the modest investments I’d cobbled together from the inheritance and my half of the pension fund would support me in this folly. Accordingly, the spousal support I accepted was a fraction of what my lawyer and my more knowledgeable friends thought was enough

Why? I was not a child-I married at 23 and was 46 when I left. Evidently I knew better, since I was advising my friends to think clearly about money and protect their own interests. Why did I behave like a child?

Beats me. Maybe it had to do with the way I was raised, but I doubt it. My father went to sea most of his life, and my mother handled their affairs, finances included, during his lengthy absences. I was on autopilot throughout most of the marriage, not fully conscious of anything that was going on around me. Once my ex- mentioned a trip we had taken, one that apparently was pretty interesting; I can’t remember a thing about it. I don’t even remember having made the trip at all. Strange.

Whatever. Do as I say, not as I do.

If next payday doesn’t come…

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Oh, but of COURSE our esteemed elected representatives will pass the state budget before the whole joint has to be shut down, right?

Right. Well, come July 3rd, we shall see.

While we wait, let’s consider an important question: Are you prepared if your employer can’t pay your next check? Are you prepared for a lay-off? Are you prepared to be canned outright? Not to harp on this issue (well, yes, to harp): emergency fund, emergency fund, EMERGENCY FUND!

There are only two ways to prepare yourself financially for hard times: one is to get out of debt as fast as you can, and the other, IMHO the most important, is to lay in enough money to tide you over a spell of unemployment or disability. I say building an emergency fund is more important than getting out of debt because you have to eat. If you quit paying credit card and student loan bills, all that will happen is your credit will tank and you’ll have nuisance bill collectors nagging you. If you quit paying on your car, it’ll be repossessed, but there’s always the bus, a bike, or Shank’s mare. If you quit paying your rent or mortgage, eventually you’ll be evicted, but it takes a long time to evict someone. But if you can’t buy food, you’ll starve before the landlord or the bank can toss you into the street.

In good times, the strategy should be to build the emergency fund and pay down principal, dividing snowflakes and snowballs between the two goals until you have at least six months’ worth of living expenses stashed in the bank. As the economic clouds roll in, focus on the emergency fund. Make your regular debt payments; quit charging on the cards, so as to avoid running up any more debt; but put all of your spare cash or sidestream income into accumulating enough cash to keep you going through a really bad stretch.

How much should you set aside for the proposed rainy day?

Opinions vary, from three months to a year or more. Personally, I think an emergency fund should cover at least six months of net pay. If you’re out of work, your income tax will drop to zilch, and so you ought not to need six months’ worth of gross pay.

That said, my emergency fund actually represents a year’s net income. In the first place, at my age I don’t have a snowball’s chance of getting a job comparable to the one I’m in. And in the second, it won’t be that long before I can collect full Social Security. I’m eligible for less-than-full SS right now, so if push came to shove, I could start collecting early. In effect, at age 62 Social Security itself becomes a kind of emergency fund for those of us who persist in doddering in to the office. For you younger pups, remember this rule of thumb: a laid-off executive can expect to spend a month searching for a new job for every year of job experience she or he has.

Alternative Emergency Funds

If saving extra cash is difficult or you don’t think you can stash enough before you’re likely to be laid off, here’s a secondary strategy: get check-bouncing protection from your bank or credit union. This is actually a line of credit. If you overdraw your account, the institution lends you the amount of the overdraft, protecting you from bounced check charges. The interest isn’t cheap. However, it’s less than a credit card costs and it could save you in a pinch. I have overdraft protection in the amount of one month’s net income.

Another strategy is to start developing other income streams now, while you’re still employed. If you have a hobby that can be monetized, start monetizing. If you have a skill you can ply as a side job, start finding customers now. If you’re thinking of starting a service business, consider whether you can begin offering the service in a small way, on a moonlight basis. While this income may not support you, it certainly will help, and often such work can be expanded to full-time equivalent when you can devote 40 or 60 hours a week to build it.

If you’re fairly confident you’re going to be laid off, then in addition to starting the job search right now, here are some things you can do to prepare:

  • Apply for credit now, since no one will lend you a dime while you’re unemployed. Get a line of credit at the bank; get another credit card. Don’t use either of these instruments, but have them at the ready in case they’re needed.
  • Pare back your spending. Streamline your budget so that you’re living much as you would if you were out of work. Put the savings into the emergency fund.
  • If you have a freezer, fill it with food.
  • If you don’t have a freezer, lay in extra nonperishable items such as beans, rice, flour, and canned goods. (Remember that whole-wheat flour must be refrigerated — it will go rancid if left for a long period at room temperature.) Clean out your refrigerator’s freezer and organize its contents so you can max out the space. Buy meat and frozen products to fill it up.
  • Plant a garden. Squash and tomatoes grow handsomely and cheaply in the summertime. If you live in a temperate climate, you can grow lettuce, kale, carrots, and beets during the summer. Least expensive strategy: grow from seeds. Learn how to can, preserve, or freeze vegetables and fruits.
  • Keep your gas tank full. At four or five bucks a gallon, it’s a lot better to buy gas while you’re earning than after you’re laid off.
  • Consider how you will get around with minimal use of your car. Know the bus routes, and if your area is safe for bicyclists, get a bike at a yard sale, thrift shop, or sheriff’s sale and fix it up so you can bicycle to nearby destinations.
  • On paper or on disk, prioritize your spending obligations. Write down the things you will need to spend on, in descending order from the most to the least important. Consider how you will cover these expenditures with the emergency funds or side income you already have in place.
  • Find out how to apply for unemployment benefits and food stamps, and see if you will be eligible for other forms of public assistance. Don’t get “proud” about this: you’ve paid for it with your taxes, and you get to use it when you need it.

None of us is ever fully prepared for an unplanned job loss. Expect to be psychologically stressed and possibly depressed, no matter how carefully you’ve laid plans and stashed emergency money. Knowing how you will feel (it doesn’t take much imagination), think in advance about morale-building activities to fill your suddenly free time. Scheduling a block of time for exercise will help your outlook a great deal, as will volunteering a few hours a week for a charitable cause. Also plan to attend meetings of trade groups or professional groups-join now, especially if you can get your employer to pay the dues. Regular exercise such as walking, running, or work-outs will protect your physical and psychological health, and activities that bring you into contact with people will raise your spirits and build business and job-searching contacts.

1 Comment left on iWeb site:

Anand Dhillon

Keeping an emergency fund is always a good idea. I also advise that people have multiple streams of income so that ifthey do lose their job, it’s not totally the end of the world.They take a lot of work to setup but extra streams can provide much needed financial security.

Thursday, July 3, 2008 – 10:27 AM

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.

Doomed!

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So much for the planned five-day no-purchase binge that was supposed to rescue my bleeding budget, or at least keep the hemorrhaging under control.

I forgot that we have to take an exiting colleague to lunch at an EXPENSIVE restaurant today. And guess who gets to pick up the tab? Shee-ut.

My research assistants are just going to have to pay for their own lunches. I’ll cover my colleague’s (since I have to), but I can’t buy lunch for myself or for anyone else. And there’s absolutely no way to weasel out of this gracefully.

So…we’ll be covering the red ink with savings.

Wouldn’t it be nice if GDU would pay a living wage? If GDU could manage something like pay equity, maybe? This guy, who’s quitting to escape academia, earns 90 grand on a nine-month contract. He teaches two-and-two, all graduate courses, and the class sizes are minuscule. When I guest-lectured in one of his courses, the full complement of FOUR STUDENTS showed up. (As you’ll recall, I spent the spring semester teaching 80 undergraduate students—the equivalent of four sections!—in a drech service writing course that every single classmate justifiably resented being made to take.) I earn two-thirds his salary, for a twelve-month 40-hour-a-week job.

What a place!

The little dog has, as expected, started to show signs of kennel cough. Fortunately, the Humane Society has a deal with a chain of veterinarians whereby they’ll treat kennel cough and ear infections (she appears to have one of those, too) for free for two weeks. So, somehow I’ve got to arrange a trip to an unknown vet around today’s shindig. This does not promise to be an easy week.