If you’re thinking about getting a dog, it’s hard to look past the soft fur, wagging tail and goofy, dangling tongue to think about the practicalities.
Like, say, the cost.
Not just the opportunity cost of parties missed while you’re sitting in an emergency room as a vet tech plucks a tick from your pet’s tear duct (true story!), but the actual hit your pocketbook will take once you bring home your new companion.
First, consider the adoption fee, which is the cheapest way to get a pet versus buying from a breeder. When stacked against all the debts you’ll incur, this is nominal by comparison. A full-grown dog can cost as little as $185 in adoption fees from a city-run shelter, while a cat can cost around $125 in Southern California. (Bonus: shelters ensure each pet is juiced up with its needed vaccines and is fixed.)
Puppies and kittens cost more because people like young and cute, while senior animals are effectively free to adopt since they’re…not young (although often still cute) and mostly sleep. Shelters are eager to get them out of their enclosures.
Private nonprofits can charge slightly more for their operational and rescue efforts, at about $300 per pup, whereas a breeder can easily set you back thousands of dollars.
That initial purchase of the animal is mostly to weed out the weirdos who want animals for untoward reasons, and also, perhaps, to mentally prepare you for all the ways in which your new friend will deplete your savings.
If you’re getting a puppy you must factor in training, which is really an investment in all the things your dog won’t eat in the future once they’re up to speed with what’s fair game to chew and what few items in the house are truly yours alone, like trousers or underwear.
To test this, you get a puppy with one floppy, velvety ear and a natural cat eye. In six months, your new furry friend consumes $1,000 in plants, more than $500 in shoes (the lining of which he rips with the precision of a cobbler), and several hundred dollars in books shredded (free confetti!). While you’re still at home – possibly in the bathroom, showering, tending to anything other than your new furry mate – he gnaws on baseboards and the arms of wooden furniture that if you really squint kinda do resemble the toys in his basket.
So, to render him too tired to destroy your shared dwelling, twice a week you will pay someone to load him up on a doggie school bus and cart him off to bootcamp to the tune of $150 a week. If you have a personal trainer, say goodbye to even more cash. It’ll cost $400 for four sessions – worth every penny.
Then there are the intangible costs of things like your pride as you slide a plastic bag over your hand and gently extract dangling plant matter from their backside while your neighbors watch in horror from across the street (another true story!). Also, the cost of your slowly eroding mental health when you call your last living parent in tears because your dog chewed through irrigation pipes – yet again – and your yard looks like an archeological excavation.
Once the plastic piping, rocks, plants and you-name-it have been ingested, you have to consider the cost of extraction. For $250, a vet recently told me Nelson somehow incurred lesions in his mouth, god knows how. That tick extraction in the lede? It cost a mere $95 for an Australian shepherd named Pebbles. In one weekend, you can easily shell out more than $1,000.
There are, however, a few tallies on your pet’s side of the ledger.
The constant companionship and unconditional love are truly unmatched and pay dividends when compared with your initial financial investment. I challenge you to find a teenage human who is genuinely delighted every time you walk in the front door. Their wonder at experiencing the mundane aspects of life, like ceiling fans and door hinges, is a delightful marvel, even on their most irritating days.
The quiet, undying loyalty when you’re outside on an adventure – guiding you, shepherding you, alerting you to possible dangers – is incomparable. The safety they provide when notifying you that an intruder (aka the UPS driver) intends on breaching your homestead beats any home security system, hands down. And, of course, there’s the cleaning they do – a tiny morsel of food doesn’t stand a chance on your floor (or countertop for that matter) with a dog around.
Let’s tally those savings: home security systems cost hundreds of dollars at least; a weekly cleaning service is another couple hundred dollars monthly; a private bodyguard merits at least a full-time employee’s wages plus healthcare; and of course you can’t put a price on unconditional love.
These qualities make the purchase of a pet priceless.
Unless you’re saving to buy a grossly overpriced house in Southern California. Then maybe buy a fish. Comet Goldfish go for as low as 16 cents at PetSmart. Just sayin’.
