Two months ago, I lost my dog to congestive heart failure, which came on rather suddenly. (Note that if your dog is ever coughing, a vet visit and x-rays are immediately in order. Dogs don’t get coughs, they get heart disease and other bad things.) It took about a month before the kids started asking for a new dog. Normally we visit the animal shelters for dogs, because, well, that’s where they keep them. We already own four cats (an accident), two gerbils, one mouse (although with the new cat door, sometimes we own multiple mice, temporarily at least. We’re just not always aware of it). We also keep a handful of fish, and as a result, my “pets” budget is usually drained dry. Clearly we’re sort of okay with a lot of animals in the house, but my first thought about animals usually is, “What’s it gonna cost?” (My second thought, unfortunately, is usually “Ah, what the hell.”)
The fish aren’t such a burden, thanks to Pet Guys, an online store that sells aquarium foam filters for a third the price of the local shop. Gerbils and mice aren’t too bad, but twenty dollars for a cat-proof lid here, another bag of ground corn for bedding there, means you’d better consider it in the budget. One of the cats cost me over a hundred dollars recently for an abcessed cat bite. (We’re quadrupally exposed for those fun incidents.)
Hershey the giant dog
We didn’t go to the shelter–$100 plus adoption fees–but not because of the cost. We heard about a year old chocolate lab whose owners worked full time and couldn’t really give him the attention he needed. We have five people, including three teenagers, and someone’s home nearly all the time. He’s huge, though–huge! 85 pounds, so this dog eats four cups of dog food a day. Four cups! That’s more than twice what Foxy ate. His name is Hershey, and he also takes twice the dosage of Frontline Plus. Another cost saving measure of mine is extra large dog tubes of Frontline, syringed out in mililiters for the cats. (This is perfectly safe and saves an enormous amount of money.) But Hershey will need 2.86 ml each month, plus a dose of Heartgard ($8 per monthly pill). (I found out they sell generic heartworm prevention in Australia, though. Nice shop at Petproductsontheweb.com. Free shipping.)
Plus all that food! We haven’t had him a month yet, but I can’t see a bag of dog food lasting that long on that appetite!
He’s also chewed up one of my fancy snap-n-seal food storage containers, so that’s a check in the loss column. Then we had to pick up a batch of stuffed animals at the thrift store–he just tossed a stuffed rabbit in my lap a few minutes ago. Soggy.
All in all, he’s a lot of fun. And he’s fairly well behaved for a puppy. Except when he puts his front paws in the kitchen sink to lick the dishes.
Perspective shot-- average sized 13 year old boy vs. big giant dog
November 25, 2008 at 12:19 am
He seems like a really nice dog
and I really enjoyed reading your post.
December 6, 2008 at 12:12 am
I already love him. The bigger the better I always say (as it applies to four-legg’eds, anyway).
I’ll have to think about dog-proofing the dog food…. hmm.
January 13, 2009 at 1:58 pm
What a beautiful chocolate lab. We have two labs and they still like to eat stuff. When they were puppies they ate my remote, cell phone, and lot’s of underwear. They are now 8 years old and starting to mellow just a little.
August 31, 2009 at 3:21 am
We must protect the dog,because the dog are friends that we trusted the most. I enjoyed reading your blog,thanks for visiting my blog also.