No, YOU Cannot Afford to Own a Dog

You really shouldn't have a dog, you know.

I bet you think I am kidding. After all, clearly I am a dog breeder, so I love dogs; how can I say you shouldn't have a dog? Who do I think I am, telling you that?!

Well, it's true. And the fact is, I shouldn't have a dog either. Because I can't afford it, and neither can you.

OK, I admit, I don't know you, and it is *possible,* barely, that you can afford to own a dog. You might be a multimillionaire; and if you are then I apologize for my first comment. You can probably afford to own one. But the rest of us, we just should not be allowed to own a dog. Because we can't afford it.

See, this is how it works... Our decisions about whether or not we can afford to have a dog should not be determined by whether we love dogs and can afford to buy and feed and house one; that is the barest edge of what is needful for a dog.  And you really have no idea what all that actually costs, anyway. You can afford dog food? Really. You can afford to spend $30 a pound for dog food, then, OK. What??! Wait a minute. $30 a POUND??! What does that have to do with anything?

Well, you *claim* to be able to afford a dog. But if you cannot afford the very best feed, then you should not have one. Less than this, and the dog will not grow, and live, to its fullest potential, and every dog deserves to live to its fullest potential, right? That is a BASIC right. And some of the best feeds out there cost about that much. Yes, really. So if you thought you could afford a dog because a bag of Ol' Roy every month was within your reach, you are only fooling yourself. No dog should have to live on that garbage; and if that is the best you can do then you should not own a dog. They deserve better. In fact, forcing your dog to subsist on mere kibble, and a low grade kibble at that, is abuse, really. It is beyond benign neglect; you are saying that your dog will never live up to its fullest potential because you just don't care enough, or can't afford enough, to give it what it needs to live and grow. You should be brought up on charges for suggesting that this is an acceptable way to treat any animal, much less a dog.

Well, but wait; you may not be able to afford $30 a pound, but you can afford to pay $50 for 30 lbs; and there are a lot of higher end feeds that fit within that window. *sigh* Well, I guess... if that is the best you can do, then OK, but I shudder to think the Hell your animals must live in, if you think that is sufficient care and feeding. It's bare sustenance, is what it is, but whatever. I guess you can afford to feed a dog, kind of. But you still can't afford to own a dog.

Why not? Well, because you can't provide the kind of enrichment that ALL dogs deserve, and should have. But you have a big back yard, you say? Lots of trees, for shade, and you can afford to buy dog toys? Yeah right. So, where is your dog going to stay? Well, you have a really nice, heavy duty dog house for when you are not at ho-- STOP. No, you should not have a dog. Do you honestly mean to tell me that you think it's OK to leave your dog outside, in a yard, unattended? What is wrong with you??! Do you not understand how many things can go wrong in your absence? Your dog could be bitten by a poisonous snake, poisoned by a neighbor annoyed with the barking, climb the fence or dig its way out of the yard and be hit by a car, be stolen by a theft ring that sells dogs to laboratories for research, or to dog fighters as bait... did you give this any thought, when you decided you were a fit home for a dog? And no, I do not want to hear about how unlikely any of those scenarios are, or that you want your dog to be able to exercise outside in your absence, or what have you. You cannot have a dog, you are an unfit owner.

But wait... what if you keep the dog in the house while you are away from home? Oh, sure. Go off and leave your dog, for hours on end, where he can get into the trash or under the counters and get poisoned, or get hold of electrical wires and either electrocute himself or set the house on fire and die of smoke inhalation or burning... No. You just do not get it; you are clearly an unfit home for a dog. Hey, what about a crate, though? You could get the dog a nice big crate, put toys in it... Oh, please. Lock your dog in a cage all day, away from people and enrichment, stuck in that tiny enclosure looking out the grill at the world... what kind of monster are you??! There your dog is, unable to stretch its legs, or relieve itself, unable to freshen an empty water bucket or food dish, and what happens if it ingests a portion of those toys because it is so frustrated and hungry in your absence, and has an intussusception? Poor dog could die of a ruptured gut, and you would not even know it until you got home. Not to mention, crates fail; dogs escape them and then we are right back to that house fire. Fail.

Wait! I know! We can build an enclosed dog run with a doggie door off the side of the house; if we floor it with concrete the dog can't dig out, and if we top it with wire he can't jump out, and if it is only accessible from inside the house, with no outer door, and privacy fenced so that no one can see him, then theft should  be restricted, and the indoor portion of this doggie kingdom could be completely dog proofed and provided with a gravity fed dog feeder and an automatically refilling water source, and some indestructible toys like a Kong or something... *sigh* Well, I see you have forgotten that the neighbor can still poison it by throwing meat baited with poison or ground glass through the wire top, but I can see you have given this some serious thought, so if you cover that wire with steel roofing to prevent that poison issue, and line the inner walls of this area with a suitable surface (stainless steel would be nice) to prevent your poor, bored, lonely dog from chewing into the drywall and either escaping by continuing to chew through the outer siding, or finding the power lines hidden in the wall, then maybe that would be OK. It isn't ideal, you know, since leaving your dog unattended is still an exercise in neglect, but at least it should be mostly safe. Shouldn't set you back more than $10-15,000 for this little pet-safe kewpie-approved doggie apartment. But you still can't afford a dog.

What now?! Well, you have just not thought this whole thing through, have you? You say you can afford 'routine veterinary care,' but what if the worst happens, are you prepared for that? Shots and neutering are just a scratch at the surface. There are routine health tests that cost money too, and they are necessary to gauge the probabilities of long term health issues. You will need, at the very minimum, eye tests, heart tests, and hip and elbow tests. These will run, collectively, to several hundred dollars. And then there is the Great Unknown, those things you cannot test for. What if? What if your dog is hit by a car, can you afford the vet bill? We could easily be talking about several thousand dollars, depending on the severity of the injuries and whether or not this happens during office hours at your vet. If it happens during emergency clinic hours, the price will more than double. Do you have $10-20,000 laying around the house in the event of this kind of situation? Are you prepared to provide round-the-clock care for a dog that may now be crippled for life, stuck in the dog equivalent of a wheelchair? Are you going to be able to provide a quality of life for this dog that is now a paraplegic, to exercise it, manage to get it to eat, to void, clean up after it? OK then, what if it develops some debilitating illness like cancer? Can you afford chemo for your dog, maybe for months? Expect that vet bill to balloon far past the measly $20,000 we suggested that a car accident might run to. Don't tell me that putting the dog down under those circumstances would even cross your mind; you owe that dog the very finest vet care money can provide. Does not matter if it does not significantly improve the dog's quality of life, or if the dog in question is already in its teens. If you cannot afford to provide proper care under all possible circumstances, then you cannot afford to own a dog.

What If? What If, What If; Whatif Whatif whatifwhatifwhatif...

Then there is the conundrum of breeding a dog. You say you want to be a breeder, but you just really don't get it. There are so many various costs that must be considered, that quite apart from the routine costs of owning a dog, make owning a breeding dog just out of the question unless you are independently wealthy. Remember those health tests we talked about earlier, on hips, and eyes, and hearts? Yeah, you get to do those of course, and if you really want to be thorough and proactive, you will redo these tests every year, especially if you plan to breed your dog. Remember that several hundred dollar price tag? Yeah. Except now, it is every year, for each and every dog you own, mind. Because sometimes those 'certifications' change over time, and a dog who is pronounced 'clear' of heart disease at age 2 might not be at age 6. So if you really care, and are not just pumping out puppies for filthy lucre, you will do what you should and drop the dime for these tests year after year. Because you want to be thorough, if you are serious about this.

But that too is only the beginning. There are all kinds of breed specific tests, some of them genetic, to make certain your dog is not carrying some unknown baggage that might rear its ugly head to cause trouble down the line. Certain health issues that run in all breeds, like epilepsy, thyroid, von Willenbrand's disease, Addison's, Cushing's, diabetes, and so on and so forth. Many more that are breed specific such as Fanconi Syndrome in Basenjis, urinary stone forming in Dalmatians, syringomyelia in Cavaliers, or Legg-Calve-Perthes disease in Westies. Each breed has its own exhaustive laundry list of tests that must be performed, before any dog is considered qualified to enter a whelping box. And considering all the other costs, it is almost anti-climactic to bring up the point that a C-section, should your bitch require one, will frequently set you back a cool $1000. By the time you are finished, each of those puppies has cost you several hundred dollars to bring into being. Forget about a profit; you won't even get close to recouping your investment, but what do you care? You are not doing this for the money, you say. Well good thing, because it's out of your league anyway.

However, you are still not even ready to put two dogs together, not even with all of these tests accomplished and passed. Because you must prove that your dog is worthy of being bred, and that means it must be tested for its fitness to reproduce. There are performance events to prove your dog has the 'stuff' to do what it was bred for, and conformation events to ensure your dog has adequate breed type to be considered for breeding. Show entries are not even the half of it. Earning a conformation Championship will set you back a minimum of $2500, and that is if you do it all your self. Hotel accommodations, food, gasoline, not to mention the cost of a suitable rig to haul those dogs in, all add to the tab. If you hire a handler, expect to at least double that. Field Championships are a mixed bag, depending on your breed, but by the time you factor in gasoline and lodging to drive to these events, be ready to drop at least another $1500-2000. Ditto for obedience titles. Failure at any of these means you get to start all over, with another dog. And trust me, far more will fail at least ONE of those tests or breeding criterion, than will make it through the grueling obstacle course. No, you really cannot afford to do this. NO ONE CAN.

So, what are we to do? We all love dogs, and want to own them, but the simple fact is that the vast majority of us are not doing it right, not caring enough, not providing a proper, safe and enriched atmosphere and adequate food and vetting, not really. Oh, if we piddle along and are mostly lucky, we can squeak by and pretend to be good dog owners for a few years, but inevitably the worst happens; your dog is attacked by a lion who got loose from the zoo, or develops some horrible auto immune disorder that no one has ever heard of, requiring thousands of dollars in investigative care, and the truth comes out: We are not worthy, not really. We are not prepared, we are not capable of properly providing for a dog. The sad truth is that most of us should turn in our dog leads and learn to enjoy dogs in books or movies, preferably rendered by CGI so that real live dogs will not have to be sacrificed, forced into living with flawed, unprepared humans to train and film them. It is time we recognized this, and regretfully but determinedly put this idea of owning pets behind us.




Are you mad yet? Are you angry at my presumption? Oh, yeah. I can hear the sudden intake of breath, I can feel the heat coming off of you in waves. Well, well. So you do have it in you. Can you feel it? The outrage, the indignation, the dawning fury? Damn, it's about time. I was beginning to think none of you were going to figure this out: We are all on a bell curve, here. On one end is the breeder I describe in this article; the one who spares no expense, tests everything incessantly, and believes that those who cannot live up to that standard are unfit to own a pet. On the other end is the hapless jerk who really does lack the wherewithal to provide even the basics, whose dogs live in filth and squalor, subsisting on scraps and garbage, and who does not aspire to do better, feeling they are 'just dogs' and unworthy of more. But the raw truth is, both ends of that spectrum are in the extreme minority of dog owners. As for the rest of us, we live somewhere in the middle of that bell curve, and it is about time we saw the folly of ranting at others for being elsewhere on that curve.

People, the constant harping and chewing on one another for 'not doing it well enough,' for not living up to our exhaustive standards, has got to stop. As I said in another article I once wrote, there are two great truths to animal husbandry. One is that, for people who own dogs, it is very easy to be angry with others for failing to live up to your standards. I see you out there, looking down at others who are lower on that curve than you are, and I see how you glare at these people, feeling they are unworthy to own a dog at all, if they cannot live up to your standards.

And the other great truth? There is always someone further up that curve than you, looking DOWN at YOU, and thinking the exact same thoughts.

It bears thinking about, especially in these times when we breeders are under assault as never before, by people who believe it is their right, and more than that, their holy duty, to end our purposeful breeding of pets. It is time that we examined our motives, and gave some real thought to how our posturing can be used against us by those who want to paint us all as animal abusers. Can you afford to own a dog? Maybe. Can you afford all this preposterous posturing, when you are giving the ARAs the tools to destroy us all? No. None of us can.

Not one of us can afford that, at all.