Category Archives: Pet

Pet Costs, a New Spin

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Bad news today, my wife informed me that we will need a new carpet for the family room because of our dog!

 

Carpet Patching

Carpet Patching

Chocolate Lab

Our dog is a great dog, she doesn’t chew on furniture, the kid’s toys or anything that she’s not suppose to.   We have a lot of fun with her, especially at Christmas.  You see, she get’s her own Christmas presents wrapped up.  Since she can smell the cheap rubbery smell of new dog toy, she know that it’s hers and gets excited along with the kids on Christmas day.  She actually opens her own presents.  Overall, she’s been a good dog!

Unfortunately, our dog has a very bad habit:  She dreams!

Yep, it’s true, she dreams… 

How do I know this?  Because I’ve seen her on more than one occassion do this.  She make a whimpering sounds like a horse, and tries to run!  It’s the most bizarre thing!  Well, the problem is that as she’s running while on her side lying down, her claws on her front legs catch on the carpet.  This effectively shreds the carpet over time (as I learned much to my dismay yesterday :().  For now, I’m going to put a rug over the spot, but eventually we will have to buy a new carpet (or redo the floor in some other type of material… hmmmm).

So, I’m not sure what the replacement cost and labor will be to replace our carpet, but I’m betting it’s at least $500…  So, tack this cost onto the cost of owning a pet!     It might be possible to repair the carpet, but that might look just as bad…

I have to wonder if anyone else has any stories about the damage caused by owning a pet?

This is the first, that I can think of it happening to me…

Yearly Cost of Owning Pets

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Today, I’m sitting down to calculate the cost of owning my pets.

I’m not including any cost like worm pills for the dog, vet visits or grooming expenses.

We currently have 1 dog (a chocolate lab), 1 cat, 2 hamsters and 1 1/2 fish.  With the fish, sometimes we get new ones when the fish dies and sometimes we don’t, thus the 1 1/2 number…  We really like having pets, but they do require a lot of work (I hate cleaning cages) and if you add up the cost per years, it’s ends up being a little over $1,000 dollars.

Obviously, the most expensive pet for us is our dog.  She eats about 1 bag of dog food a month (@ $45 per bag).  We got unlucky with our dog because she has a food allergy that requires us to spend $45 per bag.  Our cat goes through about 1 bag of cat food every 3 months (@ 10 per bag).  Cat litter usually runs about $12 a month.  The cost of the hamsters and fish pale in comparison to the dog and cat from a food perspective.  But the hamsters do require frequent bedding changes (once a week, but we stretch it to 2 weeks).  So the bedding cost for a hamster usually runs about $5 per month.   The fish cost about $3 a year. 

When we go on vacation, we only board up the dog.  We get away with the cat because we bring out extra litter pan for her, and she use all 3 until we return.  Note, we only take 1 week vacation, 2 weeks and we’d have a problem…

Yearly Pet Costs    
  Food Cat Litter Boarding Bedding
Dog 540 0 180 10
Cat 40 144 0 0
Hamster 40   0 60
Fish 1 0 0 2
      Total Cost: $1,017
  *bedding for the fish is water changes

 

My kids really enjoy there pets though, so for the time being, this is an expense that I can’t get out of. 

If you do want a pet, that isn’t expensive, fish are the way to go.  We currently have 2 beta fish, and they are both pretty and easy maintenance.

-D