WSJ: The Dog Maxed Out My Credit Card: Pet car costs

From a purely dispassionate perspective, dogs are expensive to replace.  It's not the $25 adoption fee (or more, depending where you live); it's the well-puppy visits, spaying, neutering, and, more importantly, the training.  I have an espresso machine that knows exactly how I like my latte, how hot, how fine to grind the beans, how long to steam the milk.  I paid almost $400 to repair it. 

I have a dog who knows I don't like him to pee in the house, and he doesn't.  He's trained to travel, so he knows he can't run up to strangers (they may not like dogs), he can't bark in the hotel room, and he'll have to spend some time in his crate peacefully.  The basic obedience stuff costs about $150+, and several months of regular classes and practice.  What's an hour of your time worth?  You can hire somebody to do all the training (no matter what, you've got to spend some time practicing with the dog, though), starting around $600.  The basic obedience "program" is relatively cheap.

If we choose to think of a dog as a replaceable commodity, we have to recognize the customization that makes each product unique.  My dog knows that a closed office door means "be quiet, dad's on a conference call."  He knows when "down" also means "leave me alone" and when it means "if you bring me your stuffed animal and lean against my leg, I'll find it adorable and companionable."  No guarantees than a replacement model will even have the hardware for that program.  This one rides quietly in the car - no worries that he'll freak out and jump under the clutch pedal like the last one (eventually trained away, but it took 10 years and buying a convertible before she was comfortable riding in the car).  The puppy years cost one speaker wire and a whole lot of vigilance that I, honestly, don't have time for today.  He stalked my favorite (and most expensive) pair of shoes and seemed to take it to heart when I told him I would use his hide to make a replacement.  A new dog, who knows if the message would sink in before or after the $(20? 50? 150? 450?) shoe replacement?  After 7 years together, I know for a fact that, if he ever did snap at someone, he'd be sick, because he hasn't got an aggressive bone in his body.  I might find a well-trained, mellow, adult dog in a shelter, at minimal adoption cost, but that dog would not be a replacement.  He'd just be a different dog.  Maybe better.  Maybe worse.  Probably just different.  A mysterious new friend to learn about and bond with.

It's like marriage or dating or step-parents.  The subsequent ones aren't replacements.  They're just different experiences.  And, like human relationships, you can't really give a new experience its due unless you know in your heart that you did right in the last one.  Because pets aren't commodities; they are unique exemplars (like art?) with mammalian brains.  They learn from us and train us.  They emit chemical signals and read our chemical signals.  They communicate with their furry little faces, and they read our faces and body language.  They know us, and, through knowing them, we know ourselves.  We know if we're generous, loving, caring beings.  We know if we're selfish, materialistic, shallow beings.  We know if we're practical ($5000 to extend his life for 3 more months of agony? no thanks) or just stupid in love ($4000 and he'll live out his natural life? Sure.) or good investors ($2000 to save a good, broken-in dog? I'd spend that on training, neutering, shots, and chewed-up shoes). 

Sometimes they leave us with doubts.  My former dog died of - well, I'd like to say kidney failure, but she was really murdered by a contract killer I paid.  Or we kindly ended her life in a humane way, depending how you look at it.  It was surreal to realize that I was playing God with my dog's life.  I don't know if I did it to give her a more peaceful end, or to save my own family the agony of watching her die a slow and painful death.  Her last day, I sat her down and told her that, since she hadn't eaten in days (I stopped forcing her to eat when she bit me and gave me a long, meaningful look to say "I meant that in the most loving but serious way"), and she was in bad shape, I was going to put her down unless she started eating again.  She glared at me and walked away.  Did she understand?  Even if she could understand, she had kidney failure - her body was floating in toxins and she was, essentially, drunk.  She avoided me all day.  In the car, she tried to jump out the window while we drove.  It is so natural for a dog to go off alone to die, why was I forcing her to do it the easy - but unnatural - way?  It was only at the vet's office that she crawled into my lap and snuggled.  She was a selfish dog - a survivor of the mean streets and the rough conditions at the animal shelter.  But she was capable of affection on her own terms.  Her last day, she opted to give affection to me, the one who'd been with her for more than a decade.  The puppy, the rest of the people in the family, she gave them some love, but then she crawled into my lap and just snuggled with me until it was time.  We made up, she accepted my decision.  I like to think she accepted the wisdom of the decision, but maybe she just accepted the futility of her situation.  She went peacefully to the table and died.  The puppy stayed out of the way until it was done.  Then he stood up on his hind legs and looked at her for a long moment.  I had a lot of doubt, contracting for my dog's death, choosing her execution date.  But after some time passed, I looked at pictures from her last few weeks and realized that I had been in denial about how far gone she'd been that last week or two.

The dog before her died before I got to the vet's office, but came back just long enough to say goodbye.  Another stray.  It meant something to me for her to die surrounded by love.   (She was a special and amazing dog, but that's a story for another day.)  She was sedated, but when I put my hands on her, her legs twitched and her mouth moved and she quivered until she could look me in the eye.  I held her and told her what a good dog she was and tried to give her all the love she missed during her years on the street.  She gave me one last lick and just went peaceful and dead in my arms.

I'll tell you, I've felt sad about throwing away a favorite but worn and tattered t-shirt, and it's nothing compared to the feeling of losing a pet.  They aren't commodities.  They are living creatures, our fellow travelers in this strange universe, beings as capable of hating us as they are of loving us - yet they almost invariably choose to love us.  Or else they run away. :-)  I suppose a proper financial decision on pet health care costs would look at the depreciated value of the asset.  Yet animals appreciate in value over the years, as the human-animal bond strengthens, the associated shared memories accumulate, and the emotional attachment grows.  Some people keep their college or even high school sweatshirts and yearbooks through old age.  Our furry friend assets just don't last that long, but, sometimes, money is the only thing standing between another year or a vast improvement in the quality of the remaining years, and saying goodbye. 

And yet, that same money could take a healthy dog off death row at a shelter.  Or put a kid through a year of  community college.  Or fly us home for the holidays.  Or keep us out of a shelter, ourselves.  How far to go, financially, is a tough and very individual decision. 

I spend at least $500 for the latest (ish) and greatest (good enough) computer.  Every time, I talk myself into forgetting that I'm gonna have to buy new software licenses for the products I use the most.  You bet I'd pay $500 to keep my outdated canine technology in good running condition.  I paid a bit more than that to repair his ACLs (on both sides) to keep his remaining years healthy, relatively pain free, and low cost (arthritis meds aren't cheap, and the damage they do over time isn't cheap to treat, either).  My dog is far more entertaining than cable TV, more comforting than a hot toddy, more aesthetically pleasing than a cashmere sweater and a limited edition print, combined.  And he's a furry little pain in the butt, always wanting to play when I'm stressing about a deadline (but isn't that when I need to play), wanting to go for a walk when I'm tired (you've got to make time for exercise), wanting to be with me when I just want to be alone (but alone with good company is the best kind).  If my computer ever develops dog logic to give me what I want most of the time, but to give me what I need the rest of the time, well, I guess it will be worth thousands, too.