Riley Cramer Thatcher waiting for the Bat Signal in the sky
An article on Parenting.com says parents pay about $12,000 relating to a baby’s first year of life. And a January 2017 article on US News and World Report cites a Department of Agriculture study that says middle income parents cough up about $233K for the first seventeen years of a child’s life. That means that college tuition is not included.
The expensive items the study considered were housing, transportation, food, health care, education, and clothing.
I’m sitting here trying to calculate the true cost of having adopted our dog a few years ago.
No, I’m not talking about the high quality dry dog food he eats. Or the roast chicken, cheddar cheese, sour cream, or (this is so embarrassing) whipped cream that I have to ADD to his dry dog food in order for him to even consider eating his meals.
And no, I haven’t added up the Amazon Prime orders of duck jerky or bully sticks. Or the Walmart purchases of crunchy Gravy Bones. Or the dental treats from the vet that are part of his bedtime snack ritual.
No, I’m actually trying to put a figure to the medical and dental expenses for MYSELF that this hard-headed (literally and figuratively) dog has cost me.
Shortly after his adoption, we were playing tug of war. He won and shook his head with the knotted ball of material held in his mouth and accidentally hit my right knee. Severe bone bruising put me on crutches for six weeks.
I have learned to avoid bending down to kiss the top of his head because his reflex is to jerk up his head several inches into my chin.
Now I have no actual proof that he has caused either of the cracked teeth I’ve experienced in the past three years. But I’m just saying…Don’t you find it highly suspicious that my dentist has asked both times if I’d had any recent jarring blows to my jaw?
Fortunately, I’m right-handed. Because my left arm is now in a sling for the next 3-5 weeks. There’s no escaping the blame this time; Riley was a VERY BAD DOG last Wednesday.
I had him on leash at our local park. He was down in the creek getting a drink while I stood (admittedly off balance) on the bank. A big dog strolled by on the sidewalk above me.
Riley FLEW out of that creek (“I’ve got to protect my mom from possible danger!”) up the bank past me, pulling me not only face-down but dragging me across the rock-like knobbly tree roots sticking out of the ground.
Ouch.
I thought I was just badly bruised with sore muscles. Yesterday’s X-ray shows I have an undisplaced greater tuberosity fracture. It sounds worse than it is. Most cases heal without any surgery, although the full function healing can take up to a year.
Fingers are crossed that the results of today’s MRI will not reveal any more serious damage.
When I was sixteen and wanted a dog, my father bought me a Chihuahua. I remember my initial reaction was that I wanted a REAL dog, a big dog. Little did I know what consequences that might hold!
To my readers: What’s the worst trouble you’ve had a pet cause?
Norma, really – with all the dogs we have had in the past? I don’t know which “worst trouble” to write about. It could be the time that Sparky decided to cross the road in front of our house and a car was coming down the road at the same time – he ended up with a cast on his leg (it was at Christmas time so I have a picture of him with a red bow tied to the cast). Or the time I rescued a beagle (Katie), who already had a broken leg and on the way to the vet’s office (in the pouring rain), a deer jumped from a high bank in front of our truck – rendering it immovable as steam poured from the radiator and doing extensive damage to the front of the truck. Of course, this wasn’t Katie’s fault.
I won’t talk about the sheep incident – or the time that neighbors had to physically remove our dog from the road (I guess he thought he owned it) on their way to church. Aah, the joy of owning pets!
That was quite a teaser you put out there. I’m sure there are many readers wondering what in the heck “the sheep incident” is!
Like Beverly, we’ve lived with a lot of pets over the years – dogs and cats – so I could come up with several stories. However, the one who comes to mind is Dog and, thus, sometimes called the “Dog from Hell!” He got into lots of trouble over his 17 years, 15-1/2 of which were living with us after he came to us as a stray. However, the most expensive trouble he ever caused us was when we left him in our car to see an aunt for a short time. We knew he couldn’t be left in the house alone and that’s why we had to hire “babysitters” for him, once we saw how much damage he could do to the house, but he LOVED to go for rides so we assumed, unfortunately, that he would be okay in the car alone for a short time. NOT!!! When we got back to the car, he had pulled the headliner down from the entire inside roof of the car and chewed up the dash pretty extensively along with some other little incidentals, to the tune of some hundreds of dollars to get fixed. But, as people who always take life-long responsibility for any animals who come into our lives, we kept him in our home and lives until the end of his life and loved him in spite of everything.
But he looked so cute! Are you sure it was Dog? Bahahahaha.