A funny person once proclaimed that I seem to have the fewest financial worries of anyone he knows, which is highly ironic considering that I’m currently a graduate student in the humanities at a public university, and I’ve been living off fellowships, stipends, GSI wages, and occasional guinea pigging gigs for over five years now. I certainly don’t give the impression of being rich based on my wardrobe, car, home, or other daily extravagances. But I do take pride in the condition of my dogs, and feel secure in the knowledge that I’ve got the necessary savings and/or line of credit that I can throw down if we are ever confronted with an emergency (knock on wood!!).

While budgeting alone is not a sufficient prophylactic against traumatic expenses, it is a surprisingly useful skill that really polarizes my peers; those in my age range either know how to do it conspicuously well, or they’re quietly struggling. In the absence of children, a full-time job, or a “real” house of my own, I fall somewhere inbetween. But I think we at the House of Two Bows are doing all right on behalf of our dogs, in part because there are two of us (with our own bank accounts) to cover all the pet expenses, and also because I do all the pet budgeting. Heh, heh, heh.

I had basically one financial strategy last year — to keep track of what I spent on the pets. Step one is to know what I spend and face the concrete reality of what is necessary, versus what is frivolous. After that, I can prioritize and make adjustments as necessary, or establish a benchmark for how much I should be able to stash away every month.

My primary tool was a pocket planner dedicated to this purpose, as I found it easiest and most accessible to jot things down in pen and ink whenever I made a pet-related purchase. Everything from the $2.49 tub of yogurt to the $200+ vet bill was written down within the day, lest I forget. Then at the end of the month, I sorted items into categories, and wrote those totals on sticky notes which I kept in the book. At minimum, I needed a four-month cycle to get a realistic sense of my average expenses, given the seasonality of vet visits and short-notice blowout sales.

I had established my expense categories beforehand, but I didn’t bother to file everything into appropriate categories until I did my end-of-the-month tally. During the month I would itemize my purchases in some detail (noting, for example, the price per pound of meat). In the end, I could group all of my purchases into the following categories:

• Food
• Treats
• Vet & meds
• Accessories & miscellaneous

Other categories that weren’t incorporated, but might be applicable:

• Training and behavioral consultation
• Pet insurance
• Licensing and memberships (if your local dog park requires an annual fee, for example)
• Grooming
• Dog walking, boarding, and travel
• Unreimbursed rescue and fostering expenses (which is now tax deductible with proper documentation!)
• Puppyhood (for various reasons, first-year puppy expenses deserve a category of their own)

The categories you establish should be big yet clearly demarcated to help you recognize patterns in your spending habits. At the end of the year, this is what mine look like.

Monthly Averages of Pet Things for 2011:
Food costs: $84
Treats: $26
Accessories & miscellany: $15
Veterinary and medical: $122
Total monthly expenses: $247 / month

And broken down by percentage of overall budget:

Food included all essential edibles, from raw meat to kibble, including any dietary supplements that are taken on a daily or seasonal basis.

You know, this figure really isn’t bad for two 20 ~ 30 pound dogs. However, I can see the costs increasing exponentially relative to the size of the dogs! Considering that we used to pay approximately $25 ~ $30 a month for 17.5 pounds of Hill’s Science Diet for just Bowdu (it’s been years since we’ve purchased this brand, so this is just a guess), I feel quite justified in spending a few dollars more per month, per dog. Higher quality food is affordable, relatively speaking — though I understand that time can impose more severe limits on one’s options.

Treats included non-essential edibles. The types of treats here include training treats, edible dental chews, and raw recreational bones.

I don’t think we should be spending this much per month on store-bought treats when we are spending so much on food already. Again, I wonder if making our own snacks would be more economical… However, edible dental chews, which are usually our most expensive treats, seem difficult to replace. I don’t know of homemade recipes that last as long, they don’t seem as satisfying to the pups, or they can be quite messy (like raw bones, for example).

Treats don’t occupy very much of the overall budget, but it can still be a target category for 2012. I’ll have to devise a strategy for cutting back.

Accessories and miscellaneous included non-edible items used directly by the Bows, such as leashes, collars, tags, and clothing.

I don’t expect this category to change very much either, because at this age, the Bows already have most of the everyday items that they need. Occasionally, something will come up requiring a purchase in this category, but for the most part, these are not critical items. Due to Bowdu’s destructive and possessive tendencies, I don’t buy dog toys anymore, though they make welcome gifts. As adult dogs, they have plenty of options to keep them mentally stimulated — tug games with household towels, social visits, hiking and outdoors exploration, etc.

Speaking of exploration, I only counted $10 in gas consumed for the dogs this year, which is no doubt a major underestimation. We also paid a lot of tolls while exploring a wide swath of Bay Area terrain this year. I would not have been compelled to go to many of these places if it was not for the Bows. RJ doesn’t drive, so all gas and tolls were on me and not really part of our shared budget.

Veterinary and medical expenses are exactly as described, including over-the-counter medications.

Yup, I was painfully aware of every sharp, jagged spike. I’m at a loss for how I can bring these figures down just a little lower, what with local costs of living. Granted, Bowpi had a full dental workup, which should not be an annual occurrence. We also had one unexpected trip to the vet (our regular vet was able to fit us in and we didn’t have to go to the ER, thankfully). Since the probability of “unexpected” visits seems to increase when you don’t expect them, I’m going to count that as a routine occurrence and necessary part of the budget.

At this rate, pet insurance might not be such a bad idea after all… I think we get a couple more years to consider our options before “senior pet” restrictions apply and our Bows are cut off. Anyway, I’ve had plenty of gripes about expensive veterinary care in the past and probably will have plenty more to gripe about in the future. However, this is one category where it does not pay to slack, so I’ll just have to continue monitoring expenses and setting money aside.

… That’s it! This is what I’ve learned about our budget at the House of Two Bows after tracking expenses for a full year. And now that I’m addicted to the process, I’m continuing into 2012. My purpose was to make pet finances just a little more transparent, even if only through anecdotal experience. Though I’ve posted at various times about the figures that other organizations have reported, national or regional averages really don’t map so well onto individual finances. In the end, only you have an idea of what works in your household, in the context of your own income and all your other personal finances.

And hopefully, this demonstration shows that there’s a lot of information to be gleaned from just tracking daily expenses. I don’t expect my charts to be generalizable for every dog or every household. That’s why you have to start recording your own expenses to figure out what applies to your own circumstances.

* This post has been submitted for a Blog Carnival on the subject of pet finances, hosted by Life By Pets. It’s happening TOMORROW, Saturday the 28th, so if you have ever written anything relevant on the subject of pets and personal finances, wander over to her blog for contact information about how you can submit your link.

21 January 2012

Despite this failure, we persisted with our culinary trials, since she seemed enthusiastic enough about this process of eating something that actually takes a bit of work. We refrained from giving her thicker bones and heavier cuts while she developed her chewing technique and habits. After much practice with various chicken parts, she now takes to most poultry pieces with gusto.

Our delicate little Basenji flower sure can crunch a mean bone! Raw fish is another favorite. She usually rejects anything with hooves though — beef, lamb, and pork get pulled out of her bowl, plopped onto the towel, sniffed with disdain, then abandoned. Bowdu, who will eat pretty much anything, gets whatever she rejects the next day.

Every now and then, her stomach gets a little unsettled, and she’ll suffer a bout of early morning nausea. She puked bile nearly every morning when she first arrived, a problem which we eventually remedied over the course of a month or so by offering a snack right before bedtime and getting her accustomed to just one kind of higher quality, grain-free kibble than what she was eating before.

Even though I don’t intend to ever bear children, I’m kind of amused that my “maternal” reflexes are such that I can snap awake even from deep slumber at the first sound of her retching and get a paper towel or something under her in time to catch her vomit before any major damage is done. I also recognize a very distinctive facial expression, which I describe as the “Lisa Simpson” look, just before she lets it all go.

There was one time I failed to catch her vomit — I haven’t been able to forget. Both Bows had just finished up a meal of a raw chicken leg quarter. This monstrous chunk, including a segment of spine, was noticeably fattier than their usual fare. I tried to hack it up a bit, but I probably overfed Bowpi that evening. And on this particular night, ‘Pi had managed to burrow her way deep under the covers so that she was trapped in the middle of the bed when I first heard her muffled horks and felt her writhing against my thigh, as her stomach pumped and revved up for launch.

This graphic has been circulating amongst my baby-bearing friends on Facebook. I can't help but see Bowpi in place of the infant.

Before I had a chance to move the covers, our little “Snow Angel” had deposited a putrid, chunky pile of undigested carrion onto the center of the bed. Panicked and still groggy from this most unwelcome awakening, I wondered which end it came out of. I propped my hand against RJ’s back, jolting him awake, and coolly instructed him, “Something really bad just happened. DO NOT roll over, DO NOT MOVE, or it’s going to be worse.”

He laid there steeped in the miasma and paralyzed by the nightmare that he had just shit himself in his sleep, as he later confessed, while I quickly fetched some paper towels and disposed of the bulk of the mess.

So at four in the morning, we had ourselves an emergency clean-up and laundering session, then moved to the futon in my study den for the remainder of our interrupted sleep.

I’m certain that the stench of Bowpi’s vomit wouldn’t have been nearly as bad had she just eaten kibble that night. And unlike her first turkey neck, which hadn’t sat in her stomach long enough for any real digestion to occur, this one was crawling with all kinds of nasty gut flora that had, quite literally, revolted against their job.

A lesson learned: the risk of horrendously rotten vomit is certainly one drawback seldom mentioned by rave reviewers of raw feeding. I have smelled very few things as nasty as what I smelled that night… not even the corpse flower was as bad as waking up to that.

“The Buddhist religion is responsible for the reluctance of the Chinese to put an end to the wretched existence of the pariah dogs with which all Chinese cities are infested, yet the trait of character thus exhibited is not so much Chinese as Oriental. Mr. J. Ross Browne, who was once Minister from the United States to China, published an entertaining volume of travels in the East, adorned with drawings of his own. One of these represented what appeared to be a congress of all varieties of lean and mangy dogs, which was offered as ‘a general view of Constantinople.’ The same cut would do good service as a sketch of many Chinese cities. The Chinese do not appear to experience any serious discomfort from the reckless and irrepressible barking of this vast army of curs, nor do they take much account of the really great dangers arising from mad dogs, which are not infrequently encountered. Under such circumstances, the remedy adopted is often that of binding some of the hair of the dog into the wound which it has caused, a curious analogy to the practice which must have originated our proverb that ‘the hair of the same dog will cure.’ The death of the dog does not seem to be any part of the object in view.”
Arthur Smith, Chinese Characteristics (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1894) p. 136.

The picture that Smith references is reproduced below. A pity that neither Browne nor Smith, writing decades later, found it worthwhile to unpack the motley composition of a very interesting looking group of dogs. Rather, their own prejudices compelled them to Orientalize, homogenize, trivialize, and ultimately to dismiss a scene which no doubt could have revealed a radically different conception of how dogs have long been an organic element of their own environments, with fortunes and vicissitudes determined by human interference — whether native or colonial.

John Ross Browne, Yusef; or, The Journey of the Frangi: A Crusade in the East (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1853) p. 152

When I read these anecdotal encounters between imperialist men and foreign dogs, the language is often so thick with ideological bias, I can’t help but to regard it all as fiction. By fiction I don’t mean writing which is false, but rather, an imaginative account that situates and embeds an author in a particular time and space, even as they purport to be offering transcendent, ahistorical facts. As a matter of habit, I am suspicious of anyone who relies on the authority of facts to speak unaided. For behind every such act of “objective” documentation, there has always been a person — the objectifier who selects and crafts their textual, visual, phonographic or other evidence, transforming it from the merely true to the real.

15 January 2012

Sorry, not exactly the most picturesque photos to start to the week.

No Bows were endangered in the taking of these photos.

Little Jack here is the coolest dog around during football season.

I couldn’t help but notice his distinctive coloring, coat pattern, and that wisp of a curly tail. He is quite short, with a very wide stance. I asked his owner if he knew him to have any Basenji in his background, but since Jack was found as a stray, it’s anybody’s guess. So my guess is that he’s a Basenji-Dachshund mix. Or maybe something achondroplastic plus a red Italian greyhound, given his highly animated flip-ears (though the deep red Iggies seem even rarer than Basenjis around these parts).

I only got a few clear shots because he was pressed up way too close for me to get a proper portrait! Whatever he was, he was cute, and he had super soft, glossy fur that I was happy to keep petting.

Here’s to our handsome Bowdu, seven years old today and still very much in the prime of his life. The black smudge on his nose, from something he rolled in, helps attest to his wild spirit that continues to impress, surprise, frustrate and delight me every day.

The House of Two Bows broke with our rigorous posting schedule because it seemed egregious to continue with “business as usual” when so many websites that we hold near and dear were blacked out, from Wikipedia to WordPress. By joining the strike, we were able to step aside from the blog for a day and turn our focus towards what was at stake.

I can’t say that I completely understand the proposed laws inside and out… but I think that’s okay. That signals work that remains to be done. After all, there’s a lot to wade through. Part of this was about the continuous process of paying attention to legislation that could and would affect how we operate on a basic level. I’m a little rattled by how little I would have known about SOPA and PIPA if a bunch of folks that I personally know (and not just websites) hadn’t insisted that we ALL take a look and DO something, trusting that what we saw would instantly make the bill very unpopular.

They were right. Sometimes it’s good to listen to your friends, yanow.

We might be just a dog blog. But just as our dogs prime us to be in our local communities, wherever that might be, so too is this blog situated within and an extension of the internet as an inextricably linked whole. Because this “place” is where we live and hang out, we felt it necessary to participate and react in our own way, too.

15 January 2012

And now, back to the dogs…

Lilah, the dog sighted in the previous post, is a chucho from the streets of Guatemala, now living a fabulous life here in sunny California.

Can you guess what country Bowpi’s street dog friend is from?

Answer coming tomorrow if nobody gets it (but I think some of you already know).

13 January 2012

Is it driven by tiny people?? Let’s have a bark-see.

Bowpi didn’t seem to care. She just ignored it. Bowdu, who tends to be unnerved by most things with wheels unless he can safely ride inside of it, watched with consternation.

When the car whirred too close, it set off Bowdu’s alarm bark. He was more than happy to leave the scene — not that the driver was deliberately provoking the dogs. Still, for how downright freaky such a thing must have appeared to him, I think he handled it rather well.