A while back, I wrote about the battle I previously fought with depression. My life truly changed after I found my way out of the darkness of the disease. And, as I shared in that entry, I discovered my passion shortly thereafter, which has been a blessing and a joy. When the doctors released me from the hospital, there were specific things that they encouraged me to do as therapy. One was to find something that I loved doing, and the other was to get a pet. I honestly believe that both of these things, scrapbooking and my dog, helped me recover from depression. And I suppose one can't put a value on a sound mind, because reality is that mental health is priceless. But in terms of dollars and cents, both the dog and the scrapbooking have cost me a fortune.
When I first invested in the suggested therapy, I budgeted wisely. Fifty dollars a month for scrapbooking. Factored over a year, that's about six hundred dollars. Okay, that first year, okay... those first few years... I went a bit over that amount. But still, I kept it under a thousand dollars a year. Now, when one is working within a budget, a thousand dollars a year is a heck of a lot of money. So I scrimped. I saved. I figured out creative financing. I did everything in my power to stay within that budget. Some years, I've done well. Other years, not so well. All in all, it has balanced out and I am still able to plan and save and budget.
Not so with the dog. One would think that a small little miniature dachshund that only weighs 12 pounds would not break the bank. Nine years ago when deciding what kind of pet to get for this so called therapy, cost was a consideration. I mistakenly thought that the size of the dog represented the size of the budget. In my mind, a tiny dog equaled a tiny budget. I mean, really, how much can a couple of shots and some small bags of food cost a year? Well, I'm here to tell you that is not the case. This dog has ended up costing me a fortune. And when I use the word fortune, I'm talking about much more than the scrapbooking budget. This is the Million Dollar Dog.
The first year, Misty ate dental floss that was hanging out of the waste basket. The dental floss got wrapped around her intestines, which led to her first life saving surgery. Dog surgery is expensive and the family health insurance plan did not cover pets, so that year I blew the pet budget out of the water. The next year, it was a toothpick. Specifically, she ate one. The toothpick pierced her stomach and that led to another lifesaving operation. Again, not covered under the family health plan. Another year of blowing the budget. The third year, it was a raccoon tail - she found a dead raccoon and decided to eat the tail. All those bones and fur led to an infection, which in turn led to more medical treatments. So for the third year in a row, the dog budget was more than the scrapbooking budget.
By the time Misty was four years old, we had moved to Virginia. It was there that she discovered soap, as in Ivory Soap bars. She found them immediately as I was unpacking and setting up the new house. The ingestion of several bars of soap led to a call to Poison Control (she was frothing and foaming from the mouth - you know, with bubbles and whatnot). This little stunt gave her the honor of earning her own animal file at the Poison Control Center. They were impressed, considering that they had never had an actual dog as a client before. Well, those Poison People take their job seriously, so they made sure to include follow up intervention in their treatment plan, just to be certain that I was unpacking with better doggy supervision than I'd previously shown. Because the Poison People were so good at their job, they were diligent with follow up and they called the local vet to involve him in the case (it was a hot case, and they wanted to be sure that it was well documented). This led to the vet falling in love with me immediately since I think I walked in that day with dollar bills falling out of my pockets.
The following year, we decorated our new house. That meant painters and wallpaper guys in and out for about a month. Misty bonded with the men and they always played with her on their breaks. It got to the point where Misty must have thought they were part of the family because she started following them around like dogs tend to do. After about a week of Misty's love affair with the workers, she got really sick. So sick that she was bleeding from all orifices. Yeah, it was really gross. It was also really scary, so off we went to the vet, again. The vet was baffled as to the cause of the bleeding, so he did some investigating. And, that included a call to Poison Control. Sure, the Poison People remembered Misty! Who could forget the dog that ate Ivory Soap? After much research and several x-rays later, it was discovered that Misty had eaten wallpaper. And, not just the paper. No, she ate the paper with the paste on it... and yes, the paste was toxic. More surgery to remove the paper. More medical treatments to save her life. More dollars out of the doggy budget, which by this time was so out of control that the word budget should have become bank loan.
I think we may have had a year, twelve peaceful months, when Misty did not ingest something that was life threatening. But, I could be wrong. All I know is that we spend a heck of a lot of time, and a whole lot of money, at the vet. Last year, it was bladder streuvites... those are rocks that grow in the urinary track (think cavern like rocks, that's what they look like - I still have them in a jar). They were huge. They also set a record for biggest size ratio ever and the vet took pictures to send to some animal medical journal. Great, now Misty is the famous Ivory Soap eating, streuvite rock growing dog. Such a nice thing to be known as. And, get this: our vet has Misty's picture up in one of the exam rooms. I think he did that because she has paid for so many of his vacations.
So today we went to the vet, again. The latest in this medical saga is that Misty has developed a tumor like growth on her chest. She is nine years old this month. The vet considers her a senior in terms of dog years, and those people at the vet like to make sure that their Number One Patient is well looked after. Heck, they don't want her to die, because I'm guessing there is no other animal in the county who would pay their bills in the same way Misty does. The tumor like growth turned out to be a fatty deposit. Yay, some good news! The bad news was that she is sick, again. This time it is an upper respiratory infection. To be specific, she is dying, again. This time of doggy pneumonia. They had to take more x-rays to make sure those streuvites rocks had not grown back. They had to do blood work to make sure she didn't have heart worm. They had to put her on an IV fluid drip because her temperature was 105 degrees and she was dehydrated. They had to give her antibiotic shots to save her life. They had to do this, and that, and on, and on. And the bill was, once again, off the charts. I told the girl not to even say the amount aloud, because by this point, I don't even want to know.
I love my dog. I will be heart broken when she is gone. But, I'm telling you, it would have saved me THOUSANDS (all caps with an "s" on the end) of dollars had I opted to go to therapy with a psychiatrist instead of taking their advise and getting a pet for home therapy. It is impossible to budget for an animal as unlucky as Misty. She is truly the Million Dollar Dog. It has gotten to the point where we have invested so much in saving her life that we don't know when to say ENOUGH. Really, I would be lost without her. She has been with me every single day, excluding only my business trips, since the week I was released from the hospital. I've taken her in a duffel bag on the airplane when I fly out west to visit my mom. And for nine years, she has been a member of this family. She is my little shadow. She sits on my lap each day and she sleeps in my bed at night. She follows me from room to room and she knows my commands without me ever having to speak. A flick of the wrist, a tilt of the head and she knows exactly what I want. So how does one budget for that? What is the value? Should the cost be justified?
Today, I was reminded of how attached I am to this dog. She is an obvious strain on the budget. But she has been my therapy. I owe Misty for that. And, honestly, I love her all the more because of how she came to be in our home in the first place. When the vet told me that she was once again close to death, I started to cry. I'm not ready to give her up. Maybe I still need the therapy. Maybe I need to look at her each day so that I am reminded of how far I've come. I suppose she is worth more than any dollar amount, because how can one put a price on what she and I have gone through together? In my mind, that has to be priceless.
So at the end of next month, when Jeff asks me to look at next year's budget, I am going to have to say, "Budget this?" Because, really, I just can't do it.
