Debra Matwychuk
From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 12:00AM EDT Last updated on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 3:12AM EDT
People make rational choices and act in self-interested ways – these are two assumptions underlying some of the principles of economic theory. In order to understand the absurdity of these ideas you need only a little life experience. It seems obvious that the person who formulated said laws did not have children.
I have learned a big lesson in this regard. I now know that the most critical error a parent can make is the acquisition of a puppy based on a child's emotion-wrenched and fickle promises of constant care. In the face of overwhelmingly negative and readily available evidence, the acquisition of a pet under these circumstances is a classic example of irrational (and self-destructive) behaviour. Those of you who have already fallen into this trap need read no further; the rest please take notes.
I fell into the pet trap 10 years ago because of my son's begging for a dog. It didn't help that the first misstep down this arduous road was a visit to the kennel to view four-week-old puppies. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Grey – a wire-haired pointing Griffon puppy – moved in with us one spring, and so began our economic, social and family woes.
To begin with basics, I soon learned that “feeding the dog” does not mean pouring food into a bowl twice a day. Feeding the dog means paying for dog food, and this is a cost typically borne, given our current child-labour laws, by the adults of the family. As it happens, Grey had a selective digestive tract and only the most expensive dog food was satisfactory.
While we're on the topic of expenses, it's worth mentioning that his wire-hair coat required special care by a trained professional. His trips to the hairdresser cost more than my own cuts and colour.
Vet bills began to mount when he developed diabetes at a young age and required insulin injections twice daily. Dog care became complicated – I returned from a business trip once to an $800 charge after an unfortunate butter tart incident at the sitter's. After eating the entire pan, Grey had to have his stomach pumped. The staff at the vet's office loved him too so they thought they were doing me a favour.
Then there were the tangible costs of collateral damage. From the beginning and in fact right up to the end, Grey insisted on stereotypical puppy behaviour, eating everything in sight. One of the earliest disasters was the devouring of a made-from-scratch lemon birthday cake, a precious replica of that month's Gourmet magazine cover shot.
Much less flavourful, he chewed his way through pages A through C of the telephone directory, making the search for acupuncturists or curling clubs all the more challenging. A little later, it was the new track lighting waiting to be installed in the basement – not only were the track and pot holders mangled into useless bits of metal and plastic, but the halogen light bulbs were consumed as well. This presented a secondary set of problems that need not be discussed here.
But he was undeniably cute, resembling a steel-wool pad that had seen too many pots and pans, set atop stilt-length legs. He had bushy eyebrows and a crooked, matted mustache. Even the most hard-hearted of animal haters (specifically, my sister, who will deny all of this) held him in secret admiration.
Admittedly, she may have been favourably influenced by the fact that he was the only one willing to accompany her to the deck in freezing weather for a cigarette. Come to think of it, she might have even been responsible for his nicotine habit – there was a strange incident a few years later when he chewed my houseguests' smoking-cessation gum, causing a feud between husband and wife, each of whom seemed to need the hit more than the other.
And finally, there were the domestic disputes over exercise. Born to the sporting side of the dog family, Grey's DNA was geared to workouts. If my teenage son had only realized what a chick magnet this dog was, he might have spent many more hours walking him. The truth is, despite all promises, he actually walked the dog for about 15 minutes every two to three weeks.
Conversely, I might as well have been training for a semi-annual marathon. By conservative estimates, I ran and walked with the dog an average of five kilometres twice a day, every single day, all year for several years. More precisely, this resulted in approximately 25,550 kilometres travelled over a seven-year period (that was me, not the dog, who probably ran five times that amount and definitely would have beat me in any given contest).
Sadly, we eventually lost Grey to diabetes. Without the camaraderie and the involuntary discipline, I am no longer in race shape at a moment's notice. True, my monthly household budget has shrunk, and I have learned my lesson regarding naive commitments.
Unfortunately, my son does not likely realize the significance of any of this, but I can let that go for now. I know that another principle of economics is about to bite the dust – the one that states the past cannot be used to predict the future. History is bound to repeat itself once he has children of his own.
Debra Matwychuk lives in Vancouver.
Illustration by Rachel Ann Lindsay.
Join the Discussion: