The cost of owning a dog – 12th October 2008

Suffering from a dose of man-flu has given me an excuse to drop the much required manual work in the garden and take a retrospective look at the cost of dog ownership. Working on the premise that you get out what you put in I decided, this morning, to work out exactly what I had put in and try to give it a value. Grace is now 33 months old. Over these 33 months I have devoted on average of one hour a day to training in the week and on Saturdays, often more on a Sunday. This gives me a figure of around 1200 hours devoted to training so far – if I give this a nominal value of £5.00 per hour this totals £6,000 in training. Obviously this time comes for free but it still has a nominal worth. Add to this the cost of fuel, driving to and fro from training areas and gun dog trainers, and it would seem I have spent about another £1400. If I then cost in the amount I have spent on gun dog training classes – about £250, plus the cost of food at £500, and insurance at £330 and the total starts to look a little daunting. If I then cost in the purchase price of the dog, plus leads, bedding and the general paraphernalia that accompanies dog ownership the total comes to over £9,000!

Obviously my input doesn’t really carry a financial cost, but even if you deduct this you are still looking at an actual cost of over £3,000 so far, and she isn’t yet 3 years old. I am also lucky enough to live very close to a moorland upon which I have permission to train a dog, so I don’t have to drive far to train. I haven’t even attempted to factor the ‘cost’ of domestic arguments caused by lack of consistency in commands at the puppy stage!

So, what about the other side of the equation, I have outlined what I have put in…so what do I get out of it? This diary pretty much sums it up. When you are out on a moorland with your dog working well and it swings around to a sudden point; you go to join it and both flush a bird, the dog drops and the bird wings away, or you work with a number of handlers covering a beat of about 600 yards and find birds that you have been told just don’t exist in this particular patch of moorland, or you just stand and watch your dog work the last 5 minutes of the day as the sun’s rays come almost horizontally across the heather before heading down hill back home. Is it worth it? Of course, no question at all.

So yes, it appears you do get out exactly what you put in.