Posted on Wednesday, 13th February 2008 by R.J.
Ever since we moved to Nevada we’ve been looking for another Dachshund. We already had one (a male named Jasper) and we wanted to get a female to give him some companionship. I know it sounds crazy, but ever since my wife started working Jasper has been very depressed. Most days he just lays on his bed waiting for her to get home. Not even getting up to eat until my wife’s home. It was very odd.
So we’ve been looking for a female but they seemed to be somewhat of a rare breed out here. The ones we did find were from stores and they cost between $1,000-1,700 for pet AKC registration. Now, to me, that’s a tad bit on the ridiculous side of things. We got our male for $350 with full AKC registration… Albeit, while we were living in Oklahoma.
Well a couple weeks ago we found an ad in the paper for Dachshunds for only $300! I figured there had to be something wrong with them (mixed-breed, no registration, pet registration, etc.), but we called, made an appointment, and eventually came home with a beautiful little girl.
The dogs are doing great. They play with each other all day and sleep together at night. They’re already really good friends.
But one of the thing we really didn’t account for in our frenzy to get this dog for so cheap was how much extra she’s going to cost us per month. It started off with my wife bringing home “puppy-sized” toys. The toys for the bigger dog are much too big for a puppy, right? $20 here. And, well, we certainly can’t feed them the same kind of food right? Puppies need puppy chow! $15 there. What about baths? She’s only 8-weeks, she can’t use normal dog shampoo. $9 for that.
And that’s just the start. What about all the time and effort I have to put in cleaning up twice the dog droppings? Giving two dogs a bath instead of one? Clipping two dogs nails? Feeding and watering two dogs? Letting two dogs outside multiple times a day to use the bathroom? Time is money, and the dogs need a lot of our time.
We find ourselves buying more than twice the dog food now. Why is that? You’d think since she’s a puppy she couldn’t eat as much, right? Wrong. They have turned eating into a competition! They have to eat their own food faster than the other one so they can hurry and get to the other bowl before it runs out.
And don’t even get me started on the price to replace stuff that the puppy chewed up. Dachshunds seem to have an affinity for chewing up cords for really expensive electronics. The cost of that $300 dog can quickly become several hundred dollars higher.
While we don’t regret buying the puppy, I thought I would throw this out there for other people so they can think through the entire purchase like we (unfortunately) didn’t.
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