What a difficult dog actually costs

Training is expensive. Two and a half thousand dollars is a real amount of money and anyone who waves that away is not being straight with you.

But almost nobody prices the other side of it, because the other side never arrives as a bill.

Add up last month

Not hypothetically. Actually go back through it.

How many walks did you take at an odd hour or on a worse route to avoid other dogs. How many times did you put the dog away before someone came round. How many invitations did you decline, or leave early, or not mention to anyone. How many times did you say he is usually fine to a stranger, in that particular voice.

How much did the daycare cost that you use because you cannot leave him. How much was the second lead, the harness that did not work, the head collar, the course you bought and did not finish.

None of that appears on a statement anywhere, which is exactly why it runs for years without anybody calling it expensive.

The two big line items nobody counts

The walk you stopped enjoying. Most people get a dog for a fairly specific picture. Trails, a beach, a pub garden, the dog off lead somewhere beautiful. If that picture has quietly been replaced by a tense forty minutes at six in the morning on a route chosen for emptiness, you are already paying, every single day, in the currency you actually bought the dog for.

The vet visit where they had to hold him down. This one is not about money either. A dog who cannot be handled gets less medical care, gets it later, and gets it under more stress. That has a real cost and it arrives at the worst possible moment.

The maths people should do and do not

A dog lives twelve to fourteen years. If you get this sorted at one, you have eleven good years. If you sort it at four, because it took three years of trying things, you have eight, and you paid for three years of management in the meantime.

The money is not really the variable. The variable is how many of the years are the ones you wanted.

And I would rather you did the arithmetic honestly than took my word for it. It might tell you the thing you have is manageable and not worth two and a half thousand dollars, and that is a completely reasonable conclusion to reach.

What I am not saying

I am not saying spend money you do not have. That is a genuinely bad idea and the pressure to do it in this industry is worse than it should be.

There are things that cost nothing. The six checks on this site cost nothing. Most of what is written here costs nothing. A lot of people take that and sort themselves out and I am pleased when they do.

What I am saying is that doing nothing is not free. It is just billed differently, in small amounts, to an account nobody checks.

How to decide

Write down what last month cost you in the terms above. Not money. Avoided things, changed routes, declined invitations, arguments about the dog.

Then ask whether next month is going to be different on its own. If the honest answer is that nothing is changing, you have your answer, and it does not have to be me. Any competent help is better than another year of quietly paying.

If the honest answer is that something has already shifted and it is heading the right way, then keep going and do not spend the money. That is a real outcome and it happens more than people in my position tend to admit.