The Advice Mensch needs your letters! Please email [email protected] with questions and concerns (current or anticipated) that you would like him to address. Jonathan Harris is a synagogue administrator and writer-editor living in San Francisco with his wife, three daughters, a dog and an ungrateful cat.
I recently learned my mother has scheduled a hip replacement for her 8-year-old German shepherd at a cost of more than $5,000. She is a 78-year-old widow who lives independently with the help of Social Security and pension benefits that almost, but not quite, cover her needs. I send her $1,000 each month to help make ends meet. With the high cost of living in the Bay Area, and having two school-age children, my contribution is not an insignificant expense. I am glad I can afford it and believe it fulfills a duty I have to my mother and late father. However, I’m uncomfortable with her spending $5,000 on her dog when I am helping her financially and struggling to save for college for my kids and my own retirement. She loves her dog, but I am not willing to help support this surgery. — Gary
Dear Gary: Your devotion as a son and a father is laudable. Clearly, you are someone who cares immensely about your family and sacrifices accordingly. Before proffering advice, Mensch would like to make it known that he has lived with dogs and cats his entire life and currently has one of each, along with one daughter in college and two others he hopes to send.
Your mother’s dog is no doubt an important part of her life and probably, as pets do, contributes to her well-being and good health. Dogs get us up in the morning and require that we start and end each day with a walk outside. They provide companionship, joy, and unconditional love. A loving cat in the home can soothe and amuse us. And many studies point to the fact that a pet in the home of an aging adult can lead to measureable health benefits, including lower blood pressure and elevated mood.
That being said, you might infer that Mensch would advise you to suck it up and let your mom do what she must to preserve the health of her beloved dog. But that is not the case.
Your mother’s shepherd is 8 years old. Most experts put the average lifespan of that breed between 9 and 13 years. By any measure, her dog is near the end of its natural life. Your kids have many decades ahead of them (God willing). Mensch is unequivocal in his opinion that their futures, including the funding of their education, take precedence over that of the dog.
You have provided generous support to your mother at a cost to yourself and your children. And your children no doubt benefit from having their grandmother supported and the example you set as a son. However, the vast majority of us with finite resources have tough choices to make, especially when the going gets tough. More than $5,000 growing in a college fund seems like a much smarter allocation of resources, and arguably a more compassionate one, than the purchase of an artificial hip for a dog with, at best, a few years of life ahead.
So how do you approach this situation? Mensch recommends a frank discussion with your mother. Make clear to her your financial situation and the weight of the responsibilities you feel to both her and your children — her grandchildren. Your financial stake in the matter gives you the right to question her intentions. What if the dog’s other hip goes south, or it contracts cancer? How much is too much?
Many will disagree, but Mensch has come to believe, based on personal experience, that pets, unlike people we love and lose, actually are replaceable. According to the ASPCA, 3.9 million dogs enter shelters each year, and 1.2 million of those are euthanized because they are not adopted. It is all but assured that the adoption of a new, younger dog will enhance the life of your mom and maybe even put a bit of a spring in her old shepherd’s step for a while. In the long run, the only life truly enhanced by a $5,000 hip replacement for an old dog is the vet’s.