Laura Rowley Money & Happiness

I made a shocking discovery in the last few weeks: I'm a dog person.

But this isn't a column about whether it makes financial sense to invest in a pet. It's more about when it makes sense to forget about money altogether, and embrace the simple pleasures you thought you had to put aside when you became an adult.

Some Pet Memories

I was raised in a home with 10 brothers and sisters, several with severe allergies. Understandably, pets were limited to miniature turtles (before they were found to carry salmonella) and goldfish (usually won at a school fair by tossing a ping-pong ball into their bowl).

The goldfish rarely lasted long. We'd always get one carnivore in the batch who'd eat the others; or they'd gorge themselves to death after we all took turns shaking flaky food into the tank; or they'd commit suicide, shooting straight out of the water and swan-diving over the edge, driven to madness by the cacophony of children banging on the glass, or traumatized by the green plastic army men that periodically appeared in their tank, rifles at the ready.

The turtles didn't fare any better. Saddled with sitcom names like Laverne and Shirley, they'd topple off the little plastic island (with its little plastic palm tree) in the center of their bowl and onto their backs, and suffocate in the night. My brother took one for a walk in the kitchen while my mother was unloading groceries. It met its demise when a Campbell's tomato soup can slipped from her grasp; the result was like some sort of Warholian performance art gone horribly awry. Another was taken for a stroll in the backyard and never seen again.

My mother would occasionally let us to borrow the eyedropper from the medicine cabinet to feed abandoned kittens we'd find in the prairie behind the house. (Although I lived just a block from the Chicago city border, vacant lots overgrown with native flora and fauna were called prairies in those days.) We'd bundle the rescued felines in towels and play with them for a few hours before my mother called the ASPCA, assuring us that they'd be placed in a good home. I suspect many of them ended up in a heavenly home.

A Dog Lover Is Born

As I got older, I simply adopted my parents' views by osmosis: Dogs were messy; they shed; they might bite; they had to be walked at ungodly hours of the morning and night, in the snow and rain; you had to pick up after them; they were too much responsibility; they never grow up; and, perhaps most important -- at least to a personal finance columnist -- they cost too much. Veterinarians, kennels, food, leashes, silly little winter sweaters, toys. Why would you ever get a dog?

Then I had three children of my own, all consummate animal lovers; I figured they got that gene from their father, who bought a golden retriever with his newspaper-route money at age 11. When my oldest was 5, I promised she could have a dog when she was 11, assuming this pledge would be forgotten and float away in the parental-promise ether. Instead, every year on her birthday she would proclaim, "I'm one year closer to getting my dog!"

Still, I didn't relent. Instead, I let the kids surf dog web sites, and we became dog voyeurs, going to the local dog park to play with other people's pets. I thought this would satisfy their dog craving. Instead, it intensified their desire, and my own stony prejudices against dogs began to crumble.

Chance Encounter

One day at the dog park -- 6 months before my daughter's 11th birthday -- I began chatting with a woman named Katie, who had an adorable Toto-like dog named Fredo. I asked her if she'd always been a dog person. No, Katie answered, she never had a dog as a kid, but once she got Fredo, it changed her whole outlook. I said I could never deal with a puppy. She suggested I go to the pound and get a one-year-old dog. I replied that my kids were obsessed with a particular breed of dog, the cavalier King Charles spaniel.

That's so weird, she said. My cousin has a one-year-old cavalier King Charles spaniel. She's thinking about selling it, because she just opened a business and the dog is alone all day.

I gave Katie my card, and two weeks later I was driving home with Sammy and all her stuff -- crate, leashes, bedding, toys, and a month's supply of food. Katie's cousin had bought Sammy from a breeder in Ireland (which really sealed the deal, since my heritage is all Irish). Sammy had her shots, was neutered, and had been meticulously trained -- her owner even gave me a bell for the back door, which Sammy jumps up and rings when she needs to use the facilities.

And yes, she was expensive. I am rarely spontaneous about money -- especially a purchase that requires ongoing maintenance -- but found myself enthusiastically writing a rather large check for a purebred dog (although it was less than half of her original cost).

Money's No Object

The Internet is rife with absurd calculations on the expense of owning a dog over its lifetime -- I found estimates ranging from $5,000 to $49,000. But it's kind of like looking at those government figures on the cost of raising a child. Once you hold the real deal in your arms, you never think about the experience in those terms.

We're crazy about Sammy; she's changed the dynamics of our family. The kids bound out of bed and down the stairs in the morning to see her, instead of grumbling and diving under their covers. They're kinder to each other. Everyone seems to laugh more (especially when Sammy the exterminator chases and devours a low-flying moth). Although the house is more crowded, it's somehow more peaceful. And Sammy is excellent company, sitting on the green chair in my home office, always game for a stress-relieving walk.

I eventually realized that the kids had gotten that animal-loving gene from me. I was shocked to rediscover my inner pet-person, the one who had forgotten her love of goldfish and turtles and the heartbreaking cry of abandoned kittens.

Sammy will make a dent in our budget for years to come, but I don't care. In this case, I found that money can buy you love -- at least puppy love.