I have two sharpei dogs that are a big part of my life. Basically, my tiny house is just a huge kennel now, what with the hair and the smell and the ongoing battle to remove the dog poo from the backyard...
First there is Madge, who'll be 7 in March. I've had her since she was a puppy. She's big, butch, dominant, hates exercise and loves to eat. Mrs Possum says she's a lot like me. She might be right. This is Madge, exhausted after a walk :
And then there is Meg. Meg came to me 4 and a half years ago from the SPCA. She'd been really horribly abused - starved and left outside by her owner. She had mange, no hair, back legs and tail had been broken, and was severely underweight. They weren't sure whether she would survive when they picked her up. A friend of mine was a volunteer there, and when Meg got better my friend suggested to the SPCA that I might be able to adopt her. So, I went down and fell in love with her straight away. She was just adorable, and so loving. I guess I hadn't factored in the difference that two dogs would make compared to one! Anyway, Meg came home with me. They weren't sure how old she was, but I was told that she was really sickly, and probably would only live for 18 months, that I should take her home and give her a good last year or so. Luckily we've had at least three times that now. Here's Meg. We reckon she's probably about 7 or 8 (given the twisted stomach saga). She's our lemo. Mrs Possum loves Meg the most, i think she relates to her lemo-ness and passive nature.
I've been trying to involve them in my frugality exercise. It's working! I'm trying out some dog food combinations to see where we can make some cuts without compromising their health or nutrition. They eat different things - Meg had a twisted stomach last September, so is only allowed "dry food", whereas Madge eats biscuits.
I had a look on some websites about homemade dogfood, to see if there's anything that would be good to make, cheaper or with ingredients that I can come by easily. Nothing yet has inspired me (or them), until I came across something that suggested including rice in their meals would be good for them.
Previously, Meg used to have a tin of dogfood each day, about $2.60. I've checked with the vet, and I can substitute half of that for rice. We've been doing that for about 6 weeks, and it's really working. She likes it, her coat is glossy and it doesn't seem to be a problem. I but the big 2kg bags of rice, about $2.50. I make it in big amounts which lasts for three days. A bag of rice lasts around 10 days, all up. So, before I was spending $18 a week on food for Meg, now it's $11. Madge is on a diet, she's a fat bastard like her mama, so we've reduced the quantity of dry food we have by about a quarter. She's doing well too! Her food works out to about $2 per kg, we were having just over 5kg a week. Now we're down to about 4. So, that was $10 down to $8.
Total frugal savings for the girls = $9 every week. It definitely adds up, I'll be putting that into my ongoing indirect savings calculator to the right each week, that's for sure!
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