How much is that doggy . . . ?

Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Desi gets a shampoo and an ear massage from Kim Thom at Mudpuppy....
Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Desi gets a shampoo and an ear massage from Kim Thom at Mudpuppy. Photo by Peter McIntosh.
Bichon-Maltese-Shih Tzu Charli, with ''mum'' Diane Hiku is typical of a trend towards multi cross...
Bichon-Maltese-Shih Tzu Charli, with ''mum'' Diane Hiku is typical of a trend towards multi cross-bred dogs in Dunedin. Photo by Peter Mcintosh.
Dave McPhee has spent thousands on Gypsy (left), and no doubt would on his other mate Ollie ...
Dave McPhee has spent thousands on Gypsy (left), and no doubt would on his other mate Ollie (right ) too. Photo by Chris O'Connor.
Mosgiel vet Paul Evans checks out Gypsy, following a course of chemotherapy. Photo by Stephen...
Mosgiel vet Paul Evans checks out Gypsy, following a course of chemotherapy. Photo by Stephen Jaquiery.

Dogs make their owners very happy. But why is having a dog becoming more of a financial commitment than it ever was? Debbie Porteous takes a look at a Dunedin dog's world.

A dog's life is not, in many cases, the hard and unpleasant thing it might once have been considered to be.

In fact a dog's life can be quite nice these days.

Sleeping in beds, hair cuts and styles - more often than some of their owners - regular pedicures, health insurance, fine cuisine and expensive medical treatments for conditions and injuries that would once, not so long ago, have almost certainly spelled the end for a dog, are commonplace.

Pet dogs have gone from being something kept in a kennel in the backyard and allowed inside maybe on the coldest day of the year, to being regarded as ''children'' to be made comfortable and happy, kept healthy and cleaned up after, educated and sometimes even dressed, in the vein of a small human.

Dogs have, of course, always been popular pets everywhere, including in Dunedin.

But in the past five years Dunedin groomer Kimberley Thom has noticed a marked trend.

There has been an explosion of small dogs in the city, most of them cross-bred, many of them requiring grooming to deal to knots, dirt and smells - you don't want a smelly dog in bed with you. Do you?

Thom began grooming dogs 12 years ago. Starting out in a shed at the back of the garden, she expanded to a garage and seven years ago bought Mudpuppy in Caversham.

Mudpuppy is now one of at least 12 grooming businesses in Dunedin.

She employs seven grooming staff and still her grooming and doggy day care - where dogs are left while owners work, to help socialise them, because they can't be left at home while workers are there, or because they bark too much - services having waiting lists.

People increasingly regard their dogs as a family member these days, Thom says.

One of her clients, Diane Hiku, says there is no doubt about the status of 2-year-old Bichon-Maltese-Shih Tzu Charli, in her house.

''I said to my husband, thank god we don't have children, because this dog is spoiled rotten.''

Charli has been going to doggy day care at Mudpuppy once a week to get her used to being around other dogs, has several items of clothing and a personal groomer who comes to the house.

When Charli was a puppy Hiku trained her to sleep in a basket, but during a period of illness her husband coaxed the dog into the bed, and now Charli has the lion's share of that.

''She has this much (arms open wide) and we have this much (fingers pinched nearly together). But that's OK, because we love her so much.''

Charli, Hiku says, suffers from anxiety when she is apart from ''her parents'' and this year she will be going on holiday too, because Hiku cannot bear to leave her at a kennel.

She is a special dog, bought not long after the death of Hiku's treasured father, Charlie.

''She is very special, but she's so naughty because we spoil her, but you know my dad was quite cheeky and it's like there's a bit of him living on in her.''

Plenty of dogs like Charli can be seen any given day at St Kilda Beach, John Wilson Ocean Dr or any Dunedin dog park, and Thom says the trend towards small dogs is marked.

Almost every new dog that comes into her store these days has Shih Tzu or Lhasa Apso in the list of its breeding background.

Thom puts it down to the money that can be made from cross-breeding.

Selling for up $700, a lot of money can made quickly from such puppies, where the pedigrees are upwards of $1200 each.

But cross-breeding can have its issues.

''The gene pool in New Zealand is not that big.''

And not knowing the lineage of a dog, owners cannot know what health issues may have been bred into them.

Whatever the breed, people are starting to be less shy of trying something different and are definitely not shy of spending money on their dogs, she says.

Mudpuppy offers everything from grooming - a full, up to 2-hour, shampoo, coat and nail clip and/or style, can cost up to $60 and is recommended for many dogs every 6-8 weeks - to accessories.

What self-respecting dog would be without a hoodie ($59), an oilskin jacket ($89), some doggy Parfum ($24.95) or a diamante collar ($24); to a hair dying service, ''huge'' in Auckland and overseas, but still treated as a bit of a novelty in Dunedin.

Thom used to stock sunglasses for dogs, but, strangely, demand in Dunedin was not high.

Then there is the food. While not necessarily more expensive, increasingly her customers are moving to supplement their dog's scientifically developed highly nutritional kibble with actual meat. You read it here. Dogs eating meat.

''People are going back a bit to what dogs would have eaten in the wild.''

Half her store is filled with freezers offering every meaty offering imaginable, from chopped horse, to duck necks and minced salmon.

And it is pet food where Mosgiel vet Paul Evans has seen the biggest changes in his almost 40 years in animal care.

These days vets are trained in nutrition and use diets to treat a wide range of health issues for pets, from weight to skin conditions and depression, and there are special diets for animals with cancer and Alzheimer's, he says.

''When I first put out some weight reducing cans of food honestly they rusted, they sat on the shelves for so long. When things like Eukanuba and Hills Science Diet came out, I thought: ''god, nobody'd ever pay for that kind of thing, it's too expensive. But I had the guts to put 'em on the shelf and it just took off.''

He puts it down to an appreciation that the diets we fed our animals were not optimum, and the science. But it was not cheap.

''I feed my dogs that and I get it at staff discount and even so I'm thinking, man that's expensive.''

Nevertheless, the really big-ticket item when it comes to how far people are willing to go for their pet pooches nowadays is what they are willing to pay to fix their dog's ills.

Where a broken leg, epilepsy or cancer might have been the death knell for a dog not so long ago, they are increasingly less so thanks in large part to leaps forward in technology.

Previously, if a vet could not sort it out themselves at their clinic, that was the end of the line, says Evans.

''Now we have animal skin specialists and eye specialists; you can send your X-rays anywhere for another opinion. We are GPs at the coal face of every science.''

With more accurate diagnoses come more specific treatment options, and bigger price tags.

Evans recently had a client with a German Shepherd that had a fungal infection in its spine.

The owner took it to Christchurch for an MRI, ultrasound guided biopsy and numerous blood cultures.

A treatment plan was identified, at about $5000, but the prognosis was not good and having already spent about that much the owner decided against it.

''Unfortunately, the dog subsequently died, but at least we knew what it had and were able to give the owners a prognosis. They were happy to do what they could for their dog.''

Brighton dog lover Dave McPhee has spent up to $15,000 on his best mate.

Ten-year-old German short-haired pointer Gypsy, along with 5-year-old Ollie, is also his work colleague and companionMcPhee is unapologetic about how he feels about his dogs.

''They are just very, very special dogs.''

He knows they are not people, but short of sleeping in beds, they may as well be.

The dogs go to work with McPhee every day. They have a cage in the back of the ute, but Gypsy likes to ride up front with McPhee.

If for some reason they can't go on a job, they settle down on the electric blanket on their couch at the depot, or take a trot in their custom-built run when they need to stretch their legs.

Gypsy, you see, feels the cold since part of her spleen was removed when a 2.4kg cancerous tumour was cut out. She has recently completed a round of follow-up chemotherapy.

At home, there are three cats, one of which has had a leg amputated to cancer as well.

He ''didn't care'' about the cost of treatment for Gypsy so far - she has previously had a broken hip fixed - he says, because he loves his dog.

''It's not about the money.''

Evans says he is increasingly seeing people willing to spend that much on their pets.

''Once upon a time I would have thought it was stupidity or absolute madness, but now I know it's not my call; all I can do is give them the options available and let them make up their own minds.''

While having all of this knowledge could create tricky emotional situations, most often there was not even a question about doing it.

''Because of their attachment to the animal they want to do their best by it, so they are not prepared to just pull out and say it can't be fixed and put the animal to sleep.''

There were, of course, people who could simply not afford to spend that much on their pet.

Pet insurance was still not common among Mosgiel pet owners, though more had it now.

The Companion Animal Council's most recent survey, in 2011, found pet insurance - which costs anywhere from $27 to $50 a month for a dog and from $18 a month for a cat - was slowly becoming more common. At that time, 5% of cat owners and 8% of dog owners had insured their animals.

SPCA executive director Bob Kerridge told the The New Zealand Herald earlier this year the best way to make insurance pay was to look for a policy that covered the essentials, such as routine vaccinations.

One insurance company said its biggest claim was for $22,000, while another's was for $12,000 for spinal injury, and both said the most common claims were for foreign body ingestion and accidents.

Evans says behavioural issues are more common, too, as pets are increasingly viewed and treated as family members, leading people to sometimes lose sight of the fact their pets are not little people.

''Its really why we have puppy preschools - we never had those 40 years ago - so we can give the owners some advice about issues like if you are having a dog on our bed or on your furniture you are really elevating it to your level, so you are running the risk of dominant aggression, and things like that.''

He agreed there was more cross-breeding, but on some levels felt it was helping, with breed-related things like snappy or difficult behaviour slowly being bred out.

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