Clean Run - April 2018 - 20

Savvy Finances for the
Fiscally Frisky Agility Handler
By Laura Hartwick, illustrations by author

Many of us dog agility handlers live in a continuous swirl of
check writing, credit carding, and PayPaling in our quests
towards dog agility excellence. Swirling like the water that
swooshes away, never to be seen again, with every ﬂush of the
toilet. We hope we have money left over for other things like
socks and rent. And all the other things looming in the giant
box of receipts and unopened envelopes at tax time. We're so
busy planting baby money seeds in the future of our dogs' developments in training and trialing, hoping them to bloom into
ﬂowery MACHs and Nationals or just a whole course without
messing up, that we don't always notice that we don't have
money left for, well, everything else.
Now, I'm no ﬁnancial planner, but dog training taught me to be
really good at planning things without ﬁnances. Good intentions, bad decisions, and a leash for every occasion. Oh, come
on. Turn that frown upside down! If you're like me, you would
rather do anything other than ﬁgure out ﬁnances and taxes.
Even a steady stream of eighties punk rock sing-a-longing
doesn't help. Have no fear. I've
devised a useful agility ﬁnancial
planning worksheet that's only
about dogs! We're going to use
some basic math to calculate
your monthly dog costs that
should help you with agilitybased investment strategies.
Bring the X back to taxes! Fire
up your favorite John Doe and
Exene tunes, and who better to
trust with all your money ideas
than someone you don't even
know, except for on Facebook,
who likes very much to draw
20

pictures of dogs and eat pie? The more pie, the more better the
pie chart! Get your pen ready, here we go!

Section 1: Startup Cost
Do you remember how much your dog cost? Maybe they were
free! Opened up the door on the side of the road and that was
that. Smart shopper.Your mileage may vary. If your dog came to
you via other arrangements, calculate their cost, and make sure
to ﬁgure in that gas or airfare cost if you needed to travel on a
long car ride or a roundtrip plane ticket across any oceans to
pick your dog up. Fifty-three and one-half cents per mile, please.
Kudos to you if you saved on hotel costs by never leaving the airport to pick up your sweet new puppy, even if it was in Austria!
Calculation: Dog cost number, divide by 100. Multiply by 1.5 per
dog in your household. This is your point value for Line 1A.
1A Total: ___________

Section 2: Dog
Stuff Cost
No matter your up-front dog
cost, you are still going to spend
a lot in sundry goods like food
and toys and beds and toys and
leashes and toys and collars and
toys. More than you ever imagined. Let's use a point system
for this.
Do you have an addiction to bedazzled jeweled leather collars
for every season and event? Add
10 points right now. Bonus saver
points if you just loop a rope
round their neck any time you
Clean Run | April 18

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - April 2018