As my wife and I were looking for a new “pet”, Julie invited us to watch some training at Gustavo’s. Needless to say, I was impressed by what I saw and it shifted my perception of what one could teach the family dog. During a break in the action, I asked Gustavo how many hours of work it takes to get a dog to this point (trial ready). He stares ahead for a moment to ponder a number, but just looks at me, shakes his head a little, and replies “a lot”. Now that I have been at it for a little bit I feel I can make a rough approximation as to what it will cost me, time-wise, to get Vander and me through our BH. Here it goes…
I am assuming my BH will take place on June 6th because as near as I can tell, this is the first trial in Michigan in 2013. I have been training Vander for 10 months (he is 14 months old). So in June we will have had 16 months of training.
But this is just training time to get titles. What about the free time in general I spend with Vander every year? For simplicity, I will not include miscellaneous time like throwing the ball, checking on him, telling him not to chase the cat, etc… 🙂
Every year there are 8760 hours. If I get 8 hours of sleep a night then that means I am awake for 5840 hours per year. There are 260 working days and I am gone for 9 hours (8 working and 1 commuting) during a work day so now we are down to 3500 hours of time I am awake and free to do anything. Of those, Vander gets 725. That is 20% of my free time! If Vander makes it to 12 years old that will mean we will have given Vander 8700 hours of time. So in his life we will have spent a full year, or 2.5 years of free time, doing dog-centered activities. I guess this is why we consider him more than the family dog. He is “family”. 🙂
As a licensed engineer and math instructor at the local college I appreciate your use of mathematics and reasoning. So now, the next time a student asks the everlasting, trite question of “When am I ever going to use this stuff,” I’ll simply reply, “When you get a GSD.”
LOLOLOL
Brian as I read your post all I kept thinking was “you are such an engineer!”
Me too!!!!!
And this is why I hate math, I can’t follow it all the way to the end. 😀
Great post!!
Josie, you and I can stick with our “Honey Badger” motto!
Good lord! While I was reading this I thought to myself, “this guy has GOT to be an engineer!”
I thought it was just a normal post, but I’m an engineer, too.
It’s funny, I compete in professional marathon canoe racing, and we figure a minimum of 250 and upper range of 350 hours per year of training, plus races. I guess that means it takes about the same amount of time to train me as a GSD.
Add the canoe training time to the GSD time, and it’s no wonder I don’t get anything done around the house.
As engineers we are taught to list all of our assumptions and show all our work! Otherwise we get NO credit! 🙂
Ok, so I failed calc in college, but I say for sure that Roman takes up about 90% of my time…not even kidding. However, I wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂