🌙🐩 What Does It Really Cost to Say Yes?

It was another routine, calm day here at the Poodle Farm.

I’m interviewing heavily while looking at budgets, and in general doing all those things you have to do to make a business continue to roll.

Carolina Poodle Rescue is a business. We’re simply a nonprofit business, and I’ve discovered that a lot of people don’t really understand what that means.

One of the questions I ask applicants when I interview them is, “We are a nonprofit. Do you know what that means?”

Most have a vague notion. But very few really understand.

So I use hamburgers.

If it costs McDonald’s $1 to make a hamburger, would they sell that hamburger for 50 cents?

Everybody laughs.

Of course not.

They might sell that hamburger for $2. The difference between what it costs them to produce something and what someone pays for it is how a traditional business makes money.

Now turn that model upside down.

That’s us.

It costs us about $360 per month to care for one dog at today’s basic prices.

That number isn’t glamorous. It includes food, electricity, property expenses, supplies, the gas that goes into the vans and all the other things it takes to keep this place operating every single day.

But every bit of it is essential.

It is what allows us to care for the dogs already here. It lets us give time to the dogs who have been waiting longer for their families.

And it allows us to say yes to another dog.

We average about 200 dogs in residence every month.

You can do the math.

And that doesn’t include getting a newly arrived dog medically ready for adoption.

Veterinary costs have skyrocketed, as anyone with a dog already knows. Right now, we are spending an average of about $640 in medical care for each new dog we prepare for adoption.

Our adoption fees generally range from $499 to $699.

So where does the rest come from?

That’s where I get to explain what a nonprofit really means.

We find something that is wrong in the world, and we figure out how to make some small part of it right.

For us, it’s too many dogs and not enough homes. It’s dogs who don’t receive the medical care they need. It’s dogs whose families can no longer care for them.

And tonight, it is dogs like Sue.

Sue is weighing heavily on my mind.

She is a small standard poodle, about 16 inches at the shoulder.

She weighs 12 pounds.

She should weigh somewhere around 35.

I don’t yet know why this child has been allowed to get into this condition. Part of me is actually hoping we find an underlying medical reason because the alternative is very difficult to think about.

Tonight Caleb texted me that she ate robustly.

Those might be the two best words I heard all day.

She still can’t really walk. She can stand for a few minutes and go potty, and that’s about it.

But she ate.

Today we also said hello to little Adrian, some sort of golden retriever doodly maybe mix puppy who was found as a stray.

I checked her teeth.

She may be eight weeks old.

And she’s very, very thin, too.

Leon will catch you up on all of our other newcomers next week in Welcome Wednesday, but tonight these two are heavy on my mind.

They may blow that $640 average medical cost right out of the water.

I don’t know yet.

What I do know is that we’re here for them.

And we’re also on puppy watch tonight.

Sweet Sandy, the very first dog we loaded up from the hoarding case (she lived too much) three weeks ago, looks like she may be having her puppies tonight.

I think this is her first litter. She’s scared. She doesn’t quite understand what’s happening to her.

But she doesn’t have to understand everything tonight. She just needs to know that someone is here.

And we are. Whether this becomes an easy night and she does it all on her own with our moral support or whether we end up at the ER for a C-section, we are here for her. Life is precious.

So that’s what a nonprofit is.

It isn’t a business that doesn’t need money. It isn’t a group that simply “begs for money,” as some of my applicants seem to think when they first walk into my office.

It is a business built around a problem that the traditional marketplace cannot fix.

Our bottom line isn’t a dividend.

It’s Sue eating dinner.

It’s Adrian getting a fresh start.

It’s Sandy having her babies where it is safe and clean.

It’s 200 dogs sleeping tonight knowing breakfast will come tomorrow.

And the difference between what all of that costs and what we can earn ourselves?

That’s you.

Tonight we’re doing what we do.

And we’re doing it because of you.❤️🐾

Good night from the Poodle Farm. 🌙🐩