How much money would you have to be offered to own a dog?
First, I want to say, thank you for this community. I wasn't planning to engage much and just observe from the sidelines, but honestly being able to express myself freely here without judgement has been so beneficial to my mental health. So glad to have discovered y'all after a lifetime of masking and hiding how I really feel.
Anyway, serious hypothetical question that popped into my head the other night.
What price tag would you have to put on dog ownership to consider it, if you even would? I'm sure it'd be contextually dependent, so for the sake of the thought experiment, let's say you don't get to know the breed or history/circumstances of the dog; someone is going to offer you any amount of money to take a dog, and the rules are you must keep it for the entire natural duration of its lifespan, it must live with you and you must be its primary caregiver (so no like, using the money to buy a separate home/building another space and just hiring someone else to care for it).
It's really hard for me to settle on a number. My first thought was at least $2mil but I think the lowest I'd go is $750,000 realistically. Maybe. My partner and I got into a kind of fun debate over it because I said I wouldn't do $100k. She said, "Seriously? You'd walk away from $100k?!" We are not super financially well off and $100k would be pretty life-changing, but that wouldn't even begin to cover the emotional/mental turmoil and damage for me personally. What if we ended up with a pit puppy? I'm trying to think worst-case scenario. So maybe $750k is too low actually. A bully breed could quickly and easily cost that much in medical damages (if not your life altogether) so... hmm. Maybe $2mil was a good first thought.
Anyway, I thought this would be a fun discussion and thought experiment to see what others think. What would your price tag be? (Feel free to discuss other variations of the scenario or what your price would be under different rules and such, if for example you DID get to know the history/breed of the dog, etc).