Rent a Pet: Only for the Wealthy

It looks like another company has stolen one of my ideas. It one of those ideas that you often just mention off-handedly, not seriously. However, now you can rent a pet from FlexPetz . I never really thought the rent-a-pet business would see light of day. I assumed there would be just too many background checks to get it off the ground. And let’s be honest, the allegations surrounding Michael Vick isn’t going to help the rent-a-pet “industry.”

I’d like to do the trial pet thing. I’m not sure how much maintanence a dog is. I can estimate quite a bit, but I don’t know what would happen when we are at work. However, will I be a part-time dog owner? Not in at the price that FlexPetz puts on it. To start there is a one-time $150 registration charge. There’s also an annual account maintenance of $100 a year (yes, I’m rounding up the nickel). You’d think that would be enough of the fees, but we arent done yet… no, not even close. There’s a monthly membership fee of $50 (again, I’m exaggerating by the nickel). For those too lazy to do the math we are at $850 and you don’t have a pet yet. If you actually want to take advantage of the fees, you have to pay a “Daily Doggy Time “charge for (each day or part of a day) you have a dog.” Weekdays will cost you $25 each part of a day, but you’ll have to shell out $40 on the weekends – and in FlexPets world, every weekend is a three day one, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Note that this rental is also subject to sales tax.

So let’s say you want to spend one weekend a month with a dog. We’ll assume that you pick him up on Saturday and return him on Monday. That will be $105 for those three days. For the first year you’ll spend $2110 for around 30 days with a dog. It’s really 36 days you are paying for, but you don’t get the full 24 hours, so I’m estimating the 30. That works out to $58 a day or about what I pay for my mortgage. It can get more expensive though. You can have your dog picked up and dropped off to you for $35.00 round trip (or $17.50 one way). There’s also a late fee of $75 if you do not return the dog on-time – FlexPetz closes at 6PM, so I imagine this common. They are nice enough to give you a grace period of an hour on that next day to avoid the fee.

Two-thirds of my picking-up-women-in-the-park plan is now readily available. What is this three point plan? You don’t need to do anything just sit there with a great car, a cute puppy, and a cute baby. You can now rent two of the three. I hope that we’re never able to rent the third.