It's 6:10 on a Monday morning in early March, and the radiator under the living room window has just started ticking, the sound our house makes when the boiler kicks on and the old cast iron warms up. Hank is stretched across the back door like a draft stopper, waiting for someone to notice that it's breakfast time. Mabel is on the shelf above the radiator, where she has spent most of the winter, watching him with the calm of a cat who knows she gets fed first.
That's the crew. I'm Brooke, and this is the first post on a blog I've been talking myself into for about two years.
Who lives here
My husband Caleb works for the Isanti County Highway Department. In winter that means plowing, which means his phone goes off at 3 a.m. whenever snow is in the forecast. The rest of the year he patches roads, fixes signs and mows ditches. He is quiet and handy, and he was "not really a pet person" when we met. These days Hank follows him from room to room like a golden shadow, and Caleb pretends not to enjoy it.
Hank is our rescue dog, a golden mixed-breed we adopted in October 2021. Our best guess is golden retriever, Lab and something with a curly tail. Our best guess for his birthday is April 2020, so he's almost five. He weighs 68 pounds, loves water, hates fireworks and grumbles under his breath when he's waiting for something, which is often. He came north from an overfull shelter in Oklahoma, and I'll tell that story properly soon.
Mabel is a gray tabby who turned eight on Saturday, or at least on the birthday we picked for her. She came to me as a kitten in a cardboard box left outside the clinic where I worked in 2017, which means she predates Caleb, Hank and this house, and she would like everyone to remember that. She is indoor only, particular about chairs and fully in charge.
The house
We bought our place in Cambridge in August 2022: a 1948 story-and-a-half, about 1,420 square feet, an hour north of Minneapolis on Highway 65. It has the original oak floors on the main level (scratched in a way I've decided to call character), big double-hung wood windows that look out at a sugar maple in the front yard, built-in bookshelves, hot-water radiators and no central air. Our bedroom is upstairs under the eaves. The backyard has a four-foot chain-link fence that came with the house and two raised garden beds that are currently under a foot of crusty snow.
It's drafty. It's also the coziest place I've ever lived, especially in January when the radiators are going and the dog is snoring on the rug.
Right now we're in that in-between stretch of March when the snowbanks along the driveway have gone gray and sunken, the afternoons drip and the mornings freeze back into ice. The maple out front is still bare, just a big dark outline against a white sky. In a few weeks the backyard will turn to mud, and Hank will carry a good share of it inside.
Why someone from the front desk started a pet blog
I've worked on the clinic side of the counter for more than a decade, starting as a kennel attendant in 2012 and working my way to the front desk. These days I'm a part-time client-care coordinator at a small-animal clinic one town over, three days a week. I handle scheduling, estimates, payment conversations and insurance paperwork. I'm not a vet or a vet tech, and I'm not an insurance agent. I'm the person who hands you the estimate.
I've watched a lot of faces change while they read that piece of paper. In November 2022 I found out what it feels like from the other side, when Hank ate the string off our Thanksgiving roast and we left an emergency hospital with a $3,912 bill and no insurance. We managed it, but it changed how we think about money and animals, and it's the reason Hank has had a pet insurance policy ever since.
So this blog is the stuff I wish more people could see before they're standing at a counter. What our pets actually cost, line by line, including the boring months. What our insurance has and hasn't paid. The food, gear and litter we really use, and the things that didn't work. And the small fixes that keep an old house livable with a 68-pound dog and a cat who saves her shedding for black pants.
A few ground rules for myself. I won't name my clinic, my coworkers or anyone who has ever stood at my counter. I'll share real numbers, but they're ours, from our town and our animals, and your bills will look different. And when something is a health question, I'll tell you what happened to us and point you back to your own vet.
Hank has just sighed loudly at the back door, which means I've been typing too long. Breakfast first. Then a slow walk on an icy sidewalk.
