My wife came from a family that didn’t blink at spending $8000 for surgery and hydrotherapy for their widdle pibul. I’m a farm boy and I moved her out to the country. I set a hard rule, no animals in the house and vets are for livestock, not pets. She wanted a dog anyway so we got a free puppy from a coworker. A year later, that dog got into a kissing contest with a rattlesnake and lost. She calls me crying saying is face is swelling up, he’s bleeding and she thinks he ate a yellowjacket. I ask if it’s scabbing over. She sends a picture. It wasn’t. “Ok darlin’, that’s a snakebite. Venom is an anticoagulant so it’s gonna bleed. Take off his collar now. Crunch a benedryl up into some milk, get him to drink it.” She asks if she can take him to the vet. I say no, you know the rules. She pleads. She cries. I inform her of the price of Crofab, tell her no, just give him love and milk. If he dies, he dies and he went out being loved. If he lives he’ll be stronger for it. He’s a young happy healthy dog that got hit in the place with the most lymphatic tissue. She reluctantly agrees. His face and neck swole up for a couple of weeks but he was already acting normal by day 3. Now he alerts us to rattlesnakes with a high-pitched bark and we blow em away with a shotgun. A vet bill would have been $5k or more. You gotta set boundaries with these women or private equity is gonna bleed em dry selling them delusions.