If I Won the Lottery (Golden Retriever Version)

A Word from The Bird

You might have noticed that my humans did not win the lottery. If they had, Tallulah and I would currently be with them in some beautiful remote location with absolutely no internet service. Alas, The Bee and I are still at home and left wondering what if. What if we, a couple of Golden Retrievers, had the only winning ticket for the $1.9 billion lottery? Tallulah gave me the assignment to write this post because I’m good at math. Let me show you:

the number of treats I want < the number of treats I get

So, let’s get started. After federal taxes (whatever that means), we would pocket a lump sum of $706,116,000. State taxes would also need to be taken out. That’s all kind of confusing, so let’s just round off to $706 million. I mean, what’s a few million among friends?

Obviously, we would want to buy some treats. Tallulah and I like Newman’s Own Peanut Butter Flavor treats. First of all, they’re yummy and 100% of the profits go to charity. They’re shaped like hearts and scored down the middle, so it’s easy for the humans to break them in half for us. A bag costs $5.29 (Chewy). If we spent all of our money on treats, we could buy more than 133 million bags of treats. We would share with our friends, of course.

We would also like to go to some obedience classes. Sounds crazy, but we have an ulterior motive. Do you have any idea how many treats you get during a one-hour obedience course? Ok, so it’s not 133 million bags worth, but it’s a lot. A package of classes at Petco costs about $150. That means that $706 million would buy more than 4 million obedience class packages. With that many classes, we might actually learn something.

If Tallulah and I were millionaires, we’d have to look good. Our grooming visits cost about $60, so $706 million would pay for 11,766,667 spa dates. I think that would make our groomer very happy.

We have a lot of toys, but toys are to dogs what shoes are to women: You can never have enough. A Google search told me that the average dog toy costs about $13.50. If Tallulah and I spent all of our lottery winnings on toys, we could buy 52,296,296 toys. We’d probably have to buy duplicates of some toys, because I doubt that there are that many different types of dog toys in all the world.

Tallulah and I would definitely need more beds. Between going to obedience classes and grooming appointments, playing with all of those toys, and eating all of those treats, we’d be exhausted. We really love our Best Friends by Sheri bed. It costs $84.99 (Chewy). (Let’s hope Mommy doesn’t read this because we’re pretty sure she forgot how much she spent on our bed, and she would lose her mind if she remembered.) We could buy 8,306,860 new beds with $706 million. That seems reasonable.

If Tallulah and I won the lottery, we would feel obligated to pay our own vet bills. According to the Internets, vet bills for dogs average $750 annually. Our $706 million would pay for 941,333 years of vet visits. That means that Tallulah and I would each be covered for another 470,667 years.

You know what? No one needs 133 million bags of treats, 4 million obedience class packages, 11,766,667 trips to the groomer, 52,296,296 toys, 8,306,860 beds, or 470,667 years of vet visits. Tallulah and I had a little talk, and we know exactly what we would have done if we won the lottery. We would have helped all the animals and all the humans all over the world who need so much help and who need to know that someone cares about them and wants them to have a better life. That’s exactly what Tallulah and I would have done with $706 million.