The $10,000 Dog: A Tragicomedy in Corgi Minor

Nala the Corgi

I used to be a Beagle person. Beagles are tidy little hounds with built-in brakes. They come pre-programmed with polite sniffing etiquette, a manageable poop schedule, and the kind of stoic, big-eyed wisdom that makes you think they secretly edit The New Yorker in their downtime.

Then, like every tragic heroine in a nineteenth-century novel, I made a single catastrophic decision: I got a Corgi.

Her name is Nala. She came home at seventeen weeks — the last of her litter, which should have been a warning sign, like a car lot where the only vehicle left is a lime-green Pinto with a salvage title. She was roly-poly, adorable, and immediately infested with every parasite Noah forgot to put on the Ark. Fleas. Roundworms. Hookworms. Basically, a petting zoo inside a dog. A few thousand dollars and one ruined sofa later, my house and Nala were technically flea-free, although my bank account was suffering from a terminal case of mange.

The Potty Training Apocalypse

Here’s the thing about Corgis: they are basically tiny dictators in fur coats. Potty training was less about teaching her where to pee and more about negotiating a nuclear arms treaty. She went outside fifteen to twenty times a day for microscopic pee droplets, like some sort of avant-garde water artist. There were also five poops a day. FIVE. That’s not a bowel schedule; that’s a part-time job.

In a fit of optimism, I taught her to ring a bell to go outside. Huge mistake. The bells rang so often that my neighbors thought I’d opened a church. Every hour: Ding ding ding, the Lord is calling you to the lawn. Productivity tanked, Zoom meetings were interrupted, and yes—she still peed on the carpet whenever I dared to prioritize paying my mortgage over monitoring her bladder.

Finally, in defeat, I surrendered to pee pads. But of course, Nala viewed them as more of a suggestion than a commandment. She peed next to the pad. She peed half on, half off, like a drunk trying to park diagonally across three spaces. The vet suggested a possible medical condition, so cue: urinalysis, another urinalysis, bladder ultrasound, x-rays, and a test with a name that sounds like either a Greek philosopher or a Hogwarts spell. Total cost? Another few thousand dollars. Diagnosis? “Her bladder is the size of a golf ball, which is normal for Corgis.”

Thank you, doctor, for confirming that my dog is perfectly healthy and just an asshole.

The Comforter Massacre of 2025

Fast forward to Month Twelve. Things had stabilized: Nala finally understood pee pads, my carpet had given up on life, and I was naïvely hopeful. Then one day, during a Zoom meeting, I turned around to see Poly-fil floating through the air like confetti at a Macy’s parade. At first, I thought she’d destroyed a toy. But no—this was my $200 bed comforter. By the time I ended my meeting, my room looked like an arctic tundra. Goodbye, luxury bedding; hello, Walmart polyester cloud of sadness.

The Blue Beta Blocker Incident

And then came the pills. One fateful morning, I accidentally spilled my beta blockers. Before I could blink, Nala hoovered up the entire stash like they were gourmet treats. I entered full panic mode. I scooped her up, called the vet, and raced to the doggy ER. My regular vet passed me off to the emergency vet, who made me call poison control. Did you know there’s a specialized poison control vet hotline? For $89, they told me to tell the ER vet to induce vomiting. Groundbreaking.

The ER vet then charged me $400 to make Nala vomit Smurf-colored fountains. Diagnosis: “She’ll be fine.”

So, let’s tally this up. Corgi vs. Bank Account:

• Sofa: dead.

• Comforter: massacred.

• Zoom reputation: in ruins.

• Retirement: postponed until never.

  
  

The Soul-Staring Devil Angel

And yet… and yet. Nala looks at me with those bossy brown eyes, like she’s reading the dark notes of my soul. Her white ruff is absurdly regal, her Corgi butt is basically a TikTok-worthy event, and her tiny legs stomp around the house with the confidence of Napoleon if he were furrier and cuter.

So yes, she is a Wookie-like creature from the dog side. Yes, she is financially ruinous. But I guess, after all, she’s a keeper. Because love, like a Corgi, makes absolutely no sense—and that’s the point.

See you in the margins,

--Bookstore Geek