101 Dalmatians: The Aftermath!

One Hundred and One Dalmatians is an undeniable classic. It’s a sweet, fun-to-watch Disney animation perfect for any dog lover or quite frankly, anyone looking for a delightful family-friendly movie! It’s full of adventure, hilarious characters, narrow escapes, adorable puppies and one of the most iconic antagonists in movie history; Cruella De Vil. If you haven’t seen this one, we highly recommend it. With the film Cruella starring Emma Stone detailing Cruella De Vil’s life as a young fashion designer focusing on the events that came before the plot of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, it’s fascinating to ponder what happens after the movie ends. Let's delve into 101 Dalmatians: the aftermath!

What Would Be the True Aftermath of 101 Dalmatians?

*Spoiler Alert* 
Stop reading now if you don’t want to know what happens at the end of the movie… although it’s not much of a surprise considering it's is a Disney flick.

The ending is portrayed as a ‘happy’ one where Roger and Anita Radcliffe, the human husband and wife protagonists of the story, save all of the Dalmatian puppies and agree to adopt every last one and move to a farm where they can all live happily ever after.

However, for any competent dog owner this conclusion inspires dread and anxiety as opposed to the satisfaction of a story wrapped up in a neat little bow. If you think about this ending for a minute, one thing becomes quite clear. No matter how successful Roger’s jingle-writing career is, and no matter how well Anita’s design career goes, they are still taking responsibility for 101 Dalmatians! The reality of caring for 101 dogs is nearly unimaginable.

We've tried our best though and put together a simple breakdown covering the basic costs needed to keep that many critters on one farm.

Keep in mind all of the following stats are based on these metrics for an average adult Dalmatian:

• Weight: 57.5 pounds
• Food per day: 3 cups or 0.75 pounds
• Age: 2 years old (They’re puppies at the end of the movie but they won’t stay that way forever!)

101 Dalmatians: Food

According to PetMD a dog that’s about 60 pounds will need about 3 cups of food per day. Assuming that 4 cups of food equals 1 pound, and all 101 Dalmatians will each eat 3 cups of food per day, they’ll need a total of 75.75 pounds of food per day.

If we expand that to a full year: 75.75 pounds (daily food amount) x 365 days = 27,740 pounds of food per year. Or 13.47 tons. That's a LOT of food!

The cost per pound of mid-level quality dog food brands seems to lie somewhere around $1 per pound. If we assume that the cost will work out to $1 per pound of dog food that’s an easy conversion of $27,740 spent on dog food per year. Yikes.

101 Dalmatians: Treats

This depends on the quality of the treat and also the amount. Let's go with a generic and inexpensive option like Milkbones. Giving each dog 1 treat per day = 36,865 treats per year!

If each $10 box of approx. 100 Milkbones has 10 lbs of treats, that’d add up to 369 boxes or 3,690 pounds of treats per year = $3,960.

But who would give their dog only 1 treat a day? You’d likely have to double this at the very least = $7,920.

And if you want to spoil your dog with something like Greenies, it’s a different picture entirely. A value box of 36 Greenies treats is $25 = $0.69 per treat. If you gave each of the Dalmatians 2 Greenies a week = 10,504 treats and an extra $7,247 per year.

Perhaps homemade biscuits might be a better option, although that would be a LOT of baking! You might need more than 101 Dalmatian Totes to carry home all those ingredients!

101 Dalmatians: Pet Insurance

Coverage isn’t cheap although of course this isn't a 100% necessary expense. It's worth doing the math though if we decide to be extra safe. A very rough estimate for 1 adolescent Dalmatian is $40 per month. Multiplied by 101 and that’d be about $48,480 per year. 

101 Dalmatians: Medical Expenses

Annual checkups for a dog average about $50. Multiplied by 101 that would be $5,050 per year. These pups are young so they should be healthy for a while though.

However, if we don’t want to have an exponential amount of Dalmatians on our hands (an even crazier amount than the crazy number we're already dealing with here!), we'll need to have them spayed or neutered. The cost varies for wherever you live but $100 is an average price.

Perhaps we should ‘cheat’ here for financial reasons. To save money in this situation, you can just select one gender from the group. This cuts the cost of preventing infinite more Dalmatians from joining the farm in half to a more reasonable one time cost of $5,000.

101 Dalmatians: Toys

Hopefully they won’t need much in the way of toys because each dog will have 100 other friends to play with! However, just to make sure they have toys available if they want them, we'll budget for a Classic Kong at $12.99 and a basic rope toy at about $5.00. If we gave each pup one of each for the year, that’d be $1,816 for a year’s supply of toys. That's a really low number too, and it's hard to not spoil your dogs so this would likely be higher!

101 Dalmatians: Flea and Tick Prevention

A full year’s worth of 12 doses of Frontline flea and tick prevention for 1 large dog costs $103.98. There’s a Dalmatian on the box, so it’s meant to be.

For 101 dogs you’d need to spend $10,501 to have them all covered for the year. Since they’re all moving to a farm, and will likely spend much of their time outdoors in the countryside, this is probably a must-have expense for the pups.

101 Dalmatians: Waste Removal

This is probably something the Radcliffes would have to deal with themselves but it's still a significant factor in terms of what caring for 101 dogs entails. 

According to an online pet waste calculator a 58 pound dog poops about 1.07 pounds a day and 390.09 pounds per year. Multiplied by 101 that means that the Radcliffe farm will produce a whopping 39,399 pounds or close to 20 tons of grade A Dalmatian fertilizer per year.

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The aftermath of choosing to own 101 Dalmatians? A TON of expenses! Own a Dalmatian or 2 (hopefully not 101!)? Check out our Dalmatian Collection to find Dalmatian shirts, hoodies, towels and more. Head over to Find my Breed to browse all our dog and cat breed collections, plus other animals too.