If you turned dogs into energy how much energy is dogs?

Dog.

This was the question I first posed to my compatriot, Ivy Gilbert, as we spent an afternoon in a typical fashion: watching the dogs dash around the dog park at Tompkins Square. It was a particularly crowded day thanks to the new warmth in the city after a few weeks of rain, and as the dogs tussled and attempted sex in front of us, I corrected my question (after being fairly criticized for my clarity):

How much energy do dogs produce yearly, when compared to the energy consumption of a country?

It was frivolous, but fairly challenging to answer, for two people who knew very little about either international energy consumption or dog statistics. At first I thought of perhaps a European country — maybe Germany? But they use a lot of power for trains. Ivy, pragmatic Ivy, didn’t so much pose a hypothesis as try to understand my awfully phrased question: dogs in the USA? Dogs worldwide? How are you comparing them? By calories for a dog to whatever is used for countries?

We devised a strategy: find out average calorie consumption for a dog for a day, multiplied by 365, then the number of dogs in the world (I suggested that this would be difficult), multiply that by the yearly calorie count, then convert into whatever the proper format is for a country (something with watts, I thought).

The final hypothesis was about France (that is to say, near the amount France uses, not regarding France, but kind of regarding France). France is big, but not too big (67 million people), and has all those fancy European Union trains and a global capital. I also guessed that this would be in the top 10, but not the top five (which we guessed were China, USA, Brazil, India and maybe Canada or Germany, not in that order).

So we went on our way, whiling away the hours until the bell tolled for truth.

The Search Begins

The truth bell ting-tinged around 10:20 PM, after our customary post-dinner cryptid research. I, with my goldfish brain, had flitted away from such serious matters. Ivy held me to my word.

“How many calories does a dog use in a day?”

Google became our third companion in the search for truth.

Apparently Google thinks that German Shepherds and Greyhounds are the only types of dog.

We knocked about 15 pounds off of the average German Shepherd to get 50 pounds as an “average” dog, to account for smaller breeds and skinnier street dogs. Using the calorie chart on the left, this meant a dog uses on average about 800 calories a day.

Seems low, but that’s a year of dog-energy.

Bow-WOW! (I’m reading a book on comedy written by a writer for PBS Kids).

Google easily leapt the only hurdle I had foreseen — the number of dogs in the world. Of course we could check sources, but that would sap some of the frivolity, I think.

That’s 262.8 trillion––a healthy bit higher even than the deficit! (I’m reading a book on small talk written in 2005 by Andy Borowitz.)

Suddenly we were in the realm of enormous numbers. Cast adrift into the world of scientific notation, we lost our common-sense moorings, and put our faith entirely into Google. But we had our raw number––the calculation step was done. Now it was just about conversions.

Hubris and Its Discontents

My first mistake.

What is hubris? Hubris is when you accidentally pick the wrong unit to try to represent your year of dog-energy. Seeing that watts was usually represented as a rate over time, I decided to instead use joules as a comparison point. I found a website with a list of countries by “primary energy consumption worldwide” by exajoules, and confidently converted my way to a comparable number between Doggia (the country that represents the dogs) and other nations.

You fool! You fool!

The All is Lost moment!

This site told me that the dogs couldn’t even get into the top 50 countries. They even lost to South Africa. Frankly, it shattered me. I spun into a deep depression and spent months sitting on the couch. Then I scrolled a little down the page.

The redemption moment!

I still don’t completely know what primary energy is, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted. There had to be a better point of comparison out there.

The Redemption Arc

Bingo.

This was what I was thinking of — specifically electricity, rather than the fossil fuel industry’s energy measurements. Back to the converters.

Back on the board, baby.

Let’s take it back to Wikipedia. Where would the dogs land on that list?

BAM.

I was pretty damn close in my original estimate––the dogs were just south of Saudi Arabia, but beat out the UK, just outside of the top ten energy users and quite close to France (my original gut guess). Vindication!

So, what is the answer to if you turned dogs into energy how much energy is dogs? The answer is more than the United Kingdom. But the true answer? Maybe the true answer was inside us all along.

*Sources not cited due to frivolity of topic.