How much does your dog cost you?

Parent Cafe
21

Current dogs - 2, both aged 16. One we got at North Shore Animal League at 8 weeks, cost about $100, free spay. She is a lab-chow mix. The other is a yorkie we got as a rescue at age 14, free. I paid $25 to chip the new dog, the older one never was. I take my dogs to a yearly free rabies shot clinic that my tax dollars pay towards, except this year the county exempted the dogs due to age. I feed them Costco dog food but H wants to switch to basic Purina now that they are old. They don’t like treats. H doesn’t believe in heartworm treatment or regular flea treatments but we have used Frontline from Costco when they go camping. H grooms them himself and they don’t see the vet regularly. Our other dog, a border collie, died at 15; we got her at 8 weeks from the animal league as well. Clearly, at least for these dogs, H’s choice of hands of has worked.

None has ever been boarded. The border collie and the lab-chow mix came with us to D’ s college orientation and on several camping trips. H refuses to travel so there is no need to board them. When we went to D’s graduation, a friend of hers who is a dog lover came by and took care of them. She refused to accept any payment.

The border collie fell into the fire pit when she was 14. The Yorkie barking like a banshee alerted my sons and they ran out and found her. I had a vet bill of about $200 for emergency treatment. She needed to be specially bathed and debrided, etc. and treated with cremes for several months. H did all of that himself. If he had not been able to do it, we would have put her to sleep. I paid for the pain meds, the antibiotics, the cremes and the special bandages. It was about $100 or so, compared with $50 a visit the vet wanted. She died 14 months after the incident while lying in her favorite spot in the yard. We were going to have her put down the next day. I paid for her to be cremated, which was about $250.

The lab chow is on her last legs. She walks in circles at night, like she has doggy Alzheimer’s and is sundowning. We now put her in the crate at night and it seems to calm her. She has cataracts that the vet said not to bother with but no health issues other than just being old.

Walking is done with plastic supermarket bags.

22

@SalveMater I’m very sorry. (gentle hugs)

Oh dang I forgot about boarding. Every few months she goes to doggie vacay which runs between $100 and $200 depending on length of time.

23

surgery on the infected paw
cones
booties to keep her from fussing at it
orthopedic specialist for her bone deformity

reupholstered sofa because they push it to a particular window in order to optimize the street view for barking
throws for that sofa so we don’t have to redo it again soon
nice blind that cannot be put on that window because they wreck it

dog cannot be crated because of abuse in her past

heavy wire mesh on the bottom of the screen door so they can’t go through it
heavy wire mesh attached to the bottom of the fence that extends 12 inches down underground and 12 inches in so they can’t dig out

12 pairs of under wear destroyed (conservative estimate)
baby gates

2 pairs of glasses chewed this year

back to the vet in the morning because the foot is infected again

24

the look on my daughters’ faces when they come home from college and the dogs are going bananas=priceless

25

My sturdy, hearty, amazingly bright, naughty and faithful husky dog is a pretty easy keeper.

Shots and heartworm preventative for the year runs about $250.

We’ve never had fleas. (knock on wood)

She eats pretty much what we do, with a little dog food thrown in that she usually ignores. LOL She gets a good variety of protein, carbs, fats, fuits and veggies. She loves sweet potatoes, watermelon, apples, chicken, beef, licking the cake batter bowl, anything with gravy, and once in a while, she helps herself to my husband’s stout beer. Sushi is a favorite of hers. Even the wasabi and ginger. Who knew?

She also really enjoys a cheeseburger at McDonalds. It buys her silence and we don’t speak of it.

One expense with huskies, is good containment. They do like to run…but will often find a trail and feel the urge to follow it…to…you know…the next county over. So it’s important to have a securely fenced yard, microchip and good identification at all times. Costs on these things vary.

She goes through nylabones at an astounding pace, but it keeps her teeth flawlessly clean. Am very happy to buy nylabones and avoid anesthetic teeth cleanings.

Another husky expense is a pile of brushes, combs and a good pair of clippers to clip sanitary areas short and keep the feet fur clipped short to cut down on muddy paw prints. Also…those sticky lint rollers? Buy a case of them…in bulk. Buying a gross of them isn’t unreasonable. LOL If you don’t like to brush a dog with a coat that explodes like a cat tail? Count on four $50 grooming visits per year for a good bath and brush-out. Go to a grooming salon with the high power air blade that blows the undercoat out like a snowstorm.

Huskies benefit from obedience at a young age, including lots of work on walking politely in heel without pulling.

Another expense…a good pair of roller blades or a kick bike, and a good fitting harness…so you can let your husky pull and do what they love most.

26

@MaryGJ I used to have a husky mix, she loved to pull and we used to do the roller blade thing…until one day when we were going around a corner, she slipped, I had to jump over her and ended up severing my ACL. That was a pretty expensive year.

27

For my current golden, I paid a whopping rescue fee of $800. I regarded it as my donation to dog rescue for a number of years!

Standard expenses are

Quality dog food (Fromm’s Duck and Sweet Potato) at about $40 per month

Rarely buy treats, maybe a couple bags per year.

The occasional new bone or antler.

Annual vaccinations with vet visit, maybe about $175 all told. Don’t do bordatella at this point. Topical flea and tick, oral heartworm. That’s the biggest expense, besides food.

No groomer. I take her to the do-it-yourself dog wash a few times a year, and usually cut her nails myself. I may have the dogwash proprietor do it twice a year, because he’s better at it than I am! Cost $13, IIRC. Cost of dogwash $13. Since I also buy my dog food there and belong to a loyalty program, at least one wash/nail cutting per year ends up being free. I trim her feet occasionally, badly, I admit. :slight_smile: (This is my 3rd golden, you’d think I would have learned!)

No boarding, so far. Either I take her with me, or she stays with a friend if there’s flying involved. (His dog stays with me when necessary.)

I do her teeth myself.

28

My dogs don’t cost all that much, especially in comparison to my pups - who have cost me a small fortune.

We have only had rescue animals, so while we don’t pay a fee to get them, we have sat through the lecture where they say there is no fee to adopt them, but then go on to list how they have incurred several hundred dollars of costs including the transportation/spay/neuter/ boarding costs, then ask if we are able to make a donation - like most adopters we typically make a small donation of around $100 or so.

We stick with Purina Dog Chow, bought in bulk when it goes on sale, I tend to clean out the store, then get a stack of rainchecks to make the sale price last longer. Occasional table scraps are a great treat - and our canine companions are big enough at over 60lbs each, and our vet says don’t be concerned if 95% of what they eat is regular dog food.

We get them the annual shots which run about $150 each. I buy dog toothpaste online, as I got three tubes for the cost of one in the pet shop. We use regular people toothbrushes (again, our dogs are big) which are often free after coupons. Now that the older dog is 12, the vet asked if we would consider bringing them in for sedation and a tartar cleaning, but I am not willing to pay $300 for a doggie dentist, when I don’t spend that much on my own teeth.

We rarely board them, when we’ve gone on vacation my BIL house-sits for us, we pay him 1/2 of what the kennel would cost - so usually $20/day, but he takes advantage of our freezer/pantry/fridge while we are away. Since he is also caring for the houseplants/deck flowers, etc. it isn’t fair to say this is completely a dog-related expense.

We have incurred additional expenses like having to replace furniture / carpets prematurely, as well as the occasional slippers/scarves/mittens/winter hats - if left to dry on the back of a chair. Plus the additional expense of having to make an extra lunch every now and then, when Fluffy has left only a few shredded parts of a sandwich bag…the rest of the plastic ends up in the piles in the yard.

I do all the grooming, years ago we got a great dog hair clipper set at the Goodwill store for $2.

We do have an annual license / registration fee in our state/town - pretty sure this is not true everywhere.

29

Salve Mater, BTDT recently. My sincere condolences. It is so hard to lose a pet.

Our expenses for our dear girl –
NutraPro Lamb & Rice – $50/bag, once every two months
Cans of same – $30/mo
Care when she was hit by a car at age 6 – broken ribs, pneumothorax, temporary blindness, skull fracture, lots of cuts on legs, a month of codeine, four days in doggie ICU in oxygen crate – $6k (that was her college fund)
Meds for storm phobia, bladder, flea/tick, heartworm – $150/year
Checkups – $150, twice a year
Nails trimmed $8, every two months
Boarding at the doggie spa (if we are out of country or CA; we take her with us otherwise) – $45/day plus add’l for nature walks
Teeth cleaning – $1100, which shifted mid-procedure to surgery to diagnose extent of her neck tumor
Fee from rescue (includes first shots and spay) – $200
Annual donation to said rescue – $100
Installation for Invisible Fence – $1200
Annual battery fee – $65
Treats – $15/mo

I figure about $1400/year with the occasional outlier. Worth every penny.

30

We have been lucky and not had any out-of-ordinary expenses with any of our dogs. Our 2 current dogs are under 20# each. We spend around $40 month on food- a big bag from Chewy.com lasts around 8 weeks and they also get a little wet food. Vet bills have been under $500/year.

Our daughter has a 7 year old lab mix that started having seizures a year ago. They are now up to about $300/month in meds plus a high quality protein dry food that runs around $80/month. Blood tests every 3 months run $400 and a couple of emergency room visits have totaled $1000 recently. They are young with a recent home purchase and a 15 month old- this is really taxing their finances. We had such good luck with dogs while she was growing up that I don’t think she really ever considered this possibility. Now her other lab mix has a lump- I think she is starting to panic.

31

We’ve always had multiple dogs, haven’t been without at least one or two in over 35 years. If I ever sat down and figured out what they’ve cost us, I’d probably faint. We spoil our pups, they get good quality food and treats, have arthritic-comfort beds throughout the house, excellent veterinary care. 4 of our 5 Ds also have dogs so when we all get together, it’s chaotically fun!

One thing you can never be sure of is potential health issues. One of our dogs contracted hemolytic anemia several years ago. It cost us several thousand dollars at the Emerg vet hospital in ICU for a week. They saved her, which was highly unexpected by the several specialist vets who treated her, and she was on special meds (expensive) and frequent blood draws and vet visits for the four following years that she lived. I think that probably for her alone, those last four years cost us more than $25,000.

Two of my Ds have dogs that required surgery, one emergency, one not. The cost was about $3000 each.

Pets are expensive, and dogs more so than cats. Food, treats, toys, beds, crates, leashes and collars, licensing, bowls, gates if you need them, vaccinations, heartworm/flea/tick prevention, dogwalkers, boarding, grooming, harnesses for the car, biodegradable poop bags, etc. Yep, expensive, but more than that, dogs are a longterm commitment. I think too many people venture into dog ownership without being fully informed about what they’re getting themselves into. Puppies are cute and they hypnotize you and convince you that it’s a good idea to get one! :wink:

32

a lot. When we adopted the dogs (now 13 months old), they were a rescue from Louisiana and both of them were in rough shape, they had expensive care before we adopted them, but they still were sick, had heartworm, mange, and one of them still was suffering from parvu, I think by the time we finished that first stage with the vets we had over 3k in bills with them.

Going forward, the current costs are:

About 65 a month for vet insurance to cover major care (hopefully not necessary) (we have a cat on the plan, too,the total is about 95/month).

More than a few hundreds in food, chewy toys (they chew through everything, their favorite, the bull chews, are expensive even at Costco and they go through them at a rapid rate), we use premium dry dog food because the commercial stuff has so much crap in it, but you do pay for it.

Not to mention replacing a couch one of them destroyed, rescreening screen doors and such they bareled through, all the other things puppies will do:)

33

@“Snowball City” 12 pair of underwear destroyed? I’m afraid to ask lol

34

@salvematter:
Friends of my parents had a boxer that loved to chew up anything he could, and the wife was complaining that he would chew up her expensive shoes while turning his nose up at the cheap ones (likely because the expensive shoes were leather and the cheap ones, synthetic). My wife and I have the sliding doors to our closet dog proofed by using a spring rod to keep the door closed, the cat would open the sliding door with its paw, then the dogs would use their muzzles to force the door open and get at the goodies in the laundry baskets and the shoes:)

35

^lol dogs can be so gross :smiley:

36

About $100 between food and treats. Many small illnesses/injuries I can treat myself and they don’t go to the vet often.

I have 4 keeshond girls, 3 are 8 months old (different litters) and 1 is 4 years old. I show them in conformation so that is our major expense. Went to a show with just 2 last weekend and spent $140 on entry fees, $50 on gas, $115 on hotel and probably about $70 for food for me for the weekend. For all that I got a $4 ribbon, lol. Plus time with my furries and human friends.

Now, I’m needing a new dog dryer. That’s gonna cost me around $500 :frowning:

37

In one year, DDog was neutered - can’t remember how much. Ate a chew toy - $400 for xrays and something to “push it through”. Attacked by loose rottweilers - $600 vet care (he was on a plan by then and got a discount). Things have calmed down since then.

monthly:
$58.00 pet med plan
$80.00 special diet food
$60.00 grooming

as needed:
$25-40/night dog boarding
$75 6 month supply flea/tick/heartworm meds

38

Other posters have already nicely summarized most of my dog-related costs. Except the skunk shampoos! I spend about $75 a year on that. Dog is a slow learner.

39

Has anyone mentioned collars and coats yet? Whippets need those custom-made because their body shapes and sizes are so different. Custom handmade martingale collars are $50+. And his custom handmade puffy winter coats, rain jackets, jammies etc are probably nicer than mine, lol.

40

I wouldn’t even consider a dog if boarding was going to be a common event. Our old guy died a couple of years back but we always had dog swap friends. Now we still have friend’s dogs come to stay. They are very well behaved though. It is a good reason to make sure you have a good breed with great training (our adopted guy came to us as the perfect dog. He jumped into my car and never looked back. He was very pragmatic about the whole event LOL.). Having had a perfect dog makes me afraid to ever try another. The commitment is terribly serious IMO.