How much does your dog cost you per month?

[alwaysfuckingworried]

Especially if you use a dog walker or doggy daycare? I have longed for a dog for years, and curious if dog ownership costs are rising a lot.

Mine is quite a lot even without walkers or daycare - £50 insurance, £100 food, £100 on training (we do a sport class and gundog sessions) plus maybe £20 on treats or new toys/dummies. Have to say he is worth every penny and more though

A lot

£280 dog walking
£50 medication
£75 food
£20 insurance

Oh god I cannot bear to add it all up.

Dog walker £12 per walk / £240 per month; insurance £25: ticks, fleas, vaccines etc £14 per month : fancy food £75.00 per month; supplements about £35 per month. Per dog.
I have 2 labs; there are additional costs which are not covered by insurance as they get older - arthritis jabs, blood tests ; acupuncture , hydrotherapy. But that’s only for the old boy and is discretionary.

Where are you all getting insurance that cheap?!
I have an 8 year old pug and his insurance (granted it’s one of the best) is £150 a month!
Used to pay a dog sitter £20 per day once a week, more for socialisation though as we WFH.
£20 a month for vets doggy club which gets all the flea, worm, vaccinations and a one health check per year.

Crikey Moses!! Such a lot of money. And round my way, pretty much everyone has a family dog. Col crisis?!

Mines quite expensive and we don’t use walkers / daycare / boarders
food £70
dental treats £20
medication £120
yumove £20
other supplements £30 ( necessary for SLO)
groomer £32
vet plan for worming / fleas £18
So approx £310 . The medication is claimed on insurance but the insurance is slightly more than £120 .

It's much more than I anticipated!

On average:
Dog Walker/daycare : £200
Food: £80
Insurance: £34
'Other' (toys, bedding, fleas, worming, hiring a dog field, check ups): average £20 per month

So around £335.

It's more when we do classes or agility.

@Hariboislife only the younger of mine is insured. The older one - we were quoted £300 per month and gave up - that was 5 years ago. So we now pay for his arthritis meds etc ourselves. Still cheaper than 5 years at £300 per month and rising.
The younger one, never claimed - yet…

£120ish per month. Small dog, daycare once per week. Raw food.

Mine is now almost 7 so we no longer spend on training, dog beds or toys which we spent a fortune on for the first number of years.

Doggy day care three days a week.
Dog grooming every 4-6 weeks
Vet pet plan for worming, vaccinations etc
Dog insurance (and this does not include the visits under the excess of £95)
Food
Treats
Boarding when we go away

Averages around £450-£500 a month. Love him lots 😁

Ive Always felt guilty we didn't give the boys a dog, i know theyd have loved one. But reading this thread i know exactly why we didn't.

Insurance - £35
healthplan (for tick tablets, injections etc) - £20
food - £50
treats - £5-£10 (?)
toys etc - £0-£25
dog training - £30
dog sitting - when needed

Generally, I say it costs £100 per month, plus extras.

Enough to put me off getting another, in all honesty.

Insurance: £40 pm
Food: £50 pm
Vax: £70 pa
Dog field: approx £35pm
Leads/collars/harnesses approx £100 pa
Treats and toys: £15pm

Then there are miscellaneous costs like ear cleaner (£15) dog shampoo, new beds, stuff to clean washing machines of dog fur, more expensive vacuum cleaner to deal with masses of shedding hair. I sort of dread him ever needing an OOH emergency vet appt, when the regular ones are £57 a time.

I love my dog to bits, but he’s my last.

My pug has had practically every condition a pug can have! He’s had his throat done, nostrils, both knees went. During covid he started losing his sight and now he has a detached retina one side and glycoma the other. The insurance has paid for everything luckily and the cover we have covers pre-existing conditions. No one else would insure him! Touch wood he hasn’t had anything new for 2 years but can’t see that lasting forever. At the moment I can pay so I do but we’ve reduced the cover as much as possible to keep cost down.

Daycare one day a week: £200-250pm depending on the month
insurance: £42
vet plan: £15
medicine: £50
food and treats: £40

Plus toys and other bits and pieces. Totalling around £400pm roughly.

Wow. Wish I hadn’t just done that.

Budget generously is all I can say....

We don't have a dog walker and it is still £££

Groomer is £60 per quarter so £20 pm
Insurance is £50
Food and dental treats £40
Jumpers harnesses and leads £10 (she needs jumpers and coats in winter and chews through leads 🙄)
Worming tablets £18

There is more I am sure....and our girl is healthy and low maintenance!!!!

Also if we DID need a walker we couldn't have a walker with other dogs... maybe one! at a push if she was familiar with the other dog. Our girl loves people but she is not a fan of her own kind!!!!!

@Hariboislife pugs are a walking paycheck for vets unfortunately due to all the inherent health issues hence the high insurance.

I use a dog Walker 3 days per week, it’s £15 per walk, so £45 per week. £30 for insurance (to be increased year on year as been diagnosed with glaucoma), £30 on food (guess as I buy in bulk and he’s got severe allergies so can’t change food), some extra expenses on vets that’s not covered by the insurance. Factor in holiday care etc, save to say he’s very costly! Love him to bits though and he’s worth every Penny. Toys, leads, coats, dog walking bags, won’t go there with cost!

edited - groomer too, £42 every 7wks

Just added mine up for the first time in years and I was shocked tbh. About 1200 a month for two of them. Their food, insurance and vet bills have all gone up by 30-50% in the past couple of years, and I don't buy them especially fancy food either. They are about 100kg combined though so they aren't small.

I think you can pay little if you feed cheap supermarket food, leave the dog at home rather than walker/daycare if working, holiday with them, don't insure, don't have a vet plan and don't take the dog to the vets.

But realistically anyone who works will know how expensive it is to outsource dog care. Also vet care is bloody expensive as it's effectively private health care but in the uk most people underestimate how much that costs due to the NHS.

10 y/o mini daxie

Food: £56
Insurance: £39
Flea/wormer: £8
Yumoves (joint supplements): £12

So £115. Although her food is a really good quality one so could change and save money there if I needed to.

Daycare in my area is £24 a day

Yep! Mongrel for us next time!

Reading more replies I’d forgotten about the vaccination plan we pay and groomer so that’s about another £50 a month on average.

Don’t use walkers/daycare but still a lot of money….
food easily over £100 a month - I think £120-130, then treats on top
careplan with the vets to cover all parasite meds, yearly health MOT and vaccinations £15 per month.
insurance £64 per month (we’ve claimed a couple of times so it has gone up. Starting to contemplate just whacking a vets bill on a credit card and paying it back instead of using insurance)
probably a noteworthy amount on tennis balls lol, poobags, toys etc.

probably all adds up to at least £200 a month. But I do love the furry bugger.

£60 food
£15-45 dog walker - I work from home but occasionally need the dog walker to pop in if I'm out over 4 hours
£19 vet subscription for flea/worming/vaccinations
£51 insurance
Probably £20-30 on treats and random toys

Insurance £150/month
(insurance goes up a lot with age and ... 11 year old DDog)
£30/ m canned food
£20/ month snacks, treats etc
£20/m dry food
£4-5/m extra laundry :)
£5/month vaccinations etc
£40/month kenneling averaged over the year
Big dog (30kg+), but no grooming needs

This is why I always say people thinking of getting a dog should run the "10 years on" numbers when you're insuring an old dog and may be paying for doggy daycare because your work patterns have changed.