To feel that soon , dog ownership will just be for the well off? And thats not fair.

[Tunamelt]

We had a family dog and as a child I really benefited from it . As did my own dc when we had our beloved dog.
When the dc had a hard day she cheered them up so much and it was such a good experience for them.
We have just adopted a dog.
She needed the vets in the first week due to upset tummy.
Ist vet appt £75 and then x2 meds.
She now needs a stool sample and a further vet appt to
check her health.
stool sample test alone will be over £100.
We had appt with behaviourist at £90 ph .
Her food is £60 pm.
the vet thinks she may need fluxotine for anxiety and those meds are around £80 pm
So thats come to a good amount and she has only been here a few weeks.
Its made me realise that these sort of costs are just not do able for
many - and a concern to us -and it seems so unfair that the joy of a dog may be beyond reach for many these days .

I can’t believe half of people think you are being U. My son would like a dog but we can’t afford it. Vet insurance has removed the affordability limit on what vets can charge. Vet costs are way more than they used to be.

Then see a different vet. They are not the money grabbing people that some make them out to be. They actually care about your pets and want to help.
See an independent one.

Have you not got pet insurance? Unfortunately owing a pet is a luxury not a right. If you can’t afford to treat them when they are unwell
you shouldn’t have one. You do realise the cost of medical treatment for humans is extensive? You just don’t see the costs because it’s nhs funded. And veterinary work is private, it’s not charity

Yes, vet costs are way more than they used to be. As are electricity costs, equipment costs, wage costs, service costs, medicine costs. insurance costs. . .

A vet clinic is a business. It needs to make a profit. Just like any other business.

Oh, there is another cost that has gone up. People running up debt, ranging from fifty quid, to five thousand, and defaulting on it.

Beautiful creature

Omg! going to get slated for this...but well those tests sound unnecessary for the most part.. in the 70's we gave our dog good food, exercise and love. Can't remember huge vet bills at all.

Yanbu I was talking to my friend about this today, her dog costs her £350 a month which includes food, insurance, pet plan, treats and a dog walker.

My ddog costs around £150 a month (less than my friend as I have a much smaller dog and don’t need a dog walker.)

Id like another dog but definitely can’t afford it sadly.

Years ago, we did not have all the more advanced vet treatments we do now.
I know someone who has had immunotherapy for her dog's cancer. Great for her and her dog, but it wiped out her insurance and some. She spent about £20k in the end. But if you have it then how you spend that is up to you. Her dog seems to be doing really well albeit on 3 legs.

Are you a vet ?

Sorry haven’t read all the comments but there are alternatives for anxiety to fluoxetine. Pet Remedy is a spray that mimics pheromones and is very calming. Or Rescue Remedy for dogs. Through a dog’s ear music played in the background especially if you need to go out. Isn’t the rescue helping you with any of this? Have you read The Rescue Dog by Gwen Bailey that is a good
helpful guide. Some food causes an upset stomach like most treats that are sold in the supermarket. Lots of dogs have an upset stomach in a
new environment. Get me of the dogs food that helps or feed some fresh cooked turkey and white rice for a few days. Dorwest Tree Barks is great
for soothing an upset stomach. personally I would
wait and try self help before testing her stools
unless there is blood in them.

Well, DH and I are relatively solvent. Mortgage free, nice holidays when we want, savings in the mid 5 figures, no debts, no DC to support (they left home about a decade ago,) and a decent amount of surplus cash each month .... So WE can afford another cat - or a dog. We can afford to keep it, feed it, take it for preventative vet care, and all the toys and baskets and bowls and bits and bobs it needs, and we would certainly love it with all our heart....

We could afford a £15K to £20K vet bill out of our savings. Are we prepared to pay that? No fucking WAY.

As has been said on here (by many people now) vet bills have gone up exponentially, to a farcical and ludicrous level, with many vets now upselling, and trying to push procedures on peoples pets that they don't need. That never happened pre 2019.

We have had pets (me, DH and the kids) for 25 years, (since we were about mid 30s, and our DC were 5-7 y.o,) and I had them for 20-22 years with my parents. And we coped fine, never struggled to afford to look after them, and never EVER had a vet bill we could not afford. As I said further back, some vet bills are half a year's salary for some these days. This never happened when I was growing up, and we had dogs and cats.... It would be a week's salary at the most.

No WAY would my parents have paid that. (6 months salary.. like £17K to £20K in todays money...) Nor could they have afforded it. And the biggest bill me and DH ever got - pre 2019 was a couple of hundred pounds. We paid £207 for something our cat had done (back in 2018,) and someone I know had the same thing done for their cat in 2024..... £3,300! No WAY should it all have gone up this much.

As I said before, once our old girl - cat aged 18 - has gone, we will have no more pets. Like I said earlier, we can afford them, and we can afford the extortionate vet bills. But we are not going to PAY the extortionate vet bills.

Sadly, because of the greed of some of these conglomorates and SOME vets, a shit load of animals that could make someone a lovely pet, will go unadopted.

I hope the individuals who are setting these farcical and disgustingly high vet bill prices, and trying to push expensive treatment on pets that their owner cannot afford are proud of themselves.

THIS was an interesting watch.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002pwsm/panorama-why-are-vet-bills-so-high

.

That's still the standard advice from a vet!

Many vets have been taken over by investment companies and are scamming people. I’ve found an independent vet. It’s more trustworthy. I grew up in a developing country and the only time we’d go to a vet is if the dog was injured or had biliary or another such severe illness. Also, dogs lived outside all the time (in a kennel) and chilled with their friends. They weren’t depressed.

Because there's such a thing as structural inequality and dog ownership being a luxury goes to show how accumulated and unfairly distributed wealth is in our days

But why is it any more of a right to own a dog than any manner of other things that structural inequality means people can’t afford?

A pet dog to me is not a luxury. They are family. They are essential to me, and essential to lots of people.

A dog is not a necessity. Many children miss out on essentials due to poverty. If money is an issue, people just can’t have a dog.

A dog is to me. She is family. I don't have kids.

Then you work out how you can afford them. I’m not saying people don’t value them, but they are not essential to life.

Food, water and shelter is essential. Everything else is not, if we take it right back to basics.

Same here. As I said earlier.

Of course we have some people spouting the usual flannel ..... 'oh but the vet treatment is so much more sophisticated,' and such big advancements have been made, and they can have 'scans and MRIs and treatments that were never offered then.' Blah blah blah........ 🙄

Big deal. They don't offer all this shit for £350 do they? It's always £10K or more... Sometimes up to £20K, and then when the dog/cat has recovered, (if they don't die within a month or two of all this treatment) there is monthly ongoing meds and treatments, at the costs of £200 to £300 or so a month. Sometimes more.

Do me a favour. All these ADVANCEMENTS in veterinary care have done is cause the owners a whole shit load of new problems. The vets no longer decide euthanasia is the answer for a very sick, older pet... Noooooooooo, let's try all this revolutionary new treatment first And give me £17,000 for doing it.

Come on, PLEASE! You people defending this are fooling NO-ONE.

.

My sister feels like that about her horse, it doesn’t mean every family is entitled to one. Owning a pet is a luxury, and not everyone can afford luxuries. The fact that owning a pet enriches one’s life and brings joy…well yes, there are lots of wonderful and fulfilling things that can be accessed when you can afford them and are out of reach when you can’t. Inequality sucks.

I agree. There's been a lot of "discussion" recently about extortionate vets fees and insurance companies fuelling the situation e.g. an MRI for a human would cost £"x" privately but the same MRI for an animal costs 3 times the amount. Something needs to be done quickly about it as it's the animals that suffer. However, recent governments have done diddly squat about it.

Agree @Sowhat12345 Funny how an MRI or scan for a cat or dog costs 2-3 times more than it does for a bloody human.

For those of us who see pets as family, we live according to our means.
I am on benefits, but all of my dog's needs have been met. She has never gone without food or been neglected.
I grew up with dogs that didn't go to the vet often because so many things can be treated at home, and that is what we did.
If my dog had an upset tummy, I would put slippery elm in her food. If she had a wound, I would keep it clean. Dogs don't care about scars.
Again, my dog was not a luxury. She is not a possession like a bag or a holiday. She is family.

This is possibly because you can tell a human to lie still while they're being shuffled in and out of a metal tube.

A cat won't understand that, even if they listened. They need to be anaesthetised and that comes with risks which have to be priced in.

And then.... a hospital MRI machine for humans will be well-utilised. The capital costs are spread out over a lot of cases. An MRI scanner in PetsRUs will have the same capital costs but spend much of its life sitting empty. The capital has to be allocated out over many fewer cases.