How expensive is a dog to keep?

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Hi, I'm thinking of getting a puppy. I like to budget quite carefully so I have enough to go to my savings every month. Can someone help me with how much a dog will cost me every year. I can work out food and pet insurance but what vaccines do they need every year and how much would they cost?
I'm thinking of getting a westie or a similar sized dog. I have budgeted £1500 for the cost of the dog.

TIA

Mine per month
Food £70
Insurance £30
Working/flea/vaccine £16
Doggy daycare £160 -£200
Holiday Day care for two weeks £300 (per year)

Don’t forget in the early days there will costs such as dog training classes. Also mine doesn’t need grooming but yours might.

Things like insurance will go up as a dog ages, and always read the fine print as there may well be exclusions for certain conditions, and of course will exclude pre-existing conditions. Vets bills for dogs can run into the thousands. Small dogs like Westies and Yorkies have very long lifespans, can even get into their twenties, and insurance can be more expensive than it's worth for some senior pups.

Budgeting for grooming as well as holiday care is important and will take some research in your local area.

My dog is tiny so food is about £1 a day
Pet insurance £25 (excess £85)
Vaccination/worming etc plan £17
Groom £22 every 6 weeks
Training was £65 a month
Dog care £23 a day

It's really expensive but obviously some of these costs depend on your dog/work pattern

My insurance is £25 per month
Vet plan which includes jabs, worm & flea/tick treatment is £15 per month
Food/treats approx £35/40 per month
Grooming £30 every 8 weeks

Puppy Training was £85 for a 6 weeks course.

Don't forget things like when they outgrow crate/bed/harness etc or chew them and you need to replace. Also toys and chews.

I don't need to pay a dog Walker or day care but I believe £25 a day for daycare is average and £12 an hour for a dog Walker.

Also set aside money for vet visits as it's often not worth paying the excess on the insurance and putting the premium up for something small!

For ours per month
Insurance £30
Food £120 ish
Vet plan ( worm / flea / jabs ) £17
Grooming £31
Treats £10
Medication £30 ish ( he’s got a couple of long term problems )
We don’t use any walkers / boarders .

Remember setting up costs - bed, bowls, collar and identity tag, lead, harness, travel harness or crate (if you'll be taking him in the car) a few toys, things for puppy to chew on so it's not your stuff, enzyme spray fir cleaning up wee in the house, poo bags

And probably gin - puppies are immensely cute but can be exasperating!

We get jabs as part of the vet's 'club' that covers them, wormers and flea treatments and a twice yearly once over - ask at your local vet if they do similar and how much for a westie -sized dog (price varies by size of dog and exactly what's included)

I have a similar sized pup. Monthly costs approx
Food £60
Insurance £15
Flea/Worm treatments £10
Puppy classes £40
Grooming £35 every 6 weeks
Daycare is £10 per day £15 overnight (private boarder in own home)
Initial vax weren't much think about 50 for both
Then initial outlay of dog bed, leads, bowls, toys, enzyme cleaner for first few weeks etc

all monthly costs -
£50 pet club/insurance
£80 food
£96 dog walking (twice a week)
£50 kennels (averaged over year)
I have an £85 excess on insurance
£10 dental chews/toys
£10 coats/harness etc

Food about £25 (mole valley own brand premium)
Wormer a couple of quid every few months (mole valley own brand)
Flea treatment… I only treat when needed so about 3 times over the last decade.
Swap dog sitting with neighbours
Collars, tags, treats, leads, beds prob on average a tenner a month by the time we lose stuff / things wear out.
I don’t insure after the first year but have a pot of cash if needed. First year was £23 a month
Can’t remember how much jabs are.
Clipping blade sharpening about £20 a year. Initial clipper costs approx £50.

My pet insurance is £85 per month, it goes up even if you don’t claim or that’s what we’ve found. Pet food is whatever you want to spend and how fussy your dog is. We but dog biscuits from Aldi they are as good as the branded ones, dentastix for the teeth about £5 per month, flea treatment, worming tablets can be costly. Our dog destroys beds so that’s costly and pet insurance excess I’ve left at £75 because I always want to be confident I can get our dog treated

We also use a vehicle to take them somewhere nice so the petrol costs add up.

Don't forget their Birthday and Christmas presents etc
You say you won't but....

I pay £14 a month and that covers vaccines (initial, booster and kennel cough) and flea, worm and parasites treatments. Get free claw clipping etc as well with the plan. We have insurance for the big stuff but there's a deductible - in retrospect we should have just put the money in an account each month. I bulk buy food from Amazon, top up with a bit of wet food pouches from asda (own brand)

Food (medium size) is £20 a month

We just lost our beloved old dog. He was insured up until the age of about 10 or so, but then the costs of inure be and the excess rose to a point that made it not worth it. He stayed healthy until last month - then he apparently went into cahoots with the vet and managed to run up a series of bills that came in at well over £1k in total. We could afford it, thankfully, and when we did make the decision to PTS it was based on our lovely boy’s health and welfare only. But I can certainly see how things could spiral very quickly.

As a result, we plan to set aside some cash every month as soon as we get another puppy. We will insure them, but we will also aim to build up a decent nest egg so that when insurance companies no longer want our business, we’ll have a backup. Even if we had had insurance at the end, we still wouldn’t have got much back as rather than one big claim, ddog ran up two or three separate emergencies in quick succession - so only two of the bills would have been worth claiming for, with the excess, but altogether they added up alarmingly!

So I would advise you to consider that issue and budget for it if you can.

Mine is 9 years old. Got priced out of old insurance so had to go with new company. Therefore doesn’t cover her for everything. Now she’s only covered for 80% which is common with older dogs. She’s a Large breed. I would say she has cost around 17k so far. She herself cost £100. They’re definitely not cheap

My insurance for my 10 year old dog has just gone up to nearly £100 a month. Food is probably around £60, grooming is £40 every 6 weeks, treats about £15, vets vaccination and worming plan £18, eye drops are £30 a month plus a private prescription cost every 3 months. It’s an expensive hobby!

Tricky!

Dog food I spend about £70 on two dogs, I buy a lot of chicken and rice and veg and boil it. Cheaper and nutritious. I also use Approved Foods to get Pooch and Mutt.

Insurance £18 per month for lifetime cover up to £12k per dog, 20% cash back if no claim a year - bought by many.

Toys - don’t budget this, I rarely buy them. They like my socks and knickers ugh

Boosters - £45 each per year

Grooming - £30 every 2 months (only 1 dog is groomed)

Flea stuff is £5 for two tubes, I only deflea in flea season so £20 a year

Worming is also £5 every 6 weeks

Whatever you do, don’t buy cheap dog food. Pedigree, anything made by Purina, any own store brands… just read the ingredients - disgusting.

Also, All About Dog Food is helpful for this!

I get Rocco wet dog food as it seemed a good balance between cost and nutrition. I was shocked to see how low lots of big name pet foods scored on the dog food review site.

It really, really depends. Are you planning to use things like a dog walker or daycare? What about the costs of a sitter or kennels when you o on holiday?

My beagle weighs around 17kg and costs me roughly:

Insurance - £57 per month for lifetime cover upto 15k per year.
Food - I buy in bulk but it's probably around £40 per month for wet food, dry food and treats combined. Dry food alone is much cheaper but he doesn't enjoy it.
Flea/worm treatment is roughly £10/month over the year.

He comes to work with me so I don't have to pay for a walker or daycare and my in-laws have him on days out, so I don't have to worry about those costs.

I'm a dog-walker myself and charge £10/hour for walks, and daycare could be anything between around £20-35 per day, to give a rough guide of costs.

We have a pup who is almost 1year old.

We pay each month:
Food £50 (see website www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk for good advice about nutrition in dog food... some of the most popular brands are actually very bad)

Vet scheme £14 (covers flea/worm treatments, vaccinations, health check ups)

Insurance £16 (bear in mind some things aren't worth claiming for.. spent £65 this month on meds for kennel cough.. not cheap but cheaper than going through insurance)

Treats and toys £40 - we buy natural treats and it soon adds up!

Daycare/Walker £230

For things like travel crates/play pens keep your eye on Facebook market place.. stuff is always coming up on there.

Oh I forgot grooming! This depends on the dog. We pay £20 every other month for a tidy up!

Two large dogs, food £70 month, wormers I use drontal bought online for a few pounds, as a previous poster use flea spot on if necessary, maybe £50 tops a year.
Vaccine boosters £35 each. One also has meds costing about £300 a year, no insurance as we prefer to use savings.
A westie shouldn't cost much foodwise, but they can be prone to skin conditions and other issues that can prove expensive.

We have one medium dog

Food incl treats £60
Insurance £31
£13 flea/tick/worming
£10 - 20 incidentals - new toys, bed, collar, shampoo etc

That's the set costs every month cost.

We also have to factor in vet appointments that are too small to claim off insurance. Recently it's been an eye infection. We seem to be at the vet for small things around 5 times a year which average around £40-60

For us the big cost is day care which averages over the year around £250 per month