Fido’s personal finances
The American Pet Products Manufacturers Association estimates that Americans will spend $43.4 billion dollars on their pets in 2008. When I went to write this post, I was ready to write about the ridiculous amount of money people spend on their pets. After looking up the stats, I learned that while we will spend $43 billion on our pets this year, there are 382 million pets in the United States. That works out to only $113 a pet!
I know for a fact we spend way more than that on our dog in a year just for food and vet visits. These numbers include not only cats and dogs, but horses, fish, turtles and small animals. When dog and cat owners were surveyed separately on annual spending for specific categories the numbers were up to $1425 and $990 respectively. Note that this does not represent total annual spending for pet owners, but the sum of the categories pet owners were asked about including routine and surgical vet visits, food, toys and very randomly vitamins(!).
In my case though, I wanted to talk about a truly ridiculous pet expense. When we move to London in May, we’re taking our lab mix dog with us. I get the general impression that importing your pet to most countries is no cake walk. Since the UK is an island and rabies-free, importing your pet there is even more complicated. After separate vet visits for the microchip, rabies re-vaccination, blood work, certification and de-worming, you have use British-owned carriers for transport. For our 34 pound dog, the cost of cargo plus a live animal handling fee on both sides of the pond, we’ll be paying $1700+ for the transport. With the above vet visits the total cost of taking our dog with us will probably be over $2300!
When does pet expenses become too much? We accepted responsibility for our dog when we adopted him and promised that we would not give him away. He’s also a big part of our family. For me, it’s worth the expense to take him with us. However, a lot of our friends think we’re crazy! What do you think?