Financial transparency: How much we spend on our dog
Categorized and organized by specific year, with an overall average
First published in May 2023 and last updated in July 2024.
I’ve seen a push for greater financial transparency in the online dog community over the last few months, and I love it. I thought we’d join in by summarizing what we spend on Scout!
Here I’ve compiled our annual average, specific expenditures in certain years (like her epilepsy diagnosis tests), and our grand total since we adopted her—along with an attempt to categorize costs as “necessary” or “optional”.
First: What things do we spend money on as dog owners?
You can read more about our cattle dog’s general care decisions in this article.
Necessary non negotiables
Food: Goes without saying!
Routine vet visits: Including a yearly physical and vaccines.
Seizure vet visits: Since Scout has epilepsy, she needs additional blood work once or twice a year.
Seizure medication: She takes an anticonvulsant every morning and evening.
Licensing: Everywhere we’ve lived has required our dog to be licensed with the county.
Occasional boarding: Before moving into the van, we sometimes had to travel without Scout and hire someone to watch her.
Extras
Treats: We pretty much always have some special chews or freeze-dried snacks on hand.
Toys: Scout’s usually happy to play with a stick or pinecone… but we have plenty of favorite dog-specific toys, too.
Gray area… are some things required or optional?
Training courses: We’ve spent a lot of money on Scout’s training over the years. For us, paying for information has felt necessary—but there’s a lot of free content out there too.
Preventatives: Scout gets traditional flea and tick and heartworm prevention every month. This is important for us (especially since we travel to many different environments in our van) but every owner’s risk assessment will be different. Many “natural” options are growing in popularity.
Additional medical testing: We had some tough decisions to make when Scout started having seizures about exactly how many tests we’d run.
Our average annual costs as Scout’s caretakers
In a typical year, I expect to spend between $1,900 and $3,000 on Scout’s care. This number has consistently decreased since we adopted her—but now that she’s getting older, I’m prepared for increased medical costs moving forward.
This total consists of:
Food: Around $40 a month, adding to $480 a year
Routine vet visits: About $200 once a year—now a little higher, closer to $300, since we’ve started having a house-call vet come to us
Seizure vet visits: About $100 each, so $200 in a year
Seizure medication: This can vary month to month. Around $40 to $60 for a two-month supply, so $240 to $400 a year
Licensing: $10 to $20 a year
Boarding: Used to be about $150 a weekend probably 1-4 times a year—but in the van not at all since she gos everywhere with us
Treats: Around $20 a month, so $240 a year
Toys: About $50 to $100 a year
Training courses: At this point in our training journey, we average around $300 to $500 a year for continuing training education
Preventatives: $140 a year for flea/tick and $100 a year for heartworm, so $240 annually
Larger training expenditures in our first two years together
In our first two years together, Scout’s fear-based dog reactivity was a huge problem. I easily spent $3,000 to $4,000 on training consults, group classes, videos, and structured boarding during that period.
Higher medical costs during her seizure diagnosis
Scout was loosely diagnosed with idiopathic epilepsy at the end of 2021 and went on a twice-daily anticonvulsant medication in the middle of 2022. During this time we spent around an additional $1,500 on tests like in-depth bloodwork and speaking to a neurologist. (She does not have pet insurance.)
Our grand total since we adopted our heeler
At the time of writing, my best estimate is that we’ve spent:
About $4,000 in our first year (2019)
About $3,000 in our second year (2020)
About $2,500 in our third year (2021)
About $2,300 in our fourth year (2022)
About $1,200 in our fifth year (2023)
About $500 in our sixth year so far (2024)
For a total of about $13,500 in our five and a half years together.