Long story short… We (aka my wife) lost our 16 year old Golden Retriever back in August. I knew it wouldn’t be long before she wanted something else. So after finding what appears to be a reputable and well documented breeder who had a couple of male pups not spoken for, we picked up a new Golden after Christmas. I could have bought a nice bike.
A couple of weeks ago he got sick for a couple days, off to the vet. Couple shots, drugs and he seemed to get better for about a week and a half. Then got sick again, only this time not eating and was very lethargic. Off to the vet again, test over a day, then more and finally a surgery to see if there was a blockage. Surgery went fine, but vet found something that he had never seen before so buttoned the dog up and said to go to a university vet.
So off to the after hours vet, he spent two days, didn’t find anything but got him to eat some. So they sent us back home. Next day, by the evening he was again lethargic and eventually got sick again. Spent two more days, finally find what is believed to be a cyst, a very rare one at that, on his stomach that was actually larger than the stomach itself. They drained the cyst of 200ml of fluid and was able to get him to eat again. Another surgery to remove it happened today. We haven’t picked the dog up yet, not sure if it will be tomorrow or Saturday. Time will tell.
So, this is going to be one expensive vet bill when it is all said and done. This was certainly lethal for him, likely in the coming days since he went a week without eating. Again, I could have bought a really really nice bike. I am conflicted, but also know my wife is in a better place after today and we don’t have to deal with one of our girls being devastated again.
Very timely post. Last year we lost one of dogs to a heart condition. It has been almost a year, and I still miss him a lot and think of him often. We had him for 7-8 years.
This morning, our other dog Nico, who we got before Teddy, was not feeling well. He wouldn’t eat breakfast and didn’t want his favorite treat. It brought fear to my heart since I had been thinking about Teddy. As much as I loved Teddy I love Nico even more. He is 9 years old and I would be absolutely crushed to lose him early. He did get better, so hopefully it wasn’t anything too bad.
But if a vet said “Nico will die in a month if you don’t get him this surgery, but if you spend $10,000 to get him the surgery, he should live another 6-7 years” - I would pay it without hesitation, especially remembering how much it hurt to lose Teddy.
That being said, we got another dog that is 6-7 months old. She is very cute and sweet, but has been a pain in the ass on some things. I don’t know that I would pay $10,000 to save her right now. Hopefully she will grow out of these issues and I will grow to love her as I grew to love Teddy and Nico.
So, to answer your question - I guess it depends. Since you’re talking about how you could have used the money to buy a bike, I presume that paying for it isn’t an issue from a financial standpoint. So, you weigh it against how attached you are to the dog and how much longer they have to live. That can be a tough question to answer.
What are your wife’s thoughts on this? You’ve mentioned that she’s in a better place and you could’ve bought a really nice bike but if I’m reading between the line you’d put her well being ahead a new bike. Based on the info here I’d would get pet insurance and hopefully your dog will have a nice long life without major issues. How much to spend? That’s a personal decision and your ceiling and mine are probably different.
We had trupanion for the first two years with our pup. It started off reasonable enough. But the second year they raised the premiums 50%, and the third year raised it 50% again so that’s when we pulled the plug.
In addition to that, our dog had giardia early on and it was a bit tricky to diagnose. Later on, we had a completely unrelated stomach issue (swallowed foreign object) and insurance refused to cover it because, in their words, stomach issues were a pre-existing condition, despite the fact that her initial issue was a freaking parasite and completely unrelated to her swallowing a foreign object.
The whole experience of dealing with them left a really bitter taste in our mouth.
Our greyhound is an amazing dog, but I can’t imagine spending more than $1,000 if he got sick.
We have seen a lot of greyhound owners from our adoption group spend over $30,000 on cancer treatments and the dogs only live a few months that are full of pain.
From our experience, we spent over $20k across 3 years on 4 different surgeries. We got five years out of her from the initial surgery, and since we had only had her for 3 years initially (adopted as a senior dog), it was money well spent. Still can’t believe that pet hospital didn’t even give us a free toaster…
a difficult question, but the first vet couldn’t/didn’t detect that when the dog was on the table, or before, with radiology? And felt it was better not to treat at all, even drain, but instead to kick the problem to another provider while the dog is in a bad way? Is this standard?
it also sounds like for whatever reason, you haven’t bonded well with the dog, and that’s a shame given that it’s a family pet, yours as much as theirs.
Don’t you have thousands of dollars’ worth and an excessive number of guns and ammo, yet a grand is too much to help out a pet and family member in pain?
I think the last routine checkup I took my dog to ran just shy of $500 for all her shots and everything.
Are you an animal lover? I ask that because I wasn’t until we got our Nico 9 years ago. Before then, I never wanted an inside dog and didn’t understand the love that people have for their dogs. After getting Nico, and then another - I fully understand it. While Nico is a dog, we see him as a family member.
People think nothing of spending $20k for an RV that they might use a dozen times a year, whereas that dog provides companionship and joy every day. Same with boats, sports cars, motorcycles, or bicycles.
$20k on a pup is crazy without knowing the root cause of the cyst. Is it potentially a reoccurring issue? Is it a fix it once and hopefully 15 years of happy times? I would for sure be contacting the breeder, at least to let them know of the issue. They might also have had other dogs from the litter with issues and need to evaluate their bloodlines.
Our golden is almost 10 and has a bad hip. I don’t see here living another 5 years even with perfect health, and besides the hip, she is in perfect health. Would I spend a $1,000 to fix up some issue? Yep. Would I drop $10k on cancer treatments with an unknown success rate, doubtful.
I remember as a kid our chocolate lab wasn’t doing well, still a young dog, maybe 6 or 7, in her hunting prime and an incredible dog. It was when that bad dog food spell happened. Step dad took her to the vet, “it appears to be from dog food, the test is $1,000, if it is the dog food, there is no treatment.” Step dad decided it just let it run its course and the dog died a few days later on easter sunday. That was my first hunting pup, you form something special of a bond with your hunting dogs.
Pets are tough, you want to say money is no issue, but in the end there is a cost benefit that needs to be worked out and a quality of life for them. We all want to die peacefully of old age, as we wish our pets would, but the harsh reality is, that is a modern concept and something rarely afforded to us or any animal for that matter.
It’s tough. All our dogs have been rescues so we’ve never had health insurance, but we’ve also always been very lucky. Our current dog is our costliest so far and is on a regimen of very expensive pills. She’s 13 and a half now so nearing the end…if she goes to 15 and I’m honest I guess we’ll have spent $10k over the last 8 years of her life. That’s straining what I’m willing to pay but, of course, it’s easier to swallow when it’s a few hundred here and and a few hundred there. My nightmare would be a young dog who needed a long succession of $2-5k surgeries or treatments - I don’t think I’d have the heart to balk at any individual one but I’ve seen people in that scenario blow way past what they would ever want to pay in the aggregate.
I have spent a bit over $5000 on three different dogs and around $2500 on a formerly stray cat.
For me it is more about whether it will actually fix the problem and how old is the pet.
If I knew it fixed it and the dog was less than 7 or 8, I would be hard pressed to find a max. That number could get big. I hope to never have to find out. Saying no just because of price would gut me.
It’s a very fact-specific analysis, IMO. How much loose cash do you have; how old is the pet; how likely is the expenditure to fix or stave off the problem; how much time will it buy you, and will that time be pain free for the pet, or just staving off the human pain of losing the pet; what will you do with that extra time with the pet.
Our last dog got cancer around age 12. We had a leg amputated in connection with that. It cost about $3k in covered insurance, and another $2.5k out of pocket.
Most people (including some in the LR, when I posted about it) thought that was silly. For us, it made sense. It made the dog pain free almost immediately after the amputation. She lived for another 7 months happily chasing bunnies on her remaining legs. In that time, we took a very memorable family vacation with her where she had a ball swimming in a remote Maine lake, and at one point jumped out of the canoe to go swim-chase a loon (you can take a leg off a Malinois, but you can’t take the prey drive out of them). We moved into a new house, where we now have memories of her. We acclimated our then-5-year old kid to the idea of losing a dog to whom he was very tightly attached.
Worth every penny and moment of extra time for us. Others would (and do) judge me for making that call.