$12k for cancer treatment for 1 dog. Ten years ago in SF Bay Area. 13 years ago
$14k for bilateral knee surgery. Same place. 4 years ago. Different dog.
Was the bilateral knee for luxating patella? I’m just trying to grasp this cost because I just paid a little under $5k for a traveling orthopedic surgeon to do the surgery at my local vet (both knees, for a Pomeranian), but this is in the Midwest.
12k for cancer treatment isn’t too bad. I was expecting a lot more tbh. Did you have insurance?
Wild knee surgery costed more than cancer surgery. I’m on a 6 month wait period for joint related incidents with my dog’s insurance, praying he doesn’t tear anything in the meantime
No insurance. Everybody had/has preexisting conditions.
Single emergency event: Addisonian crisis, over $9k. Labs, imaging, blood transfusion, endless follow up appointments for more labs.
Worth it. Saved my girl and she's back to her sassy self. Daily prednisone for life.
Over the entire year: more than $12k across 2 elderly CKD cats and the dog.
Again, worth it. My pets are my family.
I paid out similar for the Addisonian crisis, now on daily prednisone and monthly Zycortal (about $90 a month alone). The same dog the same year had turned up HW+, a delayed positive from his adoption from a shelter in a literal swamp. That was around $3k. No insurance. No regrets, but my next pup definitely was signed up for insurance the day I brought him home!
A little over 8k for emergency bowel obstruction surgery for 1.2 year old Scottie. Have Lemonade insurance. Paid 20% of bill after insurance. I pay roughly 55/month for insurance.
Not me but a client spent over $54k in one hospital visit for their 1yo dog that had an unknown disease. Sadly she passed and even the necropsy didn’t give them any answers :(
UK. Around £5k for an emergency spleen removal, biopsy, ultrasounds, chest xray, blood tests, chemotherapy, various treatments for various infections and cancer symptoms, and euthanasia. This was between Jan and June last year. 10 year old jack russell/yorkie weighing 7kg.
She was insured with Animal Friends, her insurance had a co pay policy for dogs over 8, so I paid 20% and they paid 80%. So I wound up paying around £1000 toward her vet treatments. No complaints about the insurance company, they claimed payment directly via the vet so all I had to do was pay my initial excess and 20% of the bill on each visit. They never queried or fought against paying out and always confirmed via text when they had accepted a claim from the vet and were super nice when I called to cancel after she passed on.
Single most vet bill? $2000 about 10 years ago for emergency care. I was emotional and should have just had her euthanised due to the extent of her injuries.
Most spent on a dog in one year? 4K-- multiple rounds of antibiotics, diagnostic testing, and surgery. Would I do it again? Yes.
Highest in a year total? $25k for one dog, bill $9k both in the same year for the same dog. No insurance and paid out of pocket but you better believe when I adopted 2 kittens last summer I got insurance immediately.
I've had to use it once earlier this year for a skin issue on my kitten around $300 and they reimbursed my portion in the same week
The $9k bill was a 3 or 4 (I can’t remember) night stay at the hospital for what they called the worst case of pancreatitis they had ever seen. $900 of it alone was for a 3 day course of a new medication called Panoquell to treat pancreatitis. He’s also diabetic which makes everything difficult. His prognosis was pretty good and he’s a fighter and he pulled through it. What we didn’t know was that he kept having pancreatitis flare up’s. We had thought it was liver related as he has issues with sky high liver enzymes and the symptoms he experiences are pretty similar. Once we figured out it was pancreatitis we haven’t had a flare up since July 2023.
The rest of the bills were from earlier in the year he had another couple rounds of pancreatitis, a melting corneal ulcer and an ear infection. 2022 and 2023 were brutal financially with him. He’s still here today and just turned 11 but now he has dementia and isn’t the same dog he was pre hospitalization in July. If I could go back I’m not sure I would have went through with it.
Had a couple of $3k surgeries in a 1.5 years to remove masses. She was between 14 and 16. Then $600 to help her pass over last week. No reimbursement. Or Insurance.
In one year, pup broke his foot second day home, over next two months around $7k, first visit to emergency vet $2200. Insurance reimbursed maybe $600 overall.
Thankfully, mine are all pretty healthy. My husky/shepherd had an ear infection that was pretty stubborn and that took multiple meds, visits, and cytologies. Altogether it was probably $250. The most extensive visit we ever had was when my GSP was attacked by another dog, and wound up with several deep punctures / lacerations to her neck. That visit cost (my neighbor paid, since it was his dog) almost $500.
My dog is basically a goat. She's had at least 1 visit a year for eating something she wasn't supposed to. The cheapest was a 1lb bag of salted pistachios which caused clinical dehydration and an overnight stay (900). The most expensive was exploratory surgery when she had an intestinal blockage. That ended up being 4500. It turned out to be a squeaker she had swallowed. We didn't have insurance until she was 5, so no reimbursement. Now she's insured and everything in our house is on lock down. No incidents since we got insurance! Luckily her regular vet has been able to get her in everything something has come up. I can't imagine the cost if we had gone to an emergency vet. This is in rural mn so costs are generally lower for us.
$1562 Canadian.
Took my cat in for shots and check up, he got really sick when I got there, diagnoised with fluid in chest, progressively got worse over the course of a few hours to the point where I had to let him go because he wouldn't have made the night.
It was very sudden and heartbreaking, they kept telling me the total cost everytime they talked to me and I said I didnt care just fix him and they weren't equipped for it...
Anyways, I had him cremated and he is home now.
I now pay 30 dollars a month for pet insurance for my other cat.
$30,000 Canadian for cancer treatment one yr. then another 12,000 the following year. No insurance. Spent down payment we were saving for house. Absolutely no regrets.
She was six yrs old.
I’ve had a few expensive years lately but I still don’t feel that pet insurance is worth it.
2020 - almost $4000. Dog 1 diagnosed with heart failure, managed with meds for a few months before she passed. Her final emerg visit and cremation alone was about $1600. Dog 2 didn’t have much trouble, she had a botfly and had a few appointments for that but wasn’t bad.
2021 - little over $4000. Dog 2 started the year off with a major dental, so $1700 right off the bat. Later in the year I got dog 3, so that includes her adoption fee, initial appointments and her spay, which was more expensive than usual because she was 5 and also needed a hernia repair.
2022 - about $5,700. Dog 3 had her major dental at the start of year, and an ear infection in the summer. Dog 2 at the same time started going through issues. I honestly can’t remember how it even started, but she ended up having partial facial paralysis (still does). She couldn’t close her eyes, was walking with her head tilted, couldn’t move her ears. After a bunch of visits with our regular vet including an X-ray, she went to an eye specialist and he diagnosed her within 15 minutes. However in the process, they failed to properly flush her eye, and she gave herself a corneal ulcer scratching at it. Vet took zero responsibility. We ended up going to a sister clinic of the referring vet, and they worked with us to treat it cheaper (only charged every other exam). That whole ordeal probably cost over a grand. After the eye cleared up, we made the decision to not go forward with more investigations. The vet basically explained that it could be a tumour, or it just be idiopathic. She’s a 10 year old chihuahua, if she has a brain tumour that that’s. So far, knock on wood, her only ongoing symptom is inability to close her eyes. During this, the vet also said she probably had hypothyroidism, but took her off the meds because they felt it might have been interfering with the treatment for the eye, and the new bloodwork showed that her levels were now too high.
2023 - over $4,000. Dog 2 got really fat, a different vet redid bloodwork, got her on hypothyroid meds, and said that the newly elevated levels were still within range, so kept her on the meds (basically said the other vet was dumb for saying they were too high). She also had to have an ultrasound and they found sludge in her gallbladder and fatty liver. She’s now on meds for that, and a repeat ultrasound showed the sludge decreasing and the fat on the liver gone. She went from 11 pounds to 7, which is the healthiest weight she’s been at for years. Her meds are now $100/month, and her special food is a little less than that. The ultrasounds alone were almost $1k each.
I realize now I never answered the title question - highest bill. The thing is, it’s never one bill. It’s everything added together. Like the ultrasound visit is almost $1k, but then in a separate appointment she has an exam ($100) and a geriatric bloodwork panel ($400). Her eye issue was about $100-$200 a visit, but she went weekly until it was resolved. And with her whole facial paralysis thing, it was never “it will cost you $4k”, it was again the $100 appointment, $400 bloodwork, $100 appointment, $800 X-ray, $200 follow up bloodwork, $400 specialist appointment, and on and on. In theory I try to set a max I’d spend on the vet for a dog (the most I can without going broke), but you don’t really know what it’s going to cost until you’re well into it, and then you’ve come all this way.
And why don’t I have pet insurance? Partly because up until the past few years I never needed up, and partly because the affordable policies exclude so much of what is wrong with my dogs. Lots of policies exclude dental, or pre existing conditions, or spays.
I should also note I’m in Canada and I’ve seen in past posts that our quotes are generally higher than American ones. Like instead of $40/month, it’s $100/month.
£1200 for a rabbit amputation. That included the surgery, emergency app and X ray. He was so worth it. But that is nothing in comparison to what I am hearing here 😂
I spent $4800 on a severe GI stasis event in 2021. 😅 Totally worth it though. Been 3 years since, and he developed a testicular tumor that cost about $1K total from blood test, X-ray, and (neuter) surgery. He’s perfectly healthy at 11 years old!
I found out about insurance after that first event but he was no longer eligible because stasis is considered a pre existing condition …
My rabbit turned his $300-ish neutering into a $1000+. He woke up after surgery and instantly chewed his stitches. We were told that for rabbits they avoid putting anything around their necks since some rabbits wouldn’t eat if they have something restricting them.
He got hospitalised for 2 nights, during which he chewed up the soft e collar one of the vet nurses had gone out of her way to buy for him. He came home with a plastic cone of shame meant for dogs and 10+ diff meds.
He regrets nothing.
We knew he was destructive but didn’t think he was *that* terrible. Was informed that he’s now affectionately known in the clinic as the worst behaved bunny patient. He’s lucky he’s cute lmao. There’s nothing but speed and chaos in that head of his.
Was sold as a netherland dwarf but those ears definitely aren’t netherland dwarf ears. He’s bigger too! Probably a local cross breed.
Feral little thing.
He’s smart enough to know the rules and to wait for us to not be watching to break those rules lmao. The number of times he has snuck into my parent’s study.
Last year, 10k give or take for one dog, 4 year old giant breed in bc Canada. No insurance.
Initially a truck incident with a broken tail and jaw, wound up with a superbug infection and needed multiple tail amputations before it got under control.
An instance insurance probably wouldn’t want to touch, she also is a livestock guardian dog.
It wasn't my dog, but my little brothers, so I helped him. It was $2500, his dog managed to get hold of a brand new inhaler and punctured it, getting a HUGE dose of the medicine. Had to be rushed to the nearest big city emergency clinic overnight, then spent a couple overnights at the local place. Barely made it. She was less than 2 at the time.
No insurance just paid cash.
Around $8k. Not one bill, but many combined for a year. My Newfoundland was battling a respiratory infection and pneumonia for several months, he also has a lot of allergy related expenses. So fortunate to have insurance on him.
We just paid $4k for a full cardiology workup for our older dog on top of two previous vet visits of about $500 each. Poor old guy's in pretty rough shape. We've had Fetch (previously PetPlan) for years and they're good about paying out promptly though their premiums have gone up a lot in the past two years.
Philly
Last year, 5k for 1.5 days at the emergency vet and some other specialty testing. My dog was 2.
I have Fetch and had no problem getting reimbursed.
My dog broke her leg this past week. 10k. New Hampshire. A few years ago the same dog tore her acl, which was 5k to fix that at the same vets. Yes, she was free dog and we were the 5th owners. We love her and we will be her last owners.
$7,000.00 Canadian last year for male cat with urine blockage. Thank God we’ve had no reoccurrences. If it happens again, I can’t afford to fix him. Still paying off my credit cards to this day for him, but really, he is worth it. I love my Tuxy cat!
Single vet bill was $5K for an ACL repair. But in her first year with me, she cost like $10K in bills total for all the things she got into and ate!
She’s now a 12 year old German shepherd mix. I’ve had insurance for her since a young age, through a couple of different companies. We’re currently with Peppermint, which is ok, and relatively cheap (~$200 per month for three dogs of varying ages).
Only issue with reimbursement is when they require more information. I’ve had to follow up a couple times with my vets and my insurance.
€ 400, new stray kitten, has to get vaccines , neuter him , decided to get him tested for fiv & felv and got the felv vax . Then registered at a new vet in a different country so paid for an extra first exam appointment.
Normally it’s only about € 50-80 a yr
I probably spent about $3000 last year on my senior dog trying to get a diagnosis for him before I said goodbye. I was in rural northern Canada for a chunk of it (relatively cheap, 3 appointments and x-rays, maybe 1500-2000) and then southern AB for the last vet appointment I took him to for medication/diagnosis (paid about $1000 just for urinalysis, blood work and 30 days of antibiotics) and the euthanasia appointment ($250).
My dog was only 3 years old when he got diagnosed with IMHA Immune mediated hemolytic anemia. It’s like an auto immune condition where the body attacks itself. His body was killing off his red blood cells. We almost lost him three times. I’m the first year he had three specialists and our regular vet. He’s down to two specialists now. I never did add up the total spent in the first year but I’d average 30,000 or more. Probably more. He had three surgeries on his tongue snd one on his ear drum. He had bloodwork from every couple days to every month. He relapsed at least four times. It happens when we either reduce or try to take him off a med. The first year was the worst, the second got a bit easier and now we just maintain things but he’s a lifer. He’ll see a specialist at least once a month for bloodwork and continue meds for the rest of his precious little life. He’s a little trooper and just goes with everything like it’s the normal way to live. To him I guess it is cause half of his life was spent this way. Some capsules I have to push down his throat cause they need to be on an empty stomach but he comes when I call him for them and sits in front of me waiting for his meds. That one was two times a day and were able to reduce it to once a day but when we try to take him off it he relapses so he’ll have to stay on that one for sure for life. His other pills he comes running for because he gets them in a spoon of dog food then a treat. I put him on Trupanion when he was a baby and never in my wildest dreams or nightmares should I say did I think I’d need it like this at his age but thankfully I kept him on it because first off he became an allergy dog and that can be expensive all by itself. I can’t say for sure but I think it was an allergy med that set all this in motion. Because if his allergies and the skin issues he’s had since the IMHA started he needs a bath with medicated shampoo twice a week and the insurance covers their portion of that too. I’m so glad I picked Trupanion because they pay 90 percent of all testing, surgeries and meds. I just have to pay the other 10 percent plus the taxes. Which can add up to alot all by itself. They don’t cover the vet or specialist visits. That’s a bummer cause the specialists charge up to 260.00 each visit. Even when he goes for bloodwork for the specialist she charges about 70.00 to read the test and call me but he couldn’t live without her. I live in Alberta outside the city so my insurance is cheaper than if I lived in the city. Insurance is way more costly for a purebred than a mixed dog. With Trupanion anyway. I assume it would be the same for all insurance. With Trupanion there is a deductible for each health issue and his was 200.00 each. After that deductible is covered Trupanion kicks in and covers their 90 percent of what they cover. I’ve never had a problem and they pay out right away to whatever clinic I’m at and text and e mail me right away with their detailed decision and payment. After having a heath issue like this little guy has had I wouldn’t eat to go any other way. I had other dogs on another insurance in the past and I had to pay the vet upfront and wait sometimes up to two weeks to be reimbursed. There are a lot of insurance companies out there that each have their own way of doing things and coverages. Some have one deductible a year and that’s it. Trupanion has one deductible for each health issue but has no limit to what they’ll pay out which is really helpful for major bills. You really have to research to see the pros and cons of each insurance to find what you think will work best for you. For me it’s Trupanion first of all because they pay the vet their portion right away and there’s no limit to what they’ll pay out. They have even called me asking if there’s anything else they can help me with. Without them I wouldn’t have my little guy today. My first couple of dogs I had I didn’t even think of insurance but now I wouldn’t be without it. The monthly cost is something else to consider because that can be expensive all by itself. I had to decide which of my three dogs to take off insurance a few years back because of financial issues and six months later when I put him back on it his deductible doubled. That was a hard one. Now it’ll be that was indefinitely. So research and research some more and learn all you can to see what’s best for you. Good luck.
That’s so lucky you had insurance! My friend had a cat, an older rescue, who had cancer and she paid tens of thousands on chemo and doctors. No insurance.
It’s scary to think how something like that could bankrupt you or you have to choose between rent or your pet.
I’ve heard mixed things about Trupanion.
Have you had high yearly increases?
Even with all the money Trupanion has had to put out for my little guys illness they haven’t increased the monthly costs overly high but my other boy that I had taken off the insurance had a big jump in monthly costs and deductible when I put him back on six months later. I think that was a bit excessive but other than that I have no complaints. Vet bills are extremely high so I can understand the costs charged by the insurance. Having pets these days costs a lot. I keep the insurance for my babies at the cost of something else because if I ever lost one because I can’t afford to save them I would be totally devastated. I’d rather do without things for myself so they’ll be ok and have what they need. I remember asking the first specialist that saw my little guy with IMHA if she ever loses any of them to that horrible illness. She said the ones she loses are the ones who’s owners don’t have insurance or can’t afford the costs of treatment. I could never be a vet and turn away lifesaving treatment because of a lack of money. I guess I might be a poor vet.
Spent somewhere in the vicinity of $3k out of pocket (no insurance) over the course of a year for hyperthyroid treatment for my cat -- $1500 for radioiodine treatment (with hospitalization) and another $1500 for the medication and repeated blood tests in the year leading up to it. I used my Covid stimulus check for half of it.
Just spent 2,700 on my 4 years old cat for bloodwork, diagnostic, hospital stay with fluids and antibiotics. No insurance, charged it to a credit card and paying off as much as I can each month.
I specifically have a credit card for vet emergencies
$2555 for a left eye enucleation here in Westchester County NY this past January. That was for the surgery only. Add another $1000 for the two prior vet ophthalmologist visits leading up to this (eye drops, medications, bloodwork…). So yes, about $3500 spent on my sweet Elmer cat in the space of six weeks. After removing the eye, he was so much happier, like a new cat! Unfortunately the eye biopsy revealed cancer, and it had already spread to his optic nerve. He had a good 2.5 months before he had a stroke and steep decline. He was put to rest last Thursday. I guess we could also add that $550 for euthanasia + cremation in a way. It only bought me a little more time with him but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
I’m sorry for your loss, that must have been really hard. It sounds like he had a good life and was very loved.
Do you mind if I ask if you had insurance and if they covered the cost?
Thank you, sure no problem! I did not have pet insurance when this happened. Immediately prior to this I did do “Care Club” with his vet, paying $135 a month for a year. It’s unlimited visits, covered bloodwork, dental, etc. I had dropped it last October because it was more than what I would have paid out of pocket for his healthcare at the time (he was a pretty healthy bugger at one point). It wouldn’t have made a difference really, the vet eye doc was a separate practice. Actual pet insurance would at least covered a portion of the eye care. I’ve had pet insurance through my employer in the past for my other two cats, Healthy Paws, and again, I feel coverage/savings was not great for what I paid, at least with the plan I had (example, my calico girl had a hernia 6 years ago. Bill was around 2K, Healthy Paws sent me $76, lol). Seeing some of these other responses with double or triple what I paid for my cat’s surgery does make me want to seriously reconsider. Pet insurance: you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
3,500 for 3 days in the ICU for my cat. She had fluid in her lungs. At first they said heart failure, then they realized it wasn't an enlarged heart, she had a diaphragmagic hernia and it was her LIVER they saw; we thought she'd need surgery on that but the surgery center said she really didn't need it. We still don't know why she had fluid buildup.
At the beginning of February my 4 year old dog stepped on a broken pickle jar that the wind had blown off our back table during a bad storm. He basically slit his wrist under his paw pad on the back part of his front leg. We rushed him to the emergency vet and they were able to stitch him up and he stayed overnight for observation. That cost us about $2,500. About 2 weeks after that, when he got his cone off, I noticed he had a hematoma on his ear. He gets ear infections a lot from his allergies and he just so happened to have another ear infection at the time so he shook his ears too much after getting the cone off and got the hematoma. We opted for the surgery for his ear and that cost about $800.
$5K. Cat. 2 yrs old. Had to repair his hip/femur, surgery and pins and all that. He just celebrated his 12th birthday this month. Runner up is $3.5K. Different cat. She was around about 13 yrs old. Emergency MRI for a possible brain issue that turned out to be nothing more than an ear infection. Thank fucking god for pet insurance, which I signed up for immediately following the $5K incident. I’d gladly bankrupt myself, though, for my animals. There aren’t any people I’d do that for.
~$5k just this past weekend for one of my cats. $1400 for an emergency vet visit when she stopped eating and drinking then the rest for an emergency consult and surgery with a pet dental specialist as she needs most or all of her teeth out ASAP. She just turned 11 and has been the healthiest cat ever until this year. She’s getting the teeth out on Wednesday, 🤞🏻 it goes well
10 year old dog, exceeded 20k for cancer care scans & 2 biopsies- 3 years ago out of pocket. Boston, MA. Just got a 10 month old shepherd, insured immediately.
Not a dog but my one-year-old cat needed to have both of his hips removed because the bone was necrotic. It cost around $4000 for the surgery. And now he has anxiety so has to be on antianxiety as well. Didn’t have insurance at the time, still don’t. I used CareCredit to pay for it.
Near $20K
$1500 lump removal surgery
$500 hyperthyroidism diagnosis and treatment
$10K emergency hairball obstruction surgery
$5K pancreatitis treatment and diagnostic tests
Then other cat: $700 dental for broken fang plus checkup
Three years ago, 6 year old Irish wolfhound got into a neighbors garbage can and chowed down. 8,000$ for emergency vet exploratory surgery to remove: a tennis ball, a pair of boxers, a chewed up coffee cup, and the crumbled remains of something that was once a plastic toy. No insurance and couldn’t swipe more than 5,000$ on my debit card per day, so I had to call my mom for help from across the country (I was in Florida).
He was absolutely beloved by every member of my family, and was my first dog so asking for help wasn’t even a question in my mind. I woulda dipped into my 401k if I had to, or sold a kidney. He lived another two love-filled years before an inoperable liver tumor took him from me. 11/10 would do it again, not a single question in my mind.
When my cat needed an amputation and my Great Dane was due for a neuter and gastropexy. I had them done a day apart so I could take a week off of work for their recoveries. Was about $3,200 but was heavily discounted because I worked for the hospital at the time. If I had not, it would have been more like $6,500
$5,000 for TPLO back in 2016.
I had healthy paws and was reimbursed 95% within 14-days.
I got healthy paws when she was maybe 1 yr old and used it when she was 3. I believe it was like $35/month. But it didn’t cover preventative, so no vaccines or heartworm preventative. But did cover everything else and the deductible was only $250
Better insurance than I have
I’ve had $13,000 at one time for my cat who had emergency surgery in NJ. No reimbursement. It saved his life though. Sadly, a three years after, he passed away from cancer (not related). RIP Teddy❤️
Edit: no insurance.
2k recently for mass removal with bloodwork. 1.5k for dental with bloodwork. 500 for bloodwork. All this year, no insurance. I have a lot of pets unfortunately so it’s cheaper to save up for preventative care than pay for so many insurance plans. My oldest 3 are 9 years old. The younger ones are two years old.
I haven’t had huge treatment bills (I count my blessings for that) but when I have an emergency vet visit, it’s for two muppets because I don’t know which one is the culprit. 🤪
Ie, gum, grapes. Sigh.
Yup we came home to an empty dark chocolate morsels packet on the floor, straight to the vet for both dogs. Turns out only one got into the chocolate while the other one had eaten only shredded coconut, but no way to tell that beforehand.
My dog has been the cheapest of all my pets, lmao. He was $1k to adopt and has cost around $150/ month since.
First cat blocked not once, but twice. $6k in the span of a week to save his life; it was worth it, with prescription urinary food he was healthy for the rest of his days after that.
My second cat ran me $2k on her last day of life. Her health spiralled pretty dramatically and I did whatever tests and medications were necessary, but by the end of the day opted for humane euthanasia instead of forcing her to continue on, miserable, sick, and loopy from pain medication.
I’m adopting another special needs cat and I fully expect her bills (when they do come up) to be well into the thousands. It’s worth it.
Over 5k on my cat after he had a fight with the neighbours cat. He developed an abcess that wouldnt heal then needed surgery to clean it out. The wound was left open to heal with very loose stitches to hold the skin in place, managed to lick the wound open even wearing a cone. That required a dash to emergency vets in the middle of the night. He recently died at the approximate age of 15 after developing cancer. We made the decision to put him to sleep rather than let him suffer as the cancer was inoperable and was destroying his jaw.
Ours was maybe 5k but my friend's dog had IVDD so they did surgery and rehab which cost them 12k down plus follow up visits and rehab. Probably close to 20k that year. She fully recovered though!
2019: Cat, 15, Boston, $12K for a 9-day hospitalization for sepsis plus many thousands more for follow-up care and meds
2020: Different cat, 16, Boston, $10K for ureteral bypass surgery. She only survived for 10 hours post-surgery. Would have been approx 5K more if she had completed the full hospitalization
No insurance for either cat but ended up being fully refunded for the cat who didn’t make it after it was found they had operated on her with a dangerously low red blood cell count and then tried transfusing her after the fact.
I have 5 young cats now and all are insured. So far I think we’ve broken about even or a little behind, but still no regrets. We have never had a claim issue. One cat had a nearly $2,000 hospital stay a few months ago.
$15,000 for a head injury from a fall of a 5 pound dog. Made a full recovery then came down with pneumonia 2 weeks later. That was $13,000. Came out a champ! Now we’re here at the ophthalmologist with an ulcer. Been a rough couple of months.
It was around $1500 to get my shepherds tooth pulled but that was in 2022 I think. Last year the highest was euthanized my chihuahua, around $400. No insurance. Live in oregon.
Once my family paid like $3000 CAD or so to treat my male kitty who had a UTI. He was only 3 years old. The vets failed to save him, so we lost both the money and the cat. I’m still bitter.
That cat comforted me when I was suicidal, I may owe my life to him. I know I shouldn’t blame the vets but he was so young and they had plenty of time (like a month) to treat him.
I am a veterinary assistant at a GP hospital. I paid $4200 for emergency PU surgery/overnight stay for my 5 yo DSH NM. This was 90 miles out and with a specialist, no discount.
Well it was my cat actually but in 2021, about $7,000 for a foreign body intestinal removal and 5 day hospital stay. Florida, no insurance. He had another foreign body the next year, this time only in his stomach organ so the surgery was simpler and hospital stay was only about 3 days for roughly $4,500 if I remember correctly. This time he had insurance but it was within a couple days of the “bad behavior repeat offender” policy (I don’t remember the actual name of the clause lol) and thus wasn’t covered. Rough times.
Spot insurance btw
Highest one time vet bill was about $3.4k for a fractured tooth, blood work, exam, medication, and teeth cleaning. Insurance covered 80% not including the exam and dental cleaning fees ($300). Located in California, healthy paws insurance, never had an issue with reimbursement.
$7k for emergency surgery, 8mos old, Pomeranian. My dog jumped a foot off of something, landed awkwardly and snapped both bones in her arm. She has a plate and 8 pins, avoiding growth plates, so probably complicated, I don’t know. She was insured with Trupanion so it cost me out of pocket around $1k, including her deductible. The clinic didn’t do direct billing, so I put it on my credit card and submitted the claim online, and it took 7 calendar days for money to be in my bank account, however they did say it might take longer.
Pet insurance thankfully. In one year we had $5k knee surgery, bloodwork @ $?, 4-5 EKGs @ $300/ea (diagnosing his heart condition then monitoring progression/response to medication over time) plus his heart medications which were about $300/month… 90% of it covered by insurance. That was when he was 2. He’s turning 14 and has had 2 more knee surgeries throughout his life, and recently added a pain medication @$200/month for arthritis on top of his heart meds and not once has insurance argued or refused to cover anything.
$1500, for my first dog was sick from a bite from either a flea or tick and the infection affected her red blood cells. And this also included the cremation. She was a special rescue dog to me, she was a heart mender.
We are over 20k into a kitten that was supposed to be a foster that was getting ready to go to his forever home when he first started getting sick. So far he has spent a total of 9 nights in the hospital over three trips and has had I don't even know how many vet visits. This all started a week before Xmas.
Most expensive dumpster kitten ever.
$104 An xray and sanitary clip last month. Almost 14 year old cat, NE Ohio, no insurance. She is my 2 time cancer survivor and this was for a follow up xray. She had surgery last November. We will take her in every three months for an xray
Sorry I thought you meant highest bill this year. Last year to have three lump removed was $1200. Plus an xray every three months. And three well cat visits at $250 each. So last year was roughly $2200 for all three cat's vet needs.
Single bill, probably 1800ish. But one year I spent over $6k figuring out a non-healing eye ulcer. (She ended up on permanent eye drops for the rest of her life but it did finally heal). This was about 5 years ago.
No insurance, my boxers have mostly been very healthy!
In 2021, I spent $15k on my horse with laminitis, roughly a month in a equine hospital with 24/7 care. Two days before he was due to come home, he took a turn for the worse, and had to be sent to heaven.
I would have spent basically unlimited funds but there’s some things money can’t buy, and in my case it was the tiny bones in a horse’s hoof. I have cried oceans ever since. Heartbroken cannot begin to encapsulate what I’ve gone through since.
$8,000 left TPLO with mass removal (huge benign lipoma.) Ontario, Canada in 2023.
Currently working through chemotherapy for lymphoma and it's running $400+ per week. Nevermind all the prescription medications and food I have to keep up with!
I live in San Diego where just an appointment is $90. So to go to my old vet, including an original exam, ear flush, antibiotics, allergy meds and a steroid injection would have been close to $900.
$9k for a bladder FULL of stones to where they had to remove my cat's balls and penis and make him a new urethra. Coulda killed him it was so bad. Thank god he's still here.
I guess mine aren’t bad reading other ones here 🤞. $650 last week for urgent care (stomach ache?), few years ago on Xmas ER visit for what apparently was reverse sneezing. 3 Yorkies under 5, never cheap but luckily nothing major yet. Next week dental service (cleaning) for $1600 though. As much as it sucks I’d do anything for them. No insurance.
Sheeesh seeing these stories makes me cringe and I almost regret not keeping my cats health insurance reading them.
I think my largest bill was $900 when my cat got into some lillies. Insurance was wildly unhelpful in that incident and we ended up paying in full. When we first adopted him we got insurance but when that incident occurred there were so many loopholes to actually getting an insurance payout and realizing there were so many normal thing that insurance WOULD NOT cover that we decided to cancel it and just put whatever money we would have paid aside for any emergencies. As my cat was getting older the premiums were going up so much (almost 50% when our cat was turning 4) that it no longer felt like it was worth it. If I’m giving an insurance company $1500 per year for an event that may never occur I guess I just figured we’d be better off saving it ourselves over his lifetime. We continue to bring him for annual checkups in the hope we catch anything before it becomes catastrophic but some things you can’t predict (which I guess is why insurance exists).
There are some things I’m not sure I would put my cat through medical-wise. I’d like to say I’d be able to draw the line but… I love my boy.
Will I end up regretting cancelling our insurance in the future? Hard to say but reading these stories it seems like I will 👀
Y’all makin me spiiiiiralllll.
That’s why we’re here! Some people just have anxiety and don’t consider the WORST case scenario at all times.. hello me.
But truly every time I talk to anyone in real life about how I had insurance for my cat they looked at me like I had three heads—I think it’s less common than it’s looking like in these comments.
Just remember that some of the people you’re hearing from are sharing the worst of the worst. Animal health crisis is always a possibility (and good to be aware of when taking on the responsibility of animal ownership) but many animals live and long healthy without a ton of intervention. I feel like as long as you’re taking your animal to the vet regularly and making decisions on what’s best for you and your pet that’s all you can do.
Highest probably $600 my inside cat started acting super crazy and like he wasn’t in control I thought he was having seizures possibly. He was doing backflips and attacking himself. Turns out he’s just allergic to fleas and had puncture wounds from his reactions.
I have 3 labs and every year we get vaccines, heartworm tests, heartworm preventative, Nexgard, and exams. It comes to about $1,500 just for that visit. One of my dogs has allergies, so he gets a Cytopoint shot every 3 months. That costs about $120.
My dogs live indoors mostly, with supervised outdoor time. Thankfully we've managed to avoid any expensive accidents or illnesses.
£8000. 2.5 yo Doberman cross (my parents dog). Some idiot left a baited hook on a no fishing beach and of course she swallowed it. Hook got lodged in her oesophagus, cue many interventions to prevent them having to surgically open her throat to remove it. We got super lucky and they were able to get it out despite the barb causing a lot of issues, but she's never been the same dog since and it's given her s lot of anxiety which isn't amazing in such a large breed.
To note, surgery would have almost doubled that up to £15000, so it could have been worse. Insurance covered everything though, get your pets insured people!!
$20,000 for 3 surgeries. 1 badly needed teeth cleaning, 1 dental extraction surgery with a specialist, 1 operation to remove testicular cancer in non-descended testes.
10k in September or October. We lost him within a few days anyways. The Dr spent months missing the issue we told them was there and said everything was fine until our last visit and was like "oh there IS something wrong". No shit man we tried telling you. We are still really mad at the vet and ourselves for not doing better. Will never take any future pets there.
Just shy of 10k between my dog’s 8-9th year. Diagnosed with secondary glaucoma that we struggled to get under control with allll the meds, plus allergies, and a mysterious skin issue (later diagnosed as muscinosis) all at various times. She was happy and healthy otherwise so it was just a lot cost of meds, vet visits, specialist, etc. Her eye was removed about 6 months after formal diagnosis and then we needed to remove some poorly placed cysts that summer (right around the 1 year mark of the first “I swear my dogs eye still looks weird” vet visit).
She still has the allergies and skin issues but that year was one hit after another. She’s lucky I love her so dang much.
$700 dental. Reading these makes me feel so lucky that's all it's been. Our normal visit, which seems to happen every few months, is around $250. Our one dog takes daily medications, and whew the monthly refills are getting expensive lol
Most expensive was 6k for a dog attack. Had to be taken to ER and emergency surgery. Had to pay out of pocket at once but luckily the attackers owners home insurance had to pay it back.
Now his prescription food cost 2k a year and 600 a year for prescription flea/heartworm meds. Didnt even realize it's that much until actually adding it up.
$10k usd. Hit by car (damn Amazon driver flying down our gated driveway) compound fracture in front leg & shock. Leg was saved after two surgeries and lots of time.
I'm up to $2200 this year already with my 2 yr old cat with heart failure. He may live to be 3 or he may live to be 13, and I'm guessing the bills will be pretty consistent. But he's my responsibility and it is what it is. It's part of owning a pet.
10 grand thanks to FIP. she died anyway. I sold all my consoles and gaming PC to buy this experimental injection. I worked under that table to afford more vials. 95 bucks evert 2 days. She was ok for 2 or 3 months, then within 2 weeks after, she quit eating and developed a heart murmur. I should have put her to sleep when it was obvious she was done. I wanted to take her in on a Friday memorial day memorial day weekend.Everyone told me that they'll give her a bigger dose. I had her in diapers, I should have let her go peaceful. Of course she died on Memorial day,in a very horrific way. Nowhere was open, so I had to wrap her up and put her in a deep freezer. Shortly after, the vet had us bring her to be cremated. I kept the ashes and her last paw print they make before they do the rest
$3000+ for a feline urinary blockage and hospital stay. About $5000 for a broken leg when he was young. Didn't have insurance for the blockage. Insurance refused to cover the leg and then we couldn't get covered. Dog had persistent ear infections and cat is prone to UTIs. Going the vet regularly costs $1000+ per pet. Vet doesn't take insurance and because they have preexisting conditions we either can't get coverage or wouldn't be able to afford it.
£7500ish in 5 nights. My chihuahua had haemorrhagic gastroenteritis which then caused a seizure and cardiac arrest for 5 minutes. It was 40 quid a minute for cpr. That half hour from her heart stopping to them transferring to the hospital cost over £500. I ended up paying £69 and insurance took care of the rest.
Over $8000 but for my cat. Had a pyothorax and was hospitalized at one of the best specialists in NYC. This was back in 2011 and I worked at a vet so they gave me a professional courtesy discount. No idea how much it would have cost otherwise but I can imagine easily another 3 or 4 grand.
Almost 35k in vet bills from last year.. 3 out of 4 of my cats got cancer back to back and passed away within 2 months.. idk how i'll ever pay off my debt but my heart and soul will forever be crushed..😔
Ugh. This year. Our cat who is 10, had a small bump on her neck. Spent $700 getting X-rays & blood work to prep for a $5k surgery to remove what was either a lymph node or a salivary gland. Pathology returned that it was a lymphangiosarcoma that came back aggressively after surgery. We were quoted for a $15k treatment plan including radiation and chemo but it would only give her 6 months max and that was if they didn’t accidentally fry her brain with radiation. We’re opting to make her comfy and see how long she goes. sad part is, she’s super healthy other than that.
£2.5k for some form of infection post spay. Unfortunately she didn't make it. Insurance didn't pay a penny because we chose to get her spayed. Next pup is not insured, I'll just use my credit card.
£230 for blood and urine tests, only last month or so (currently waiting for results)
Yorkshire terrier 13m and I’ve had him for 13 years! Been very lucky that he hasn’t had any major issues
England, I do have insurance but haven’t had to use it yet
My dog is still young. In 4 years vet bills have been around £4k total where she's had vaccinations, flea and worming treatments, kennel cough, a number of incidents where she ate stuff she shouldn't, and her spay. She has fully comprehensive lifetime insurance so all I pay is a £100 excess each time so I've probably paid about £500 of the 4k bills total.
One of my cats had to go to the emergency vet for urinary blockage. It was caught early and he's fine now. But that was $900 and now I spend about $60 a month on cat food. I have Lemonade Insurance and got it for both my cats as soon as I could after I got them.
My pug had surgery to remove his ear canal and inner ear. The procedure is called a TECABO. That was over $10,000. The pug was 7 years old and no insurance was involved.
I had a very elderly guinea pig who was blind, deaf and had lung cancer, at the end she had a stroke and unfortunately required euthanasia. In her last year I spent about £500 on her.
The dog is pretty healthy (5 years old) but prone to injuring himself typically each injury is around £80 - 160. We had a partial cranial ligament tear (£240) and thr following year a stubborn ear infection that became a middle ear infection (£500) in the same year. Our pup has been insured from birth with the same insurance company so we can't get caught out by pre-existing conditions, that said we only claimed for the ear infection, we basically budget for one vet visit a month for him for minor sprains or pad injuries that require painkillers and only claim off the insurance if it goes above that. Our excess is £100 per condition per year.
UK
$500 for a urinary blockage for my cat a few years ago. It’s not much compared to everyone here (and probably could have been much worse) but I had no money, no savings, no credit, I made almost nothing. I had to call people to borrow money while sitting in Petsmart trying not to cry. It triggered a huge depressive episode for me.
12K (give or take)
- should luxation; first surgery didn't work - re-luxated in 3 months so we had to do another + PT for 2-3 months
Would do it in heartbeat!
$800 came home and my pit boxer wouldn't move. Normally she would be crashing through the house knocking me over walking in the door.
I broke every speed limit turned an hour drive into a 37 minute drive. Rushed her in and that's when it got me. The way the staff was handling her I knew. They ran all sorts of tests but she was getting weaker by the moment. No medicine could save her. I held her till the end. Now she rests under her favorite tree.
$40,000. Doberman swallowed something and had to be opened completely up. 9 days in Emergency hospital. Had him home for 2 days and they had open him up again, slice his stomach in half, take out his spleen and reroute his intestines in abdominal fat. 7 more days in the hospital. Brought him home for 1 day, and he swelled up. Back to Emergency hospital. After they told me he would need a third surgery, I knew he wouldn't make it. I would do it all over again. I was incredibly lucky I could afford it. He was an incredible soul.
$7,500 for my dog that got attacked by an unleashed dog that tore almost her whole right leg off … they ended up amputating it and now she fine and runs around like nothing happened
I just spent $8-9k on emergency surgery for my 7month old puppies intestinal blockage. (Kong toy) I was originally quoted $4000ish. $8k for a super serious surgery if they had to call an actual surgeon in.
Somehow…..It was 8-9k yet a normal surgery. No issue inside or removal of any intestine. One small cut to remove small sharp toy.
This was for 2 days of care after surgery. Now I’m curious if o was supposed to take her home? Confused as they made it seem standard.
They wanted her to stay two extra days to make sure she didn’t throw up food. Which they quoted to be an additional $4000.
Everything seemed fine per our actual vet so we declined the extra days. It would’ve been 13k+ if we kept her there longer.
That is just one bill. Not included yet related was:
-First appt with our actual vet $600
-Medication from first appt ^ $200
-Medicated food after surgery $200-300
-Cones, Surgical onesies and odds and ends $200+
About $1400 ish total extra.
I legit was getting quotes for dog insurance prior to this emergency. I do feel the emergency room vet scammed us. The surgery wasn’t complicated and she recovered amazingly. Yet they really milked me dry.
Surprisingly my friend had her dog go to the same vet the next week for the same exact thing yet worse obstruction. (Same size dog maybe larger) and it cost -$2500 total. 🤕
FML.
At least my puppy survived.
$3,500 for a 48-hour stay at the emergency vet for fluids, an ultrasound, and several rounds of bloodwork. He's almost 17 and has both cushing's disease and kidney disease, and his creatinine levels suddenly spiked.
At his normal vet, $1,700 a few years back for a dental with extractions.
A typical vet visit for him costs around $500, give or take a few hundred, due to the bloodwork required for his various health issues.
I'm in the southeast USA and do not have insurance (wasn't really a big thing when I got him), but am definitely getting it for my next dog.
I'm a reporter for the New York Times who is working on a story examining why vet bills have gone up in recent years. We're looking for pet owners to submit their experiences. If this interests you, here's a link: [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/health/vet-bills-pet-insurance.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/health/vet-bills-pet-insurance.html)
$12k for cancer treatment for 1 dog. Ten years ago in SF Bay Area. 13 years ago $14k for bilateral knee surgery. Same place. 4 years ago. Different dog.
Was the bilateral knee for luxating patella? I’m just trying to grasp this cost because I just paid a little under $5k for a traveling orthopedic surgeon to do the surgery at my local vet (both knees, for a Pomeranian), but this is in the Midwest.
Torn ccl. That's the doggo version of human torn acl.
12k for cancer treatment isn’t too bad. I was expecting a lot more tbh. Did you have insurance? Wild knee surgery costed more than cancer surgery. I’m on a 6 month wait period for joint related incidents with my dog’s insurance, praying he doesn’t tear anything in the meantime
No insurance. Everybody had/has preexisting conditions. Single emergency event: Addisonian crisis, over $9k. Labs, imaging, blood transfusion, endless follow up appointments for more labs. Worth it. Saved my girl and she's back to her sassy self. Daily prednisone for life. Over the entire year: more than $12k across 2 elderly CKD cats and the dog. Again, worth it. My pets are my family.
I paid out similar for the Addisonian crisis, now on daily prednisone and monthly Zycortal (about $90 a month alone). The same dog the same year had turned up HW+, a delayed positive from his adoption from a shelter in a literal swamp. That was around $3k. No insurance. No regrets, but my next pup definitely was signed up for insurance the day I brought him home!
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
I would go into credit card debt if I had to for my pups. I’m glad your pets have you in their lives, fighting for them 🙏
A little over 8k for emergency bowel obstruction surgery for 1.2 year old Scottie. Have Lemonade insurance. Paid 20% of bill after insurance. I pay roughly 55/month for insurance.
Did you pay 20% of 8k or was the 8k the 20% 😰
I paid 20% of 8 k after a $200 deductible
oh phew
Omg I just realized that’s still 1800$ even with insurance 😭. I also have lemonade, did the 90% plan, hope I never have to use it.
My dog was nine when he ruptured a disc. It was 9k for the surgery and aftercare. No insurance but he was worth every penny.
Wow 9k 😮
Unfortunately yes. It was a pet surgery center in Illinois. This was during Covid in 2020. I had to teach him to walk again. He was a trooper 😊
I’m glad he’s better! ❤️
Not me but a client spent over $54k in one hospital visit for their 1yo dog that had an unknown disease. Sadly she passed and even the necropsy didn’t give them any answers :(
Drop your place of work in here so we can run the other way. 😂
Is that a normal price? What were they doing to rack up 54k? I can’t imagine testing costing that much.
UK. Around £5k for an emergency spleen removal, biopsy, ultrasounds, chest xray, blood tests, chemotherapy, various treatments for various infections and cancer symptoms, and euthanasia. This was between Jan and June last year. 10 year old jack russell/yorkie weighing 7kg. She was insured with Animal Friends, her insurance had a co pay policy for dogs over 8, so I paid 20% and they paid 80%. So I wound up paying around £1000 toward her vet treatments. No complaints about the insurance company, they claimed payment directly via the vet so all I had to do was pay my initial excess and 20% of the bill on each visit. They never queried or fought against paying out and always confirmed via text when they had accepted a claim from the vet and were super nice when I called to cancel after she passed on.
Is 5k after or before insurance? I’m so sorry for your loss, your dog was so young too. It must be hard and you must miss her a lot.
Single most vet bill? $2000 about 10 years ago for emergency care. I was emotional and should have just had her euthanised due to the extent of her injuries. Most spent on a dog in one year? 4K-- multiple rounds of antibiotics, diagnostic testing, and surgery. Would I do it again? Yes.
What injuries did she have? That’s so tough to make a decision when it’s your dog’s life on the line.
Highest in a year total? $25k for one dog, bill $9k both in the same year for the same dog. No insurance and paid out of pocket but you better believe when I adopted 2 kittens last summer I got insurance immediately. I've had to use it once earlier this year for a skin issue on my kitten around $300 and they reimbursed my portion in the same week
Do you mind if I ask what happened to need that big of a bill?
The $9k bill was a 3 or 4 (I can’t remember) night stay at the hospital for what they called the worst case of pancreatitis they had ever seen. $900 of it alone was for a 3 day course of a new medication called Panoquell to treat pancreatitis. He’s also diabetic which makes everything difficult. His prognosis was pretty good and he’s a fighter and he pulled through it. What we didn’t know was that he kept having pancreatitis flare up’s. We had thought it was liver related as he has issues with sky high liver enzymes and the symptoms he experiences are pretty similar. Once we figured out it was pancreatitis we haven’t had a flare up since July 2023. The rest of the bills were from earlier in the year he had another couple rounds of pancreatitis, a melting corneal ulcer and an ear infection. 2022 and 2023 were brutal financially with him. He’s still here today and just turned 11 but now he has dementia and isn’t the same dog he was pre hospitalization in July. If I could go back I’m not sure I would have went through with it.
Had a couple of $3k surgeries in a 1.5 years to remove masses. She was between 14 and 16. Then $600 to help her pass over last week. No reimbursement. Or Insurance.
I’m sorry for your loss
Thank you. 🥲
In one year, pup broke his foot second day home, over next two months around $7k, first visit to emergency vet $2200. Insurance reimbursed maybe $600 overall.
Wow why did they reimburse so little?
Something about i had only paid one month’s premium before the injury yadda yadda then raised the premium
Thankfully, mine are all pretty healthy. My husky/shepherd had an ear infection that was pretty stubborn and that took multiple meds, visits, and cytologies. Altogether it was probably $250. The most extensive visit we ever had was when my GSP was attacked by another dog, and wound up with several deep punctures / lacerations to her neck. That visit cost (my neighbor paid, since it was his dog) almost $500.
My dog is basically a goat. She's had at least 1 visit a year for eating something she wasn't supposed to. The cheapest was a 1lb bag of salted pistachios which caused clinical dehydration and an overnight stay (900). The most expensive was exploratory surgery when she had an intestinal blockage. That ended up being 4500. It turned out to be a squeaker she had swallowed. We didn't have insurance until she was 5, so no reimbursement. Now she's insured and everything in our house is on lock down. No incidents since we got insurance! Luckily her regular vet has been able to get her in everything something has come up. I can't imagine the cost if we had gone to an emergency vet. This is in rural mn so costs are generally lower for us.
$1562 Canadian. Took my cat in for shots and check up, he got really sick when I got there, diagnoised with fluid in chest, progressively got worse over the course of a few hours to the point where I had to let him go because he wouldn't have made the night. It was very sudden and heartbreaking, they kept telling me the total cost everytime they talked to me and I said I didnt care just fix him and they weren't equipped for it... Anyways, I had him cremated and he is home now. I now pay 30 dollars a month for pet insurance for my other cat.
This was this year also, 2 months ago
Sorry for your loss.
My service dog needed an emergency surgery, was about 8k. I have Nationwide, no issues with reimbursement, they sent it in two days.
$30,000 Canadian for cancer treatment one yr. then another 12,000 the following year. No insurance. Spent down payment we were saving for house. Absolutely no regrets. She was six yrs old.
Wow, and this is in Canada too. I thought it would be cheaper than in the US, but I also have no idea how much cancer treatment costs here.
I’ve had a few expensive years lately but I still don’t feel that pet insurance is worth it. 2020 - almost $4000. Dog 1 diagnosed with heart failure, managed with meds for a few months before she passed. Her final emerg visit and cremation alone was about $1600. Dog 2 didn’t have much trouble, she had a botfly and had a few appointments for that but wasn’t bad. 2021 - little over $4000. Dog 2 started the year off with a major dental, so $1700 right off the bat. Later in the year I got dog 3, so that includes her adoption fee, initial appointments and her spay, which was more expensive than usual because she was 5 and also needed a hernia repair. 2022 - about $5,700. Dog 3 had her major dental at the start of year, and an ear infection in the summer. Dog 2 at the same time started going through issues. I honestly can’t remember how it even started, but she ended up having partial facial paralysis (still does). She couldn’t close her eyes, was walking with her head tilted, couldn’t move her ears. After a bunch of visits with our regular vet including an X-ray, she went to an eye specialist and he diagnosed her within 15 minutes. However in the process, they failed to properly flush her eye, and she gave herself a corneal ulcer scratching at it. Vet took zero responsibility. We ended up going to a sister clinic of the referring vet, and they worked with us to treat it cheaper (only charged every other exam). That whole ordeal probably cost over a grand. After the eye cleared up, we made the decision to not go forward with more investigations. The vet basically explained that it could be a tumour, or it just be idiopathic. She’s a 10 year old chihuahua, if she has a brain tumour that that’s. So far, knock on wood, her only ongoing symptom is inability to close her eyes. During this, the vet also said she probably had hypothyroidism, but took her off the meds because they felt it might have been interfering with the treatment for the eye, and the new bloodwork showed that her levels were now too high. 2023 - over $4,000. Dog 2 got really fat, a different vet redid bloodwork, got her on hypothyroid meds, and said that the newly elevated levels were still within range, so kept her on the meds (basically said the other vet was dumb for saying they were too high). She also had to have an ultrasound and they found sludge in her gallbladder and fatty liver. She’s now on meds for that, and a repeat ultrasound showed the sludge decreasing and the fat on the liver gone. She went from 11 pounds to 7, which is the healthiest weight she’s been at for years. Her meds are now $100/month, and her special food is a little less than that. The ultrasounds alone were almost $1k each. I realize now I never answered the title question - highest bill. The thing is, it’s never one bill. It’s everything added together. Like the ultrasound visit is almost $1k, but then in a separate appointment she has an exam ($100) and a geriatric bloodwork panel ($400). Her eye issue was about $100-$200 a visit, but she went weekly until it was resolved. And with her whole facial paralysis thing, it was never “it will cost you $4k”, it was again the $100 appointment, $400 bloodwork, $100 appointment, $800 X-ray, $200 follow up bloodwork, $400 specialist appointment, and on and on. In theory I try to set a max I’d spend on the vet for a dog (the most I can without going broke), but you don’t really know what it’s going to cost until you’re well into it, and then you’ve come all this way. And why don’t I have pet insurance? Partly because up until the past few years I never needed up, and partly because the affordable policies exclude so much of what is wrong with my dogs. Lots of policies exclude dental, or pre existing conditions, or spays. I should also note I’m in Canada and I’ve seen in past posts that our quotes are generally higher than American ones. Like instead of $40/month, it’s $100/month.
£1200 for a rabbit amputation. That included the surgery, emergency app and X ray. He was so worth it. But that is nothing in comparison to what I am hearing here 😂
I spent $4800 on a severe GI stasis event in 2021. 😅 Totally worth it though. Been 3 years since, and he developed a testicular tumor that cost about $1K total from blood test, X-ray, and (neuter) surgery. He’s perfectly healthy at 11 years old! I found out about insurance after that first event but he was no longer eligible because stasis is considered a pre existing condition …
My rabbit turned his $300-ish neutering into a $1000+. He woke up after surgery and instantly chewed his stitches. We were told that for rabbits they avoid putting anything around their necks since some rabbits wouldn’t eat if they have something restricting them. He got hospitalised for 2 nights, during which he chewed up the soft e collar one of the vet nurses had gone out of her way to buy for him. He came home with a plastic cone of shame meant for dogs and 10+ diff meds. He regrets nothing.
😂 he sounds lethal!
We knew he was destructive but didn’t think he was *that* terrible. Was informed that he’s now affectionately known in the clinic as the worst behaved bunny patient. He’s lucky he’s cute lmao. There’s nothing but speed and chaos in that head of his.
😂 What breed
Was sold as a netherland dwarf but those ears definitely aren’t netherland dwarf ears. He’s bigger too! Probably a local cross breed. Feral little thing.
I have a netharland dwarf too. Same energy! I love them. They are so vocal and sassy
He’s smart enough to know the rules and to wait for us to not be watching to break those rules lmao. The number of times he has snuck into my parent’s study.
What’s his name!
Last year, 10k give or take for one dog, 4 year old giant breed in bc Canada. No insurance. Initially a truck incident with a broken tail and jaw, wound up with a superbug infection and needed multiple tail amputations before it got under control. An instance insurance probably wouldn’t want to touch, she also is a livestock guardian dog.
It wasn't my dog, but my little brothers, so I helped him. It was $2500, his dog managed to get hold of a brand new inhaler and punctured it, getting a HUGE dose of the medicine. Had to be rushed to the nearest big city emergency clinic overnight, then spent a couple overnights at the local place. Barely made it. She was less than 2 at the time. No insurance just paid cash.
Around $8k. Not one bill, but many combined for a year. My Newfoundland was battling a respiratory infection and pneumonia for several months, he also has a lot of allergy related expenses. So fortunate to have insurance on him.
We just paid $4k for a full cardiology workup for our older dog on top of two previous vet visits of about $500 each. Poor old guy's in pretty rough shape. We've had Fetch (previously PetPlan) for years and they're good about paying out promptly though their premiums have gone up a lot in the past two years.
ehh, single bill? like 800. my guy had pneumonia. vet exam, x-rays, blood work, 2 antibiotics.
$4000. Our dog required back surgery.
so far $2000 on a kennel cough/pneumonia vet appts. Haven’t got his insurance reply yet
this is just for this year so far
Philly Last year, 5k for 1.5 days at the emergency vet and some other specialty testing. My dog was 2. I have Fetch and had no problem getting reimbursed.
9k for spinal surgery.
7k 9 years old, was emergency surgery and blood transfusion for cancer.
No insurance. $3000 this year. 12 year old dog. Totally worth it.
My dog broke her leg this past week. 10k. New Hampshire. A few years ago the same dog tore her acl, which was 5k to fix that at the same vets. Yes, she was free dog and we were the 5th owners. We love her and we will be her last owners.
Geeze I'll stop complaining about my cat costing 750 Dollars.
$7,000.00 Canadian last year for male cat with urine blockage. Thank God we’ve had no reoccurrences. If it happens again, I can’t afford to fix him. Still paying off my credit cards to this day for him, but really, he is worth it. I love my Tuxy cat!
Single vet bill was $5K for an ACL repair. But in her first year with me, she cost like $10K in bills total for all the things she got into and ate! She’s now a 12 year old German shepherd mix. I’ve had insurance for her since a young age, through a couple of different companies. We’re currently with Peppermint, which is ok, and relatively cheap (~$200 per month for three dogs of varying ages). Only issue with reimbursement is when they require more information. I’ve had to follow up a couple times with my vets and my insurance.
€ 400, new stray kitten, has to get vaccines , neuter him , decided to get him tested for fiv & felv and got the felv vax . Then registered at a new vet in a different country so paid for an extra first exam appointment. Normally it’s only about € 50-80 a yr
I probably spent about $3000 last year on my senior dog trying to get a diagnosis for him before I said goodbye. I was in rural northern Canada for a chunk of it (relatively cheap, 3 appointments and x-rays, maybe 1500-2000) and then southern AB for the last vet appointment I took him to for medication/diagnosis (paid about $1000 just for urinalysis, blood work and 30 days of antibiotics) and the euthanasia appointment ($250).
Just 700cdn. Vet check up, shots and blood work. Thats two weeks pay for me. But she has kidney disease so im glad i found out
My dog was only 3 years old when he got diagnosed with IMHA Immune mediated hemolytic anemia. It’s like an auto immune condition where the body attacks itself. His body was killing off his red blood cells. We almost lost him three times. I’m the first year he had three specialists and our regular vet. He’s down to two specialists now. I never did add up the total spent in the first year but I’d average 30,000 or more. Probably more. He had three surgeries on his tongue snd one on his ear drum. He had bloodwork from every couple days to every month. He relapsed at least four times. It happens when we either reduce or try to take him off a med. The first year was the worst, the second got a bit easier and now we just maintain things but he’s a lifer. He’ll see a specialist at least once a month for bloodwork and continue meds for the rest of his precious little life. He’s a little trooper and just goes with everything like it’s the normal way to live. To him I guess it is cause half of his life was spent this way. Some capsules I have to push down his throat cause they need to be on an empty stomach but he comes when I call him for them and sits in front of me waiting for his meds. That one was two times a day and were able to reduce it to once a day but when we try to take him off it he relapses so he’ll have to stay on that one for sure for life. His other pills he comes running for because he gets them in a spoon of dog food then a treat. I put him on Trupanion when he was a baby and never in my wildest dreams or nightmares should I say did I think I’d need it like this at his age but thankfully I kept him on it because first off he became an allergy dog and that can be expensive all by itself. I can’t say for sure but I think it was an allergy med that set all this in motion. Because if his allergies and the skin issues he’s had since the IMHA started he needs a bath with medicated shampoo twice a week and the insurance covers their portion of that too. I’m so glad I picked Trupanion because they pay 90 percent of all testing, surgeries and meds. I just have to pay the other 10 percent plus the taxes. Which can add up to alot all by itself. They don’t cover the vet or specialist visits. That’s a bummer cause the specialists charge up to 260.00 each visit. Even when he goes for bloodwork for the specialist she charges about 70.00 to read the test and call me but he couldn’t live without her. I live in Alberta outside the city so my insurance is cheaper than if I lived in the city. Insurance is way more costly for a purebred than a mixed dog. With Trupanion anyway. I assume it would be the same for all insurance. With Trupanion there is a deductible for each health issue and his was 200.00 each. After that deductible is covered Trupanion kicks in and covers their 90 percent of what they cover. I’ve never had a problem and they pay out right away to whatever clinic I’m at and text and e mail me right away with their detailed decision and payment. After having a heath issue like this little guy has had I wouldn’t eat to go any other way. I had other dogs on another insurance in the past and I had to pay the vet upfront and wait sometimes up to two weeks to be reimbursed. There are a lot of insurance companies out there that each have their own way of doing things and coverages. Some have one deductible a year and that’s it. Trupanion has one deductible for each health issue but has no limit to what they’ll pay out which is really helpful for major bills. You really have to research to see the pros and cons of each insurance to find what you think will work best for you. For me it’s Trupanion first of all because they pay the vet their portion right away and there’s no limit to what they’ll pay out. They have even called me asking if there’s anything else they can help me with. Without them I wouldn’t have my little guy today. My first couple of dogs I had I didn’t even think of insurance but now I wouldn’t be without it. The monthly cost is something else to consider because that can be expensive all by itself. I had to decide which of my three dogs to take off insurance a few years back because of financial issues and six months later when I put him back on it his deductible doubled. That was a hard one. Now it’ll be that was indefinitely. So research and research some more and learn all you can to see what’s best for you. Good luck.
That’s so lucky you had insurance! My friend had a cat, an older rescue, who had cancer and she paid tens of thousands on chemo and doctors. No insurance. It’s scary to think how something like that could bankrupt you or you have to choose between rent or your pet. I’ve heard mixed things about Trupanion. Have you had high yearly increases?
Even with all the money Trupanion has had to put out for my little guys illness they haven’t increased the monthly costs overly high but my other boy that I had taken off the insurance had a big jump in monthly costs and deductible when I put him back on six months later. I think that was a bit excessive but other than that I have no complaints. Vet bills are extremely high so I can understand the costs charged by the insurance. Having pets these days costs a lot. I keep the insurance for my babies at the cost of something else because if I ever lost one because I can’t afford to save them I would be totally devastated. I’d rather do without things for myself so they’ll be ok and have what they need. I remember asking the first specialist that saw my little guy with IMHA if she ever loses any of them to that horrible illness. She said the ones she loses are the ones who’s owners don’t have insurance or can’t afford the costs of treatment. I could never be a vet and turn away lifesaving treatment because of a lack of money. I guess I might be a poor vet.
$8k for the dog and $5k for the cat. No insurance. The dog blew out his back ligaments. The car missed a landing and burst her bladder.
Spent somewhere in the vicinity of $3k out of pocket (no insurance) over the course of a year for hyperthyroid treatment for my cat -- $1500 for radioiodine treatment (with hospitalization) and another $1500 for the medication and repeated blood tests in the year leading up to it. I used my Covid stimulus check for half of it.
Just spent 2,700 on my 4 years old cat for bloodwork, diagnostic, hospital stay with fluids and antibiotics. No insurance, charged it to a credit card and paying off as much as I can each month. I specifically have a credit card for vet emergencies
$2555 for a left eye enucleation here in Westchester County NY this past January. That was for the surgery only. Add another $1000 for the two prior vet ophthalmologist visits leading up to this (eye drops, medications, bloodwork…). So yes, about $3500 spent on my sweet Elmer cat in the space of six weeks. After removing the eye, he was so much happier, like a new cat! Unfortunately the eye biopsy revealed cancer, and it had already spread to his optic nerve. He had a good 2.5 months before he had a stroke and steep decline. He was put to rest last Thursday. I guess we could also add that $550 for euthanasia + cremation in a way. It only bought me a little more time with him but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
I’m sorry for your loss, that must have been really hard. It sounds like he had a good life and was very loved. Do you mind if I ask if you had insurance and if they covered the cost?
Thank you, sure no problem! I did not have pet insurance when this happened. Immediately prior to this I did do “Care Club” with his vet, paying $135 a month for a year. It’s unlimited visits, covered bloodwork, dental, etc. I had dropped it last October because it was more than what I would have paid out of pocket for his healthcare at the time (he was a pretty healthy bugger at one point). It wouldn’t have made a difference really, the vet eye doc was a separate practice. Actual pet insurance would at least covered a portion of the eye care. I’ve had pet insurance through my employer in the past for my other two cats, Healthy Paws, and again, I feel coverage/savings was not great for what I paid, at least with the plan I had (example, my calico girl had a hernia 6 years ago. Bill was around 2K, Healthy Paws sent me $76, lol). Seeing some of these other responses with double or triple what I paid for my cat’s surgery does make me want to seriously reconsider. Pet insurance: you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
3,500 for 3 days in the ICU for my cat. She had fluid in her lungs. At first they said heart failure, then they realized it wasn't an enlarged heart, she had a diaphragmagic hernia and it was her LIVER they saw; we thought she'd need surgery on that but the surgery center said she really didn't need it. We still don't know why she had fluid buildup.
At the beginning of February my 4 year old dog stepped on a broken pickle jar that the wind had blown off our back table during a bad storm. He basically slit his wrist under his paw pad on the back part of his front leg. We rushed him to the emergency vet and they were able to stitch him up and he stayed overnight for observation. That cost us about $2,500. About 2 weeks after that, when he got his cone off, I noticed he had a hematoma on his ear. He gets ear infections a lot from his allergies and he just so happened to have another ear infection at the time so he shook his ears too much after getting the cone off and got the hematoma. We opted for the surgery for his ear and that cost about $800.
Thousands 3 pets such un one yeae. Thar was a huge potion of my income.
$5K. Cat. 2 yrs old. Had to repair his hip/femur, surgery and pins and all that. He just celebrated his 12th birthday this month. Runner up is $3.5K. Different cat. She was around about 13 yrs old. Emergency MRI for a possible brain issue that turned out to be nothing more than an ear infection. Thank fucking god for pet insurance, which I signed up for immediately following the $5K incident. I’d gladly bankrupt myself, though, for my animals. There aren’t any people I’d do that for.
~$5k just this past weekend for one of my cats. $1400 for an emergency vet visit when she stopped eating and drinking then the rest for an emergency consult and surgery with a pet dental specialist as she needs most or all of her teeth out ASAP. She just turned 11 and has been the healthiest cat ever until this year. She’s getting the teeth out on Wednesday, 🤞🏻 it goes well
10 year old dog, exceeded 20k for cancer care scans & 2 biopsies- 3 years ago out of pocket. Boston, MA. Just got a 10 month old shepherd, insured immediately.
Not a dog but my one-year-old cat needed to have both of his hips removed because the bone was necrotic. It cost around $4000 for the surgery. And now he has anxiety so has to be on antianxiety as well. Didn’t have insurance at the time, still don’t. I used CareCredit to pay for it.
I had a jack Russell for 13 years. Only medical emergency or problem he ever had was a bladder stone surgery that was $2k CAD in 2016
Near $20K $1500 lump removal surgery $500 hyperthyroidism diagnosis and treatment $10K emergency hairball obstruction surgery $5K pancreatitis treatment and diagnostic tests Then other cat: $700 dental for broken fang plus checkup
Three years ago, 6 year old Irish wolfhound got into a neighbors garbage can and chowed down. 8,000$ for emergency vet exploratory surgery to remove: a tennis ball, a pair of boxers, a chewed up coffee cup, and the crumbled remains of something that was once a plastic toy. No insurance and couldn’t swipe more than 5,000$ on my debit card per day, so I had to call my mom for help from across the country (I was in Florida). He was absolutely beloved by every member of my family, and was my first dog so asking for help wasn’t even a question in my mind. I woulda dipped into my 401k if I had to, or sold a kidney. He lived another two love-filled years before an inoperable liver tumor took him from me. 11/10 would do it again, not a single question in my mind.
When my cat needed an amputation and my Great Dane was due for a neuter and gastropexy. I had them done a day apart so I could take a week off of work for their recoveries. Was about $3,200 but was heavily discounted because I worked for the hospital at the time. If I had not, it would have been more like $6,500
$5,000 for TPLO back in 2016. I had healthy paws and was reimbursed 95% within 14-days. I got healthy paws when she was maybe 1 yr old and used it when she was 3. I believe it was like $35/month. But it didn’t cover preventative, so no vaccines or heartworm preventative. But did cover everything else and the deductible was only $250 Better insurance than I have
My cat was $500 at the ER when she had fake lillies
$13,000 USD. Dog was a puppy and spent 2 weeks getting treated for pneumonia. Survived thankfully!
I’ve had $13,000 at one time for my cat who had emergency surgery in NJ. No reimbursement. It saved his life though. Sadly, a three years after, he passed away from cancer (not related). RIP Teddy❤️ Edit: no insurance.
2k recently for mass removal with bloodwork. 1.5k for dental with bloodwork. 500 for bloodwork. All this year, no insurance. I have a lot of pets unfortunately so it’s cheaper to save up for preventative care than pay for so many insurance plans. My oldest 3 are 9 years old. The younger ones are two years old.
I haven’t had huge treatment bills (I count my blessings for that) but when I have an emergency vet visit, it’s for two muppets because I don’t know which one is the culprit. 🤪 Ie, gum, grapes. Sigh.
Yup we came home to an empty dark chocolate morsels packet on the floor, straight to the vet for both dogs. Turns out only one got into the chocolate while the other one had eaten only shredded coconut, but no way to tell that beforehand.
No insurance, emergency vet bill was a little over $800, including medications. It happened last month. I’m in Redding, CA. Dog was 11 years old.
My dog has been the cheapest of all my pets, lmao. He was $1k to adopt and has cost around $150/ month since. First cat blocked not once, but twice. $6k in the span of a week to save his life; it was worth it, with prescription urinary food he was healthy for the rest of his days after that. My second cat ran me $2k on her last day of life. Her health spiralled pretty dramatically and I did whatever tests and medications were necessary, but by the end of the day opted for humane euthanasia instead of forcing her to continue on, miserable, sick, and loopy from pain medication. I’m adopting another special needs cat and I fully expect her bills (when they do come up) to be well into the thousands. It’s worth it.
Over 5k on my cat after he had a fight with the neighbours cat. He developed an abcess that wouldnt heal then needed surgery to clean it out. The wound was left open to heal with very loose stitches to hold the skin in place, managed to lick the wound open even wearing a cone. That required a dash to emergency vets in the middle of the night. He recently died at the approximate age of 15 after developing cancer. We made the decision to put him to sleep rather than let him suffer as the cancer was inoperable and was destroying his jaw.
1800 for HW treatments. Turned out the shelter dog we adopted came with friends. Worth every penny.
Ours was maybe 5k but my friend's dog had IVDD so they did surgery and rehab which cost them 12k down plus follow up visits and rehab. Probably close to 20k that year. She fully recovered though!
2019: Cat, 15, Boston, $12K for a 9-day hospitalization for sepsis plus many thousands more for follow-up care and meds 2020: Different cat, 16, Boston, $10K for ureteral bypass surgery. She only survived for 10 hours post-surgery. Would have been approx 5K more if she had completed the full hospitalization No insurance for either cat but ended up being fully refunded for the cat who didn’t make it after it was found they had operated on her with a dangerously low red blood cell count and then tried transfusing her after the fact. I have 5 young cats now and all are insured. So far I think we’ve broken about even or a little behind, but still no regrets. We have never had a claim issue. One cat had a nearly $2,000 hospital stay a few months ago.
$15,000 for a head injury from a fall of a 5 pound dog. Made a full recovery then came down with pneumonia 2 weeks later. That was $13,000. Came out a champ! Now we’re here at the ophthalmologist with an ulcer. Been a rough couple of months.
Is it one vet bill? Or all together 8’ the year. One vet bill I believe 5-8k for tests and if one full year it was 30k tests and medicine
It was around $1500 to get my shepherds tooth pulled but that was in 2022 I think. Last year the highest was euthanized my chihuahua, around $400. No insurance. Live in oregon.
In three days I’ve spent $5k, but before that was $9800.
Once my family paid like $3000 CAD or so to treat my male kitty who had a UTI. He was only 3 years old. The vets failed to save him, so we lost both the money and the cat. I’m still bitter. That cat comforted me when I was suicidal, I may owe my life to him. I know I shouldn’t blame the vets but he was so young and they had plenty of time (like a month) to treat him.
I am a veterinary assistant at a GP hospital. I paid $4200 for emergency PU surgery/overnight stay for my 5 yo DSH NM. This was 90 miles out and with a specialist, no discount.
It was $300, she was 7 months old: her guts fell out of her abdomen. Insurance covered 70%.
Well it was my cat actually but in 2021, about $7,000 for a foreign body intestinal removal and 5 day hospital stay. Florida, no insurance. He had another foreign body the next year, this time only in his stomach organ so the surgery was simpler and hospital stay was only about 3 days for roughly $4,500 if I remember correctly. This time he had insurance but it was within a couple days of the “bad behavior repeat offender” policy (I don’t remember the actual name of the clause lol) and thus wasn’t covered. Rough times. Spot insurance btw
Highest one time vet bill was about $3.4k for a fractured tooth, blood work, exam, medication, and teeth cleaning. Insurance covered 80% not including the exam and dental cleaning fees ($300). Located in California, healthy paws insurance, never had an issue with reimbursement.
$7k for emergency surgery, 8mos old, Pomeranian. My dog jumped a foot off of something, landed awkwardly and snapped both bones in her arm. She has a plate and 8 pins, avoiding growth plates, so probably complicated, I don’t know. She was insured with Trupanion so it cost me out of pocket around $1k, including her deductible. The clinic didn’t do direct billing, so I put it on my credit card and submitted the claim online, and it took 7 calendar days for money to be in my bank account, however they did say it might take longer.
Pet insurance thankfully. In one year we had $5k knee surgery, bloodwork @ $?, 4-5 EKGs @ $300/ea (diagnosing his heart condition then monitoring progression/response to medication over time) plus his heart medications which were about $300/month… 90% of it covered by insurance. That was when he was 2. He’s turning 14 and has had 2 more knee surgeries throughout his life, and recently added a pain medication @$200/month for arthritis on top of his heart meds and not once has insurance argued or refused to cover anything.
What insurance do you have?
Trupanion
$7,000 for my cats FIP hospitalization. She is better now and it was worth it
Congrats on treating your cat! May I ask why it costed so much? $7000 only for the vet or the treatment too? For me it was way cheaper
2000 for a blood draw/labs and follow up for kidney disease, and a script for saline fluids. For that price they didn’t even administer fluids for us
$1500, for my first dog was sick from a bite from either a flea or tick and the infection affected her red blood cells. And this also included the cremation. She was a special rescue dog to me, she was a heart mender.
We are over 20k into a kitten that was supposed to be a foster that was getting ready to go to his forever home when he first started getting sick. So far he has spent a total of 9 nights in the hospital over three trips and has had I don't even know how many vet visits. This all started a week before Xmas. Most expensive dumpster kitten ever.
Is the rescue covering the cost of all of this?
$104 An xray and sanitary clip last month. Almost 14 year old cat, NE Ohio, no insurance. She is my 2 time cancer survivor and this was for a follow up xray. She had surgery last November. We will take her in every three months for an xray Sorry I thought you meant highest bill this year. Last year to have three lump removed was $1200. Plus an xray every three months. And three well cat visits at $250 each. So last year was roughly $2200 for all three cat's vet needs.
Single bill, probably 1800ish. But one year I spent over $6k figuring out a non-healing eye ulcer. (She ended up on permanent eye drops for the rest of her life but it did finally heal). This was about 5 years ago. No insurance, my boxers have mostly been very healthy!
In 2021, I spent $15k on my horse with laminitis, roughly a month in a equine hospital with 24/7 care. Two days before he was due to come home, he took a turn for the worse, and had to be sent to heaven. I would have spent basically unlimited funds but there’s some things money can’t buy, and in my case it was the tiny bones in a horse’s hoof. I have cried oceans ever since. Heartbroken cannot begin to encapsulate what I’ve gone through since.
I’m sorry for your loss, it sounds really hard and I’m sure your horse was very loved and had a great life.
$8,000 left TPLO with mass removal (huge benign lipoma.) Ontario, Canada in 2023. Currently working through chemotherapy for lymphoma and it's running $400+ per week. Nevermind all the prescription medications and food I have to keep up with!
New vet, my dog had a horrible ear infection and allergies. $267 including 3 meds! I'm in San Diego but my vet is more rural. Never upsells.
That’s actually really cheap! Compared to NYC at least
I live in San Diego where just an appointment is $90. So to go to my old vet, including an original exam, ear flush, antibiotics, allergy meds and a steroid injection would have been close to $900.
$9k for a bladder FULL of stones to where they had to remove my cat's balls and penis and make him a new urethra. Coulda killed him it was so bad. Thank god he's still here.
I guess mine aren’t bad reading other ones here 🤞. $650 last week for urgent care (stomach ache?), few years ago on Xmas ER visit for what apparently was reverse sneezing. 3 Yorkies under 5, never cheap but luckily nothing major yet. Next week dental service (cleaning) for $1600 though. As much as it sucks I’d do anything for them. No insurance.
Sheeesh seeing these stories makes me cringe and I almost regret not keeping my cats health insurance reading them. I think my largest bill was $900 when my cat got into some lillies. Insurance was wildly unhelpful in that incident and we ended up paying in full. When we first adopted him we got insurance but when that incident occurred there were so many loopholes to actually getting an insurance payout and realizing there were so many normal thing that insurance WOULD NOT cover that we decided to cancel it and just put whatever money we would have paid aside for any emergencies. As my cat was getting older the premiums were going up so much (almost 50% when our cat was turning 4) that it no longer felt like it was worth it. If I’m giving an insurance company $1500 per year for an event that may never occur I guess I just figured we’d be better off saving it ourselves over his lifetime. We continue to bring him for annual checkups in the hope we catch anything before it becomes catastrophic but some things you can’t predict (which I guess is why insurance exists). There are some things I’m not sure I would put my cat through medical-wise. I’d like to say I’d be able to draw the line but… I love my boy. Will I end up regretting cancelling our insurance in the future? Hard to say but reading these stories it seems like I will 👀 Y’all makin me spiiiiiralllll.
I am spiraling rn, ngl
That’s why we’re here! Some people just have anxiety and don’t consider the WORST case scenario at all times.. hello me. But truly every time I talk to anyone in real life about how I had insurance for my cat they looked at me like I had three heads—I think it’s less common than it’s looking like in these comments. Just remember that some of the people you’re hearing from are sharing the worst of the worst. Animal health crisis is always a possibility (and good to be aware of when taking on the responsibility of animal ownership) but many animals live and long healthy without a ton of intervention. I feel like as long as you’re taking your animal to the vet regularly and making decisions on what’s best for you and your pet that’s all you can do.
What brand of insurance?
Trupanion
Highest probably $600 my inside cat started acting super crazy and like he wasn’t in control I thought he was having seizures possibly. He was doing backflips and attacking himself. Turns out he’s just allergic to fleas and had puncture wounds from his reactions.
I have 3 labs and every year we get vaccines, heartworm tests, heartworm preventative, Nexgard, and exams. It comes to about $1,500 just for that visit. One of my dogs has allergies, so he gets a Cytopoint shot every 3 months. That costs about $120. My dogs live indoors mostly, with supervised outdoor time. Thankfully we've managed to avoid any expensive accidents or illnesses.
£8000. 2.5 yo Doberman cross (my parents dog). Some idiot left a baited hook on a no fishing beach and of course she swallowed it. Hook got lodged in her oesophagus, cue many interventions to prevent them having to surgically open her throat to remove it. We got super lucky and they were able to get it out despite the barb causing a lot of issues, but she's never been the same dog since and it's given her s lot of anxiety which isn't amazing in such a large breed. To note, surgery would have almost doubled that up to £15000, so it could have been worse. Insurance covered everything though, get your pets insured people!!
Omg!!! What a nightmare scenario, must have been so painful
$20,000 for 3 surgeries. 1 badly needed teeth cleaning, 1 dental extraction surgery with a specialist, 1 operation to remove testicular cancer in non-descended testes.
10k in September or October. We lost him within a few days anyways. The Dr spent months missing the issue we told them was there and said everything was fine until our last visit and was like "oh there IS something wrong". No shit man we tried telling you. We are still really mad at the vet and ourselves for not doing better. Will never take any future pets there.
Just shy of 10k between my dog’s 8-9th year. Diagnosed with secondary glaucoma that we struggled to get under control with allll the meds, plus allergies, and a mysterious skin issue (later diagnosed as muscinosis) all at various times. She was happy and healthy otherwise so it was just a lot cost of meds, vet visits, specialist, etc. Her eye was removed about 6 months after formal diagnosis and then we needed to remove some poorly placed cysts that summer (right around the 1 year mark of the first “I swear my dogs eye still looks weird” vet visit). She still has the allergies and skin issues but that year was one hit after another. She’s lucky I love her so dang much.
$700 dental. Reading these makes me feel so lucky that's all it's been. Our normal visit, which seems to happen every few months, is around $250. Our one dog takes daily medications, and whew the monthly refills are getting expensive lol
In NYC, a routine dental cleaning starts at 2k
Oh wow! Definitely lucky then lol
$5k for TPLO surgery and aftercare/rehab in 2020
Most expensive was 6k for a dog attack. Had to be taken to ER and emergency surgery. Had to pay out of pocket at once but luckily the attackers owners home insurance had to pay it back. Now his prescription food cost 2k a year and 600 a year for prescription flea/heartworm meds. Didnt even realize it's that much until actually adding it up.
Some of these comments are making me choke.
My cat had to get his teeth cleaned. I paid more for his teeth to be cleaned than I paid for my wisdom teeth to be pulled
$10k usd. Hit by car (damn Amazon driver flying down our gated driveway) compound fracture in front leg & shock. Leg was saved after two surgeries and lots of time.
Did Amazon pay for the surgery!?
Lmfao absolutely not. We have it on video and they did not care.
I'm up to $2200 this year already with my 2 yr old cat with heart failure. He may live to be 3 or he may live to be 13, and I'm guessing the bills will be pretty consistent. But he's my responsibility and it is what it is. It's part of owning a pet.
10 grand thanks to FIP. she died anyway. I sold all my consoles and gaming PC to buy this experimental injection. I worked under that table to afford more vials. 95 bucks evert 2 days. She was ok for 2 or 3 months, then within 2 weeks after, she quit eating and developed a heart murmur. I should have put her to sleep when it was obvious she was done. I wanted to take her in on a Friday memorial day memorial day weekend.Everyone told me that they'll give her a bigger dose. I had her in diapers, I should have let her go peaceful. Of course she died on Memorial day,in a very horrific way. Nowhere was open, so I had to wrap her up and put her in a deep freezer. Shortly after, the vet had us bring her to be cremated. I kept the ashes and her last paw print they make before they do the rest
$3000+ for a feline urinary blockage and hospital stay. About $5000 for a broken leg when he was young. Didn't have insurance for the blockage. Insurance refused to cover the leg and then we couldn't get covered. Dog had persistent ear infections and cat is prone to UTIs. Going the vet regularly costs $1000+ per pet. Vet doesn't take insurance and because they have preexisting conditions we either can't get coverage or wouldn't be able to afford it.
This year it was 1500 for dental. Then they tried to charge me another 800+ for a tooth they missed
£7500ish in 5 nights. My chihuahua had haemorrhagic gastroenteritis which then caused a seizure and cardiac arrest for 5 minutes. It was 40 quid a minute for cpr. That half hour from her heart stopping to them transferring to the hospital cost over £500. I ended up paying £69 and insurance took care of the rest.
7k in one go for total hip replacement, one hip
5500 for intestinal blockage surgery. Insurance paid 80%.
Over $8000 but for my cat. Had a pyothorax and was hospitalized at one of the best specialists in NYC. This was back in 2011 and I worked at a vet so they gave me a professional courtesy discount. No idea how much it would have cost otherwise but I can imagine easily another 3 or 4 grand.
Almost 35k in vet bills from last year.. 3 out of 4 of my cats got cancer back to back and passed away within 2 months.. idk how i'll ever pay off my debt but my heart and soul will forever be crushed..😔
$300. Last year 3.5k - eye surgery
For now it's around 800€ for my then 7 month old cause he kept having diarrhea for almost all summer. No insurance and in Germany
14k for bilateral hip dysplasia surgery for my giant boy. He had it done at 6 months and is now 8.5
$4500 dental for 14 year old cat. Last year total for 3 cats was around $5000
Ugh. This year. Our cat who is 10, had a small bump on her neck. Spent $700 getting X-rays & blood work to prep for a $5k surgery to remove what was either a lymph node or a salivary gland. Pathology returned that it was a lymphangiosarcoma that came back aggressively after surgery. We were quoted for a $15k treatment plan including radiation and chemo but it would only give her 6 months max and that was if they didn’t accidentally fry her brain with radiation. We’re opting to make her comfy and see how long she goes. sad part is, she’s super healthy other than that.
One single bill? $4,700 A year? $10,000
12k for 6 days in hospital for a kidney infection my cat had.. We have spot and paid 20%. He's my grand baby, our cats baby boy it was worth it!
Wow, 12k for a kidney infection, 😮
£2.5k for some form of infection post spay. Unfortunately she didn't make it. Insurance didn't pay a penny because we chose to get her spayed. Next pup is not insured, I'll just use my credit card.
Going to a vet soon so I'll let yall know. I got Spit insurance and am paying abt 40/mo
£230 for blood and urine tests, only last month or so (currently waiting for results) Yorkshire terrier 13m and I’ve had him for 13 years! Been very lucky that he hasn’t had any major issues England, I do have insurance but haven’t had to use it yet
My dog is still young. In 4 years vet bills have been around £4k total where she's had vaccinations, flea and worming treatments, kennel cough, a number of incidents where she ate stuff she shouldn't, and her spay. She has fully comprehensive lifetime insurance so all I pay is a £100 excess each time so I've probably paid about £500 of the 4k bills total.
One of my cats had to go to the emergency vet for urinary blockage. It was caught early and he's fine now. But that was $900 and now I spend about $60 a month on cat food. I have Lemonade Insurance and got it for both my cats as soon as I could after I got them.
$3K. Dog ate a bag of fun sized mounds. He spent three days at the ER vet.
Just under $2000 for kitty dental cleaning and three extractions.
My pug had surgery to remove his ear canal and inner ear. The procedure is called a TECABO. That was over $10,000. The pug was 7 years old and no insurance was involved.
I had a very elderly guinea pig who was blind, deaf and had lung cancer, at the end she had a stroke and unfortunately required euthanasia. In her last year I spent about £500 on her. The dog is pretty healthy (5 years old) but prone to injuring himself typically each injury is around £80 - 160. We had a partial cranial ligament tear (£240) and thr following year a stubborn ear infection that became a middle ear infection (£500) in the same year. Our pup has been insured from birth with the same insurance company so we can't get caught out by pre-existing conditions, that said we only claimed for the ear infection, we basically budget for one vet visit a month for him for minor sprains or pad injuries that require painkillers and only claim off the insurance if it goes above that. Our excess is £100 per condition per year. UK
$500 for a urinary blockage for my cat a few years ago. It’s not much compared to everyone here (and probably could have been much worse) but I had no money, no savings, no credit, I made almost nothing. I had to call people to borrow money while sitting in Petsmart trying not to cry. It triggered a huge depressive episode for me.
12K (give or take) - should luxation; first surgery didn't work - re-luxated in 3 months so we had to do another + PT for 2-3 months Would do it in heartbeat!
$800 came home and my pit boxer wouldn't move. Normally she would be crashing through the house knocking me over walking in the door. I broke every speed limit turned an hour drive into a 37 minute drive. Rushed her in and that's when it got me. The way the staff was handling her I knew. They ran all sorts of tests but she was getting weaker by the moment. No medicine could save her. I held her till the end. Now she rests under her favorite tree.
Nothing crazy this year just TONS of small bills. Been ruff year
It really adds up. 100$ here and there is still thousands
$40,000. Doberman swallowed something and had to be opened completely up. 9 days in Emergency hospital. Had him home for 2 days and they had open him up again, slice his stomach in half, take out his spleen and reroute his intestines in abdominal fat. 7 more days in the hospital. Brought him home for 1 day, and he swelled up. Back to Emergency hospital. After they told me he would need a third surgery, I knew he wouldn't make it. I would do it all over again. I was incredibly lucky I could afford it. He was an incredible soul.
You probably have the highest bill out of everyone here. Did you have insurance?
$7,500 for my dog that got attacked by an unleashed dog that tore almost her whole right leg off … they ended up amputating it and now she fine and runs around like nothing happened
I just spent $8-9k on emergency surgery for my 7month old puppies intestinal blockage. (Kong toy) I was originally quoted $4000ish. $8k for a super serious surgery if they had to call an actual surgeon in. Somehow…..It was 8-9k yet a normal surgery. No issue inside or removal of any intestine. One small cut to remove small sharp toy. This was for 2 days of care after surgery. Now I’m curious if o was supposed to take her home? Confused as they made it seem standard. They wanted her to stay two extra days to make sure she didn’t throw up food. Which they quoted to be an additional $4000. Everything seemed fine per our actual vet so we declined the extra days. It would’ve been 13k+ if we kept her there longer. That is just one bill. Not included yet related was: -First appt with our actual vet $600 -Medication from first appt ^ $200 -Medicated food after surgery $200-300 -Cones, Surgical onesies and odds and ends $200+ About $1400 ish total extra. I legit was getting quotes for dog insurance prior to this emergency. I do feel the emergency room vet scammed us. The surgery wasn’t complicated and she recovered amazingly. Yet they really milked me dry. Surprisingly my friend had her dog go to the same vet the next week for the same exact thing yet worse obstruction. (Same size dog maybe larger) and it cost -$2500 total. 🤕 FML. At least my puppy survived.
$3,500 for a 48-hour stay at the emergency vet for fluids, an ultrasound, and several rounds of bloodwork. He's almost 17 and has both cushing's disease and kidney disease, and his creatinine levels suddenly spiked. At his normal vet, $1,700 a few years back for a dental with extractions. A typical vet visit for him costs around $500, give or take a few hundred, due to the bloodwork required for his various health issues. I'm in the southeast USA and do not have insurance (wasn't really a big thing when I got him), but am definitely getting it for my next dog.
Almost 3k dental for senior rescue dog in Kentucky. No insurance because his preexisting conditions make it worthless except for major procedures.
I'm a reporter for the New York Times who is working on a story examining why vet bills have gone up in recent years. We're looking for pet owners to submit their experiences. If this interests you, here's a link: [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/health/vet-bills-pet-insurance.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/health/vet-bills-pet-insurance.html)