An interesting question: How much would you spend on a sick pet? One school of though might be that a pet becomes a member of the family, so you spend whatever it takes. But another is that it's a little obscene to spend so much on animals when so many people have no or inadequate health care. Or you could put a dollar amount on it:
Most pet owners (62 percent) said they would likely pay for pet health care even if the cost reached $500, but that means more than a third of pet owners said that might be too much to spend on an animal.
What if the bill for veterinary care reached $1,000? Fewer than half of pet owners said they were very likely to spend that much at the vet. Only a third said it was very likely they would pay a $2,000 vet bill.
Once the cost of saving a sick pet reached $5,000, most pet owners said they would stop treatment. Only 22 percent said they were very likely to pick up $5,000 in veterinary costs to treat a sick dog or cat.
So at $500 or under, our dogs and cats get to live another day, but as the price climbs toward $5,000, it looks a little grimmer for kitty and poochie. The story notes that cat owners were more likely to quit on a pet than dog owners. I don't know if that's because cats are less lovable or because cat owners take on the personalities of their pets ("Shape up, Snowball, or its curtains!")
I confess that I'm more in the "whatever it takes" school, at least up to a point (the location of which I don't yet know). When my last cat, Pierre, had a liver problem, I spent $1,100 in tests, procedures and medicines before it was all over. He was pulled back from the brink and had several more good years after that, finally going to that great litter box in the sky at the ripe old age of 19. So it was worth it. I probably could have gone as high as $2,000 without having to worry about straining my finances. I could go higher than that today for Dutch and Maggie if I had to. Would I? Don't know. Probably.
We are responsible forever for what we have tamed, Antoine de Saint-Exupery says in "The Little Prince." Wise words.
