Lifetime health care costs for dogs based on data from seven veterinary clinics in Denmark

Reports indicate that owners believe the health care costs for their dogs are too high, yet few studies report on the actual costs. Most studies are based on surveys of owners, and there have been no studies carried out in Europe. The objective of our study was therefore to provide estimates of lifetime health care costs for dogs based on billed costs taken from records from veterinary clinics in Denmark. Data were collected in late 2023 and were based on invoices from seven clinics of different sizes and locations and related to health care for dogs born in 2006-2011. Only dogs that were treated in the same clinic for their entire lives were included. The records were split into visits that were considered to include basic health care costs such as vaccinations, and costs associated with conditions that were considered acute, chronic or requiring surgery. The costs were then summarised for each dog within each clinic. A total of 17,893 invoices for 716 dogs were included. These consisted of 8821 visits for basic health care and 5899 and 1861 visits for acute and chronic conditions, respectively, along with 1312 visits related to surgery. The median inflation-corrected cost per visit was 133 EUR, and the median lifetime health care cost was approximately 2800 EUR, covering a median lifespan of 10 years. These costs varied greatly, with a breed-weight-adjusted interquartile range of 672-1521 EUR in the least expensive clinic, which was small and located in a rural area, to 1076-4962 EUR (interquartile range) for a clinic in a major city. Health care costs can encompass various levels of treatment and different treatment quality, but this aspect was not evaluated. We conclude that, on average, a visit to the veterinary clinic costs approximately 133 EUR (as of 2023) and that dogs typically visit the clinic 2.1 times per year over their lifetime. However, there is major variation in costs among both dogs and clinics. Overall, the costs identified fell within a similar range to those observed in questionnaire-based studies from other countries. However, the substantial variation warrants further investigation, for example comparing differences in health costs for different breeds of dogs and the differences between different kinds of clinics. We also found that the median yearly health care costs for a dog were less than 5 % of the mean costs for a person in the Danish public health care system.