Today, Explained - The cost of loving your pet

Episode Date: October 11, 2026

Our emotional relationships with our pets have only grown since the pandemic — and so has the financial price we pay. This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen, edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Mackenzie Rullo, 4, waits ringside with golden retriever "Envy" at The Rocky Mountain Cluster All Breed Dog Show in Denver in 2016. Photo by Kathryn Scott Osler/The Denver Post via Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail] to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Ina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Nathan Lane. We talk about his critically acclaimed run in Death of a Salesman, taking his dog to therapy, and winning an Emmy for only murders in the building. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers. Hey guys, Cassidy Hubbard here. This week on Ann Mom, beloved reporter and beauty queen, Allie LaForce, opens up about IVF and an incurable genetic disorder, the stress and shame of miscarriage, and the one thing that would have helped her with her transition into motherhood.

Check out the latest episode of Ann Mom wherever you get your podcast. Hi, my son, Rusty, is the greatest dog there ever was. We have a wonderful dog named Bab, Babe Ruth. later Ginsburg. We love him and he's crazy and he's here to stay. Now, I don't own a pet and I never have. I did not grow up with them.

I've never had an animal in my home. Not even like a fish or that you want at the carnival or something? When I was in elementary school, we had to take caterpillars home but mine died because the food had pesticides. Wow. Wow.

Over half of American households have pets. But when my friends Taylor Poplars and Delaney Murrow tell me about sharing their lives with their dog Bonnie, five and a half. Pyrenees shepherd mix, we think. I admit, I just don't get it. Our house is covered in dog hair. We have lint rollers everywhere. If you come to my house, you're going to be white fur on your butt.

Like, that's just how it is. If there's something she wants to get across to you, she will paw at you constantly. Pets are messy. They're expensive. Easily a year, we spend $6,000 on Bonnie total. She does take Prozac because of her anxiety. I mean, she's a woman of America. So, of course, she takes Prozac.

She's on prescription food. It's $130 a bag. It ain't cheap, but it's worth it. That's what everyone says. It's all worth it. It's taught me a lot about patience and understanding and second chances and going through periods of hard times with her and not giving up on her.

And they become part of your family. Hey, Junklin. My name is Jade, and I'm calling about my dog. His name is Carlisle. He's so patient. He allows me to pick him up and twirl him around. He doesn't like it, but, you know, I can hold him like a giant baby. He's 65 pounds.

Our cat, Nico, is the greatest cat ever who's ever lived ever. He's part of my soul. He's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Millie, say hi. Thank you. Good girl. Rory, you want to say hi? Hopefully you got to hear his little baby. He'd be like, booboo.

Anyway, he's an 11-year-old senior, and I love him to death. I'm John Gleyn Hill, and this week on Explain It to Me from Vox, you're going to explain to me this whole pet thing. How did we become so attached to these little creatures that live in our homes? And what makes that special love worth the cost? I'm Ron Phillips. Rod teaches history at Carleton University. My most recent book is A History of Cats.

It's called Cats, a History. The man loves cats. A lot of people do. But they were not always so welcome to curl up at our feet. Cats really didn't become pets on a wide scale until after the Second World War. So what are we looking at? We're looking at 70 years. It's very, very recent that we think of cats as pets in that sense. All the cats in the world today are descended from one species, and that's for the Middle East, the Middle Eastern Wildcat.

It takes us back about 12,000 years, the first time that wildcats came into human communities. Since then, cats have been used by humans to control vermin. They've been kept in granaries, in bakeries, to control rats and mice. They'd been on ships to control rats and mice. They use the libraries and breweries to control rats and mice. And at the same time, there's a great deal of hostility to cats because they live on the fringes. They're not like dogs. You know, dogs live among people.

Cats live on the edges of people. And the church really turned on cats. They treated cats as heretics, as accomplices of witches and so on. And then sometime, about 150 years ago, there's a shift. And all of a sudden, there's a portion of the population start to say, no, you know, there's nothing wrong with cats. They're actually as nicest dogs. You know, they have a lot of positive qualities. I think them extremely beautiful, also very graceful in all their actions.

And they are quite as domestic in their habits as the dog. Harrison Weir, 1889. And so you get cat shows, and people start breeding different breeds of cats. And then by the, you know, the early 1900s you see signs of people keeping cats. But it's really after the Second World War that you get a lot of evidence that people are keeping cats. You get commercial cat food. We just got in these new Puss and Boots flavour packs. The latest thing in dry cat food.

And then you start to get cat care books and have a look after your cat. Dr. Critsick's tender-loving cat care. Clayton's cat remedies. The Care and Handling of Cats, a Manual for Modern Cat Owners. What caused that shift? What made people go from cats are evil and they are the devil to, oh, I love my little kitty. They're the best. Well, I think that has partly to do with people having more money. After the Second World War, people were, you know, they were owning cars. They were going on vacation. They were, you know, owning appliances. People have a lot more disposable income. And they can turn some of that to having cats. Yeah, I want to talk about that because I think there was a period of time where a pet was like, okay, that's an animal that lives in the house, cool, whatever. And now it's very much like, no, this is a member of our family. When did that happen and why did that happen? Yeah, that's, that's very new, actually. I mean, I would say from the 1990s, so we're looking at the last, you know, 25, 30 years that people have really started to think of animals or their pets as part of the family.

it seems to take place at the same time as we get a rise in divorce and the growth of blended families. You get these sort of multi-tiered families, and at the same time you seem to get these what people are calling multi-species families. And so not just humans, but animals also being thought of as part of the family. So it's part of a process where families became much more complex. And, you know, it's very much tied to the growth of the animal industry or the pet industry. I mean, now it's just endless, endless ways you can spend money on your pet with toys and furniture and endless health things. You take your pet to the dentist. They get groomed and then places for them to stay when you go on vacation.

You know, people are putting this kind of money into their pets that they would normally put into children. Yeah, there have been lots of. anxieties about the falling birth rate. And I think people point to pets for that a lot. Oh, exactly. Yeah. Now, J.D. Vance talked about childless cat ladies. We're miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. Taylor Swift came back and said, yeah, I'm a childless cat lady. There is a lot of concern about the declining birth rate and this idea that, you know, maybe pets are replacing children. And I mean, there's some good surveys here and there. There's one in

China just a few years ago where young people said, I don't need to have children. If I have my pet, I can invest a lot of emotion into my pet. And it's less expensive and less trouble than having a child. But, you know, if you decide you can't have children because it's too expensive or you don't have room or, you know, for your career, then, you know, a pet might be, you something that will satisfy some of the needs you have for emotionally bonding with some a smaller creature. Is that a factor into how much people are like spending on their pets? Yeah, well, I think so. Having a cat is not cheap if you're going to look after a cat or a dog properly with vet bills and that kind of thing. How much have you spent on your cat this year?

Oh, that's a very good question. I don't know. Probably maybe $3,000, just with just with food and cat care and they lose interest in toys very quickly. So you have to keep buying the new toys. They're not cheap. But they're totally worth it. Next, why the price of health care for our pets can rival our own. What if we told you there was one thing you could eat to reduce your risk of death by about a quarter? Interested?

And what if we added that this magical substance can dramatically lower your cholesterol, all, improve your mood and keep your weight stable. No, it's not protein. It's actually fiber, the least sexy, most overlooked nutrient of all. But what is fiber? How could one nutrient do all those amazing things? And how can you get enough? Is a powder you stir into some water going to do it for you?

All that plus the strange tale of the gorilla poop obsessed father of cornflakes in the latest episode of Gastropod. Find Gastropod and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Support for TakeSwin comes from Upside. There are certain things you need to buy each month. If you have a car, you need gas. If you eat, you need groceries. Maybe the occasional meal out.

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That's an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first take of gas. Use the promo code explained. I'm JQ, back with Moore Explain It to Me. Helene Olin is the managing editor at the American Economic Liberties Project, an antitrust organization. She's also a dog person. My current child is Barney Rubble, and he's a Havini Spoodlebex. She says people often aren't prepared for just how expensive having a pet can get.

I've written about money on and off for several decades. And I wasn't prepared for how expensive it's become to be a pet owner. Veterinary care in particular has gotten extremely expensive. Part of it is just our general surge of inflation. Part of it is that we expect more. Part of it is that the same medical advances that have come for people and have kept us alive longer. and we consider miracles, whether it's cancer drugs or stem cell therapies or various pharmaceuticals, the same is true for your cats and dogs. 25 years ago, it was very rare to hear of a pet having an MRI.

Now it's kind of standard if a pet presents with an issue. And then finally, of course, is the fact that big corporations and private equity have seen all of this, know that people say they will do anything for their pets, know that they think of their pets as children, and have rushed into the sector. When your pet is young, you're probably spending several hundred dollars a year, maybe somewhere between 500 and a thousand, depending on where you live, right, for various vaccines, spay and neuter, you know, annual checkups. But where the real costs start coming in is as they get older and they need maintenance. Tooth cleaning, pet needs to be put under anesthesia. You'll spend a minimum of $1,000 and that will be even higher if a pet's tooth has to be removed.

You know, if a pet has a, you know, a spinal emergency say, I've spoken to people whose pets of, you know, back legs have collapsed or, you know, disc herniations, you can easily be. you know, over $10,000 on a surgery. Oh my gosh, that's so expensive. Right. You mentioned that some of this comes down to who owns pet clinics and how that's changing. Who owns them now? Traditionally, of course, it was an independent practice. But in the past, say, 10 to 15 years, big corporations and private equity have moved into the space.

So the largest owner of vets in the United States right now is a group called Mars. And if Mars sounds familiar to you, that's Mars as in Skittles. Taste the rainbow. Oh. They own vats under the names of VCA, Banfield, and Blue Pearl. And that's around 2,500 veterinary clinics in the United States. vet clinics now, I'd say somewhere between a third and 50% are owned by corporations. Wow.

It was 10% or less than 10% a little over a decade ago. What caused this spike and why is a candy company behind it? As people have come to see their pets as humans, as people realize how much can be done to help their pets, the corporations and private equity basically saw what one analysts described as low-risk, high-reward. In Britain, where there was a recent government investigation into all of this by the CMA, that's their equivalent of the Federal Trade Commission, they determined that people were paying about 16% more vets owned by large corporate outfits versus independent vets. So Big Vet is a real thing. That is something. Big Vet really exists and Big Vet is running up your bills. What options do people have? I mean, do you get pet insurance? How are people paying for this if it's so expensive? I live in Los Angeles and I wrote a piece for New York Magazine a few months ago about all the people here who are now driving their pets down to Tijuana.

because it is so much less expensive down there. So that's one way around it. In pet insurance is a very mixed bag. It is extremely expensive in many cases. It goes up at very high rates. My own patent insurance increased by 30% from last year to this year. Wow. And by the way, Barney Rubble is two and a half years old. Oh, he's still so young. Barney Rubble has had no issues that I am aware of. Like, that would account for a 30% increase. And the other thing with pet insurance, unlike human health insurance, there's no ban on pre-existing clauses.

And I have lost count of the number of people I've interviewed over the years who discovered too late that their pet health insurer deemed what's something a pre-existing condition. What do people do when they get to the point of the cost too much. I just, I can't, I don't have this money and I can't spend it. What do they do? In some cases, they run up debt. Pet parents, hold on to your wallets. The cost and care for our furry friends is skyrocketing. One study found one and five pet owners carry at least $2,000 and pet-related debt. The buy and pay later services are increasingly moving into the veterinary area as well. In other cases, they surrender the animal. And if you talk to people at the shelters,

they will say that they believe part of the uptick they've gotten in surrendered animals, because they have over the past few years, has to do with the increase in costs of veterinary care. Yeah, I imagine that just feels like such an impossible choice, like choosing between this money you don't have and the quality of life for something that you love? The emotions are huge, and this is in part why private equity and corporations have moved in, is because they know people are going to feel very emotional about their pets and that they're going to want to do anything they can to keep them alive or keep them healthy or keep them pain free, and that they will pay almost any price.

When my last dog was diagnosed with heart disease, I was determined to keep her going for a couple of years. And, you know, I was pursuing various, you know, medications. I had her on one medication that cost $300 a month. And it was, you know, I just was like, I can't lose my Katie. And of course, you know, the thing, the tragic thing is about. pets. Is they're both better than us, in my opinion, and they live shorter lives. And you are going to lose your pet eventually.

And it's just the most heartbreaking thing in the world. Coming up, how to ease the pain of losing your four-legged friend. Support for today's episode comes from IM8. Trying to navigate through a dozen different supplements a week is a great way to lose track, get discouraged, and give up. I-M-8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine once and for all. IM8's Daily Ultimate Essentials has 16 supplements in one drink for $2.61 a day. That covers 90 ingredients across nine major organ systems. Co-founded by David Beckham and built by leading doctors and researchers, IM8 was designed by the world's best. Ninety-five percent of people who tried it for 12 weeks felt more

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One of the reasons I haven't gotten a pet yet is the inevitable grief of losing them. Why say hello when you know you're going to have to say goodbye? My name is Sunita Puri, and I am the director. of the inpatient palliative care service at the University of California Irvine. I also have the great privilege of being a writer. Recently, she wrote for the New Yorker about end-of-life care for pets, and she shadowed a pet hospice vet. Sometimes families call vets because they know that it's time for euthanasia at home, and they want to give their pet that peaceful end. Other times, pets have a lot of symptoms and families aren't sure, is it time now? The most moving part of the visits that I was

able to witness was the discussions about when is the right time. Yeah, we actually heard from a listener who's grappling with this exact question. My name is Alyssa, but my talk's name is Little Bug, and I'm putting her down tomorrow. It's so hard because I don't know. I don't know. when the right time to do that is. Like my family had always weeded until the last minute where, like, the dog is suffering. And I know I didn't want to do that. I know I wanted to be kind with enough to her. But then there's, like, this big gray area of when that kindness is.

How do you know when it's time to say goodbye to your pet? from the beginning when we adopt a pet we know we're in a race against time that our pet is likely to die before we do one thing that is important to track is what are the things that your animal love to do that are getting harder for them are they having trouble with the basics standing up walking outside How much are they sleeping versus being awake? The harder category is being able to really see suffering that isn't necessarily just physical, but is the suffering of lingering, of the pet enduring, but not truly living as it once did. I think it's this other side of loving a being is knowing that loss is embedded in every type of love we have. And I think this is an enormous human spiritual task, right, to set your suffering aside to see that of another beings. Around a lot of grief, there are rituals.

Yes. A loved one dies and you have a funeral. And we don't really have the way to mark the life or to mourn. are pets. Is that a factor in this? Is that part of what makes it so difficult? I think losing a pet is incredibly isolating in our society. If you request a week off because your dog died, it's going to generally land differently in a workplace than saying, I need a week off because a human relative died. I interviewed a great pet grief therapist as part of the piece who said that part of her work with clients is developing rituals,

finding a way to keep that relationship and that love and commemoration alive in a way that feels true to you. So for example, she has pictures of the cats she's lost. She says good morning to them every day. Just knowing about our pets mortality or ritual that I've developed for myself before I lose my pets, is to say to them every day, I will take care of you until the day you die. I will love you until the day you die and beyond.

Thank you for loving and protecting me. And I have started to say these sorts of things to my parents too. I told my mom yesterday, I will love you until the day you die. I will take care of you until the day you die. what a blessing it is to be able to say that to people you love before something changes. I've never had a pet. I didn't grow up with them. And you write this beautiful line. You write, our love for pets can feel purer than our love for people, but the certainty embedded within all love is loss.

despite this inevitable grief, why is it worth it? I think that anything or anyone worth loving in life, we know they're going to change, right? Change is the absolute law of the universe. But that doesn't make the love less worth it. I think what you can gain from that, that relationship, what you can discover about yourself in that relationship, the immense joy almost that we don't have language for, that absolutely makes the inevitable loss worth it to me, because it expands my universe, it expands my heart, and it allows me to face that fear of

will this have been worth it one day? And the big, resounding response in my heart is absolutely, and I would do it all over again no matter what the end looks like. Pets are time capsules and witnesses. They see things that nobody else in our life sees or is able to behold. And so being able to really sit in that love, in that uncomplicated, pure love from an animal,

there's something about being held in that love that makes every part of the inevitable suffering worth it. I just had to say goodbye to my best friend. His name was Oreo. He is a multi-pooh. There's not enough words in the world to describe how much he meant to me. He would follow me around everywhere. My grandma would always say that he's my shadow and I was always his shade.

My two babies. Mimi and Choco, they got me through the pandemic, if I'm honest. The reason why I went, you know, walking and had someone at home during a time where we were isolated. So I miss him very dearly. Brewer was about 12 years old and he was a rescue from San Diego and he made our lives the best. I wanted to call about my dog, Barry. He really taught me a lot about how you, uh, Stick up for the ones you love, even when they are pleasant to everyone else, or at least a little temperamental.

He was a beautiful dog. We miss him a lot. And that's our show. Thank you so much to everyone who left voicemails and sent emails and photos, introducing us to your pets and remembering the wonderful lives they lived. It's clear they were and are so loved. This episode is dedicated to each and every one of them. And now we're working on a show about AI agents. Tech companies say they'll make our lives easier. Has that been true for you?

And is there anything you've given up in the process? Give us a call at 1-800-61848-8-55 or shoot an email to AskVox.com. Better yet, have your AI agent do it for you. If you want to keep hearing more explain it to me, the best way to support the show is by becoming a Vox member. Head to Vox.com slash members to learn more. This episode was produced by Peter Ballinanon Rosen. It was edited by Jenny Lawton.

Thank you for everything, Jenny. It was fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Bridger Dunnigan, and our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. I'm your host, John Blen Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you. soon. Bye.