Owning a dog means expenses. We found this resource on Rover useful to get a sense of the extra expenses. It has a breakdown of how much is spent on food, grooming, vet visits, vaccines, etc. The first year might be more than the annual just because we had a few upfront costs, such as dog bed, dog bowl, etc.
We also have our budget tracking to know how much exactly we’re spending on our puppy. We’re still populating it and can share our summary early 2023. But if you’d like to start tracking your dog’s expenses, I have a google sheet template that I can share with you for your own use or to download. Feel free to copy it to your own Google Drive; you don’t need to share your data with anybody but you. If you need a refresher on how to do this, see the bottom of this webpage. Cells in yellow are where you put your expenses and data. I populated it with a little bit of my own initial expenses as a sample, you can change it with your own data.
Some general breakdown of our own expenses with Mocha.
Relatively One Timer
- Dog pick up / adoption and delivery fee, and things related to it (gas, etc)
- Spay / neuter fee
- Dog bed (Don’t get an expensive one if a puppy, multiple sizes throughout the puppy’s lifetime until full size)
- Dog bowl for water
- Crate (get one with a divider so the puppy grows with it)
- Dog carrier (soft or plastic hard shell, multiple sizes throughout the puppy’s lifetime until full size)
- Exercise pen
- Collar and body harness (multiple sizes throughout the puppy’s lifetime until full size)
- Leash
- Dog tag
- Optional car accessories, like a backseat liner
- Brush or comb
- Nail clipper or nail grinder
Repeatables
- Food (includes treats and chews)
- Toys
- Microchip
- Various vaccines, deworming, and flea and tick preventatives
- Routine vet exam (annual)
- Insurance
- Pet wet wipe, for when the puppy has accidents or tracks its own pee or stool
- Disinfectant and odor stain remover
- Lint remover if you have a shedding dog
- Extra rent/home insurance due to owning a dog
- Toothbrush and toothpaste
- Shampoo
- Professional grooming
- Training
- Occasional / optional: professional sitter / walker, daycare / boarding
- Occasional / optional: we don’t use this but some do: potty pads. We train Mocha, our puppy, to pee outside in our patio on a small personal-sized lawn. It works! It saves us the need to constantly buy potty pads.
How to copy the template to your own Google Drive
You can skip this section if you know how to save a google sheet to your own Google Drive.
Step 1: Make a copy of the sheet. You can do this by clicking on File > Make a Copy.
Step 2: Rename the sheet as you’d like. Change it to “Cooper’s Expenses”, for example.
