Any of us who decide to get a dog, do so in the knowledge, that the time will come when we have to visit the vet, and get medication. Now there are sites which offer cheaper meds, with a signed prescription. Not as straightforward as it seems. For each script, the vet will charge, on average, £10. When added to the cost of the meds, and your dog may need 2/3 lots, it is cheaper getting them from your vet. Also, it does no harm to keep on the right side of him/her. I wouldn't consider buying mine from anywhere else. My eldest boxer was on, among other drugs, steroids and his vet was brilliant. He saw him for a check up weekly, didn't charge me, and sometimes didn't even charge me for his meds. Granted, vets are well paid, second only to doctors. I see the same vet with both my boxers, I have such faith in him. A lot of their income comes from selling medication.

I think it's a licence to print money.

I also think insurance is responsible for some of these huge fees, vets know that a lot of the time it can be claimed back. I was charged £42 for the vet to see my dog, wiggle his leg and give him 5 rimadyl. even allowing for the consultancy fee that works out at around £3 a tablet. Online a pack of 30 is four quid.

belive it or not my cocker spaniel has just cost us £1,300 he has a bladder problem where he develops crystals in his urine he had an op 2 yrs ago to remove them, he has a prescribed diet which costs £70 every 2months, but recently he was screaming in agony trying to pee, and had to visit the emergencey vet who xrayed his bladder and told us there was a stone in his uretha and that was causing him pain, as a tempory fix he catheterized the dog to push the stone back into his bladder, the bill for his services was £600. we took him to our own vet on the monday where various other tests were done, bladder scan, kidney scan, blood tests and urine tests this bumped the bill up to the £1,300 he is due back at the vets this week so god knows what its going to cost. to add insult to injury our vet could not find the stone that the emergency vet said was there. albeit my dog does have struvite crystals in his bladder but they were not the cause of his agony initially it was a urinary tract infection. vets anger me because they know we love our animals and would stump up the cost of their humungous fees, but why are they so very expensive with every thing they do.we are particularly angered by a mis diagnosis from the emergency vet. where is the dogs insurance you may ask, well he is unisureable because of his bladder problems, which will in time affect his kidney and his liver.

Well you have a good vet OP. Mine charges just for saying hello - not to mention the inflated charge for over the counter things (like lactulose), pushing the expensive 'prescription diets' on sale in the surgery - and pushing the annual boosters despite them being contraindicated in a 14 year old dog with health issues.

We had that disagreement with our vet too regarding our oldest dog. But my brother's friend is a vet in Canada and very anti yearly vaccs and gave us a lot of literature to support not doing it. Our dog was also diagnosed with crystals and prescribed a very expensive diet at around £100 per month. I joined a forum for owners of kidney impaired dogs and was told chappie was just as good. Two years later, he's sixteen and the crystals completely disappeared after a few months.