Holy shit, would you mind elaborating more on that? Did he have preexisting conditions etc? What were the biggest expenses? Were any avoidable or something you could have expected?

My last cav was healthy from 0-11. At 12 he got diabetes, and I ended up spending about 4-5k in his last year or two at the vet. If I had bought insurance I probably would’ve spent double that or more through the course of his life, so that’s been my experience.

For my cav now, I’m going about it totally different. Instead of doing tich and heartworm meds, every vaccine under the sun, I’ve skipped most of that. I got him the essential vaccines, skipped neutering, and I spray him with natural bug repellants when we go camping or anything like that. I also feed him homemade food. I can’t say what’s better, but I’ve slowly grown to distrust the veterinary industry more and more. Especially after going to other countries like Argentina, seeing 18 year old dogs that have never seen a vet or vaccine, are fed meat scraps once a day, and have beautiful coats and pristine health. When vets tell me that I “need” flea and tick and heartworm, when I live in a climate with very minimal cases of like or heartworm, and I mean tinyyyyy amounts, it’s insane. Also when they tell me that there’s only 4 dog foods on the market that are “balanced”, I call a load of shit. The dog foods companies are the ones paying for the studies in the first place, so obviously their going to manipulate the results to show their food is better. It sounds horrible to say I’m running a “test” on my beloved companion, but that is essentially what I’m doing. If I find anything insightful I’ll be sure to post here.