Susie adopted her Shih-Tzu Neddy when he was just a year old and suffering from a stubborn digestive complaint. “I took him to the vet and was amazed by how streamlined everything was,” says Susie. “It’s been a number of years since I last had an animal, and I didn’t realize how much the veterinary field had expanded and grown, and how many great procedures are now available for pets.”

As Susie discovered, many vets now offer almost the same uality of treatment for pets as doctors do for people. Blood profiles, complicated surgeries, hospitalization with round-the-clock monitoring and care, and even specialized diagnostic tests such as CT scans, MRI cans, ultrasound examinations, and endoscopic biopsies are the norm at many contemporary clinics.

Yet all this care comes at a price, and vet bills can consequently run into the hundreds and thousands of dollars. The good news is that there are several ways you can decrease these costs without sacrificing the quality of health care your animal needs.

1. Practice preventive care
It usually costs more to fix something than to prevent the problem in the first place. Your car mechanic will tell you that spending just a little each year on tune-ups and oil changes will help avoid expensive repairs down the road. Your pet isn’t a car, but the same philosophy applies. Here are a few ways to prevent problems that might entail more costly procedures later.

• Annual lab tests. Diagnosing problems such as diabetes and thyroid disease with a simple, inexpensive yearly blood test only adds about $50 to $60 to your bill, which translates to about 15 cents per day! It’s not much when you consider that to treat diabetes, it can cost hundreds of dollars just for the hospitalization to run glucose tests to regulate insulin levels during the first week of treatment! Lab tests should be done annually on younger pets, and at least twice yearly on pets seven years and older.

• Nutritional supplementation. Healthy foods and quality supplements minimize oxidation and inflammation (two major causes of all chronic degenerative diseases) and boost the immune system. Quality supplements and food cost more than low-cost “generics,” but are healthier and more effective. Spending a little extra on better nutrition is less expensive than paying for procedures when your pet becomes ill.

• Surgical sterilization. Spayed and neutered dogs and cats have a greatly reduced risk of developing breast cancer, and no chance at all of developing cancer of the testicles or uterus.

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