When I read threads like this I want to kiss my vet. Here a routine cat spay is $100-$120. That includes pain meds but no iv drip or bloodwork. Dog spay for medium dog with drip and bloof work is around $250-$300. My vet isn’t rich but he only works 41/2 days a week, has a nice house in one of the nicer subdivisions, takes nice vacations, has a big rv, wife doesn’t work and his daughter goes to LSU. So he must be doing something right. He also has at least 2 vet techs, 3 receptionists, and a couple of kennel helpers.
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Wow, that seems cheap to me for all that, but is does depend on where you are.
I was going to say we do have a low cost clinic in the area too. They also help the local rescues out. My grandma fed some cats, and…they multiplied. By the time we got involved, there were 19 outside feral cats (I know). We took them to the local clinic through the rescue, trapped them and would have an appt. What we caught, is what we caught. (One time we had 5 spots, but 2 cats when in the last trap together, so 6. Lol)
They were absolutely awesome to deal with. $10/cat, gave us cut sheets to cover the traps and keep them calm. BUT, they make the call. If they find out one is injured etc, they have the right to pts. It was more a “factory type”, brought them in traps through the side door, pick up, they were fixed and rabies shot, and ear tipped. No other vaccines, or bloodwork, not the care I’d want for my beloved indoor pets, but you couldn’t get close to them without them panicking.
One of the old tom cats was a huge beautiful cat. My grandma called him Whitey, my Dad called him Creamy. He was beige but had a little bit of orange to him. Siamese sort of looking. Well, we knew he was older with a neck abscess. We debated taking him in, dreading the day he’d go in a trap, but…we did. As luck would have it though the regular clinic was closed, so we drove him another place. We explained, said we’d offer to pay to try to fix him if able to. They did neuter him, clean his wound, shot of antibiotics, and he came back to his neighborhood! He lived a few more years, passed away last summer.
When my grandma passed away, there were large donations made to the rescue, and the clinic for their help.
The price difference between over the phone vs in person may not have been bait and switch but the front desk person not accounting for everything? Still not okay, but understandable how perhaps a new employee could look up the price for a “spay” in the computer and provide that number, not understanding that that’s a line item for a spay, not the whole thing. Training issue for sure but maybe less nefarious than outright deception.
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My 55# dog spay at a low cost clinic here in MA was $200. The quote at the clinic I worked at was $700. I think your quotes are very normal. Your other option is to use a reputable low cost clinic?
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Cats always seem to cost less for me even than comparably sized dogs. It’s been that way for me no matter where I was living at the time
In my experience, the low cost clinics don’t spay giant dog breeds like Great Danes.
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The low cost clinics seem to go up to 100 lbs.
Far fewer bleeding issues with cats. Even a very pregnant cat spay is still easier than a comparable sized dog in terms of exposure/visualization and ligation.
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I don’t believe that.
I make more money than my vet does and I did not have $200K in student loan debt.
Spay/neuter surgery at my clinic is in line with other surgeries - they did a mastectomy on my older bitch 2 years ago for a suspicious lump and it was about $700. I had two skin tags removed from my dog last year and it was at least $400…don’t remember exactly. But it’s probably very different - pre-surgery blood work for both, fully monitored pre and post-surgery, they keep the dog until they are fully awake, pain meds sent home, suture removal and follow up appointment is free.
The vets in your link don’t volunteer but they make it clear that they subsidize the spay/neuter with other aspects of their practice, work “in volume” and also receive donations. I think it’s great that they organize their clinic so that people are encouraged to spay/neuter, but it’s not low-cost because other vets are overcharging.
Our non-profit spay/neuter clinic is subsidized by our vaccination and out patient clinic. I have special training, which allows us to keep costs down by performing more surgeries in less time. My staff also has special training, and their skills are fully utilized to help keep costs down, while sterilizing as many animals as possible, as quickly as possible. Volume – we don’t make much on each procedure, but we do a lot of them. We also receive donations and do fundraising.
ETA: just found the bill for the skin tag removal and it was $788. I knew it was more than $400 but didn’t want to overstate in case my memory was faulty. There is also an infected anal gland involved in this bill but it would be fair to say $700.
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Marshfield and others have said much of what I wanted to say, but going to add a few things:
I’m partially spayed (not a full OHE like many vets do) and the cost was well over $10k. In case anyone wanted a comparison for the human procedure. An OHE surely would have cost even more.
Also, low cost clinics frequently don’t send your animal home with pain meds. Abdominal surgery HURTS. A lot. I’m not going to say it’s cruel to not give your animal pain meds because I don’t want a firestorm of people who didn’t do it for whatever reason, but I would never, ever put one of mine through that. And not having anesthesia monitoring or pre-anesthesia bloodwork? Sure, it goes fine if everything is okay. You could probably even say it goes fine most of the time, but if something goes wrong, you’re likely to be in a lot more trouble in a clinic that didn’t do a full workup and doesn’t know what’s happening in that animal than in one that did.
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Without pre op bloodwork you are going to lose more animals due to complications. That’s probably an acceptable risk with high volume rescue type work. I couldn’t live with myself if my pet died while under getting an elective procedure due to an underlying medical problem that we could have detected pre-surgery. It’s ok if others have a different cost/benefit analysis but I will never do surgery without comprehensive bloodwork in advance.
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I had my male dog neutered 2 years ago, and it was almost $800. I about choked when I saw the bill, as I’d been expecting just over $300. No complications, he was 2 years old and 75lbs.
My female was spayed around 2 also, she was also 75lbs, and that surgery was about $200. But, her spay was 12 years ago and done by a vet our family had been going to for years, and I seem to recall he gave me a bit of a discount as well.
Did you mention the dogs age when you first called? The spay price for a 1 year old dog is higher than for a 5/6 month old dog that hasn’t gone into heat yet. The price also increases as the size increases- are you sure your dog isn’t bigger than you initially thought? Did you discuss stomach stapling with the vet at all? That’s common with large breed dogs during a spay and might not have been included in the initial estimate. I assume your regular vet is a travelling vet without access to a surgery facility? Frankly, unless the travelling vet has an established relationship with a local vet that usually annoys them. They would rather spend their time doing procedures for clients.
I’m in MA, in a pricey area, and I’m not at all shocked by the prices you quoted. I would expect $800-1K for an older, very large breed spay. I think my sister paid around 600-700 for her dog- and she was maybe 9 months but only 60 ish pounds at that point and had never gone into heat.
So there are good quality low-cost spay/neuter clinic out there, and there are also not so great ones. Same with regular vets- there are some excellent vets at reasonable prices in the world, and there are also vets that I wouldn’t let mend my sweater let alone sew up a pet and do bad-mouth low-cost clinics. I have seen some of each. Low-cost clinics are funded a variety of ways- some are staffed by vet students with a licensed vet supervising, some by donations, some by grants and subsidies. But they are trying to keep costs low, and yes, there might not be as much surgery monitoring and medications as you would find in a regular clinic. I would not recommend trying to get the dog described spayed at a low-cost clinic. There is a huge difference in risk, skill, and costs associated between spaying a 5 month old mutt that weighs 50 lbs and the dog described. Low-cost clinics are generally for the former.
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Dang I need to move to where some of you guys practice! At my practice a small dog spay is about $125, a medium dog spay is about $200, and a large dog spay is about $280. A giant breed gets an extra $80 on top of the $280. In heat adds another $80, and doing a pexy adds $150. So a giant breed dane with a pexy in heat would be about $590 at max.
I wish I could charge $1K plus for giant breed spays. They are a PITA and take so much time but we have to keep prices in line with other local clinics. I would much rather cut a colic that needed an R&A at 2 am than spay a healthy great dane bitch ANY DAY. They are the absolute worst.
We also work with a low cost program that works off grants and donations. Owner’s pay $10 for a neuter and $80 for a spay and the remainder is covered by the organization. Giant breeds are excluded.
Bottom line is that old school vets have screwed us over by making the public perception of spaying and neutering as a simple, cheap exercise. Maybe it was back when monitoring, appropriate pain control, and even sterile technique wasn’t a thing but these days they are EXPENSIVE. People simply won’t pay for it though so we take the loss and hope to retain that client for the remainder of the pets life to make up for it. We don’t cut corners to lower cost because none of us (the docs) will compromise on appropriate monitoring and pain control for these invasive abdominal surgeries. I don’t foresee the public perception changing despite our efforts at education.
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^^ fascinating insight. Just curious why Great Dane bitches are the worst? Just their size or something else? I would think something like a Leonberger would be worse - huge AND hairy, but I suppose they are not very common. 
Why I have males.
Ehh….I spent at least $15K in vet bills on my first dog, even though he was unneutered. If there was a way he could rack up a vet bill, he found it. It included a lot of self-inflicted injuries like eye injuries, broken toes, suspected forelimb break, and then living in a city he had a paw and leg laceration (probably broken glass), got hit by a car once after finding the only weak spot in a “safely fenced park” which included a knee surgery, which then predicated a 2nd knee surgery several years later…I’m sure there were others but I’ve blocked them out…the knee surgeries alone were at least $8K.
Oddly the next dog I had - who we did neuter - lived to be 16 and had ONE emergency vet trip in that entire time due to an allergic response to bee stings or spider bites. Otherwise, nothing but routine annual visits.
Since then, all my dogs have (luckily) been less expensive than the first, but none as inexpensive as the 2nd.
You just never know. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Spaying is very inexpensive compared to an emergency impaction, parvo infection, car accident, accidental poisoning, etc. All typical incidents in the average vet practice, unfortunately.
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OP, that does sound expensive but I think spaying prices have gone up in the last six years. I think the average here is $200-800. I take my dogs to two different vet practices; one charges ~$300 for a spay, the other one $800+… both within 10 miles of each other, both offer the same aftercare. You are going to find a difference in price depending on location. I will say, the $800 one is run by a family friend who I know makes a lot of good money with his practice… but he is well established and well educated.
At the end of the day, veterinarians are running a business. They need to make money to stay in business. However, you can vote with your feet if you don’t like their costs or their practices. Shop around and you will find some wild variations in prices; this is because, IMHO, most vets can set their own prices on services they provide. Especially small vets, I’ve found – and I do think small veterinarians have much higher mark-ups in general than horse vets.
For example: my routine vet and my horse vet charge me $2 for vetwrap. My small vet charges me $12… That is a big difference in price and it, across the board, seems to be reflected in everything from a lyme titer to a blood panel. I had my dog hooked up to an IV for a day (it was actually less than 6 hrs) and it was over $1000… my horse, for three days of IV, didn’t even come close to $1000… Small things like that can drive people to the conclusion that they are being nickle-and-dimed by their vet.
That being said, I do not think that spaying is one of those areas where most vets make their money.
Low cost spay-neuter clinics are like anything else. Do your research. I agree there are some poorly managed and undereducated people handling the low-cost clinics… but there is also a lot of fear-mongering done by vets who feel threatened by the presence of low-cost clinics. Low cost clinics are a huge boon to low income people, and have a very valuable place here. It is one of the single most effective ways to help control feral populations here and I am happy to have them, especially when the kill shelters local to them have a 95% kill rate…
FWIW, I had four 45lb dogs (that I found on the side of the road) a few years ago all get spayed/neutered at a low-cost clinic. It was $75 for the females and $50 for the males. No complications and they came home with HW & medication.
Ironically, the one pet that I recently did get spayed at a non-low cost clinic was the only one to develop major complications post spay… and that was some serious high dollars involved on what was negligence on the vet’s part. It’s like everything else - some are good, some are great, some are bad… and sometimes, you can do everything right and things still go wrong.
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For those that do or have worked in a vet clinic, how long do these uncomplicated procedures take? I was just watching a video titled “5 minute cat spay” that was listed on Planned Pethood website. Just makes me wonder how that $800-1000 charge is broken down. Also, it seems like small animal medicine in particular is headed the way of human medicine which is a terrible and outrageous mess in regards to true cost. And I’m not talking insurance vs no insurance, I mean the honest to goodness “what did that syringe cost when the hospital bought 100,000 of them?”
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Well I can’t break down a spay but have my itemized bill for my dog’s skin tag removals. No syringes billed to me. Mostly drugs and surgery time…which I believe was my vet and an anesthesiologist but may also include a tech.
catheterization $31
15 mins surgery $210
.5 day patient care $15.50
Inhalant Isoflurane Anesthetic $60
Ketamine $24.50
Midazolam injectable $24.50
Torbutrol Dolerex $24.50
IV Fluid $30
Biodmedical disposal $4.75
Bandaging $22
He had his teeth cleaned while he was under so some of that time might be for that as well.
