Eventually I broke down and ended up having to put my dog down.

If you think you’ve experienced guilt or pressure before there’s nothing like the vet telling you that your furry best friend’s life can be saved as long as you’re willing to spend more money than I spent on my first car. If something goes really wrong, it seems like all of the options are expensive.

As a broke grad student I couldn’t afford any of them. I didn’t have the credit history to qualify for CareCredit either and to be honest, my student loans are bad enough. I simply had to bring my dog home in pain and try to forget that he’s in pain and do whatever I could to make him comfortable. Eventually I broke down and ended up having to put my dog down. Even doing that, I felt horrible because I could barely afford the basics, even for that.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever really want to have another dog again. I miss the one I had before, that died early and that entire experience has really had an impact on me. If you don’t make a lot of money or don’t have a bunch of money saved for whatever, you probably shouldn’t have a dog unless you have pet insurance. Because something that started off as a minor issue can snowball into something much worse in just a couple of weeks.

Everything at the vet is expensive, and if I had simply signed up for a plan that at the time was $55 a month, who knows. I could have found a way to budget for that. I wish I had because I feel like my dog might still be alive, because I would have been able to do something.

David S – Gainesville, FL