Pet ownership and care should not only be for the wealthy

Earlier this year at VMX, I sat in a packed ballroom while the PetSmart Charities and Gallup team unveiled their new research, State of Pet Care Study: Veterinarian Perspectives on American Veterinary Care.¹

One slide stopped me cold. Veterinarians were asked which view came closer to their own:

• "It is the responsibility of the veterinary industry to make veterinary care affordable for pet owners."
• "People should not own pets if they cannot afford veterinary care at current market rates."

In a survey of 933 practicing veterinarians, 63% chose the second view. Thirty-seven percent chose the first.¹

I've been wrestling with it ever since. I know a lot of veterinarians, and I don't know a single one who would say pets should be reserved for the wealthy. So, what is that 63% actually telling us?

Pet ownership is good for human health

The human-animal bond is not a hobby. The Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI) found that 87% of pet owners say their pet positively impacts their physical or mental health²—so much so that HABRI estimates pet ownership is associated with $22.7 billion in annual US healthcare savings.³

Animal health is human health. Gatekeeping pet ownership for the wealthy doesn't benefit anyone.

What this stat is really telling us

The hardest part of being a veterinarian today isn’t the difficult diagnoses, it’s sitting across from a pet parent who loves their animal, walking them through a thoughtful treatment plan, and watching the conversation end at the price.

The hardest part for pet parents is that same conversation, from the other side of the table. We are not on opposite sides. The system has put us there.

According to American Veterinary Medical Association data, 56% of associate veterinarians are paid through production-based compensation.⁴ Among new graduates, that number jumps to 70%, nearly double what it was in 2018. Production-based compensation ties the veterinarian’s livelihood to the size of the patient's bill.⁴

That structure quietly puts the veterinarian’s interest and the client's interest on opposite sides of the conversation. Day after day, it wears on our mental health.

This is not a moral failure of the people in scrubs. It is a structural failure of the system around them.

Production pay alone isn’t the whole story behind the mental health crisis in veterinary medicine, or the erosion of trust between pet parents and veterinarians. But it is a real weight, and I believe it is part of what shows up as defensiveness in that 63% of veterinarians who said people shouldn’t have pets if they can’t afford it.

The real truth: 92%

In the same PetSmart and Gallup report, 92% of veterinarians agreed that trying something non-ideal for a patient is better than doing nothing.

The 63% and the 92% are not contradicting each other. They are the same story from 2 different vantage points.

Sixty-three percent is what we say when asked, in the abstract, who should carry the affordability problem.

Ninety-two percent is what we do when there is a real pet on the table.

We already believe in flexible, contextualized care. We just haven’t built the operational scaffolding underneath it. That includes how we pay veterinarians.

What shared responsibility looks like

The “veterinary industry" is not a single solo practitioner. It is the coalition of schools, associations, corporate groups, industry partners, and practice owners that surrounds the person in scrubs. When we ask if the industry has a responsibility to make care affordable, we're really asking whether the rest of the coalition will share the load with the veterinarian in the exam room—the only one actually facing the client.

The Gallup report shows where the gaps are.

Only 23% of pet parents say their veterinarian has ever offered them a payment plan. Seventy-three percent of practices have financing available.

Eighty percent of veterinarians say their education prepared them only a little or not at all to discuss financial barriers with clients.

Seventy-three percent of pet parents who declined care due to cost say their veterinarian did not offer a lower-cost alternative.

Shared responsibility looks like veterinary schools teaching financial conversations the way they teach pharmacology: payment plans offered proactively, community clinics, telemedicine—financial incentives that reward diagnostic acumen, not bill size, and a spectrum of care that is more than a phrase on a conference slide.

Some pieces exist. Most do not. None of them connect. That's the work, and it’s ours to build together.

Us versus the broken system

This is not a telemedicine vs brick-and-mortar argument. It is not a corporate vs. independent argument. It is an us-versus-the-broken-system argument.

The 63% is what we say when we have been carrying on an impossible conversation alone for too long. The 92% is what we already do when there's a real pet in the room.

The fix is not to narrow down who deserves a pet. The fix is to widen the path to care. What we can’t do is ignore the stats—or worse, misread them.

The pet on the table doesn't care which one of us figures it out; they just need someone to.

Pet ownership, and the care that comes with it, shouldn't only be for the wealthy. We got into this work because we love pets. Let's build a solution that lets us prove it.

Kate Elden, DVM, is chief medical officer at Dutch, where she oversees clinical strategy, including scaling the company's affiliated veterinarian network, advocating for veterinary telehealth access with lobbying efforts, and continuing to build on the high quality of Dutch veterinarians through specialized training. Prior to joining Dutch, Elden served as the medical director of veterinary telemedicine at Companion Pet Partners, where she helped to launch their telehealth program across multiple hospitals. In addition to being a veterinary leader, medical director, and advocate for the evolving future of veterinary medicine, Elden is driven by a commitment to veterinarians themselves: supporting their well-being, improving workflows, expanding access to care, and developing the next generation of veterinary leaders.

References

1. State of Pet Care Study: Veterinarian Perspectives on American Veterinary Care. Gallup, PetSmart Charities. 2025. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QT0J1sLKOlg1N5kMowv-j5QNtQERyxCi/view?usp=sharing
2. HABRI Launches “The Real Reason for Pets,” a National Campaign Celebrating the Joys of Pet Ownership. News release. Human Animal Bond Research Institute. February 25, 2026. https://habri.org/pressroom/20260225
3. Pet Ownership Saves $22.7 Billion in Annual Health Care Costs. News release. Human Animal Bond Research Institute. May 23, 2023. https://habri.org/pressroom/20230523
4. Chart of the month: A look at compensation trends. American Veterinary Medical Association. October 30, 2025. https://www.avma.org/blog/chart-month-look-compensation-trends