Two years later and I thought that it might be interesting to take a trip down Puppy Expenses Lane again. This time I hope to see if the myth that a second dog costs substantially less the the first has any weight. Some of you may remember that our first puppy, Killian, cost us $2,857.70 once we had tallied up all the expenses (see the original blog entry for the categorical breakdown).

What you see below might surprise some of you. To try and give some context to the numbers, I've also gone to the trouble of tallying up the NON-puppy, plain old maintenance expenses incurred by our two dog household over the last year. 

April 2010 to March 2011 - (Better known here as the Year of Adding the Viceroy):

Initially, that number isn't too bad. It's only $319.69 more than Killian's start up costs were the previous year, and Killian's care is included in that number. But think about the following:

• Murphy was half as much as Killian (Killian's puppy bottom cost us $1,000!)
• We had nearly all the supplies we needed -- like crate, collar, grooming supplies... it was more of a "Just add puppy food" situation.

So how could the expenses be so high? Well, Murphy showed up sick. VERY sick. And he has a tendency to get sick often. Add all those vet visits up and the costs start to climb quickly!

The picture does get a little nicer in year three though. Maintenance costs are much easier to stomach when looked at over annually like this:

April 2011 to March 2012

Bottom Line:

Dogs are expensive! (But you probably didn't need me to tell you that!)