I Have 4 Senior Dogs. Here Are My 3 Top Tips for Saving Money on Their Care

Eleven and a half years ago, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I met up with a woman I'd never seen before in a parking lot and was handed a tiny baby puppy in a box. The puppy was no longer than my hand, didn't even have her eyes open -- and she needed immediate care.

Since that fateful day, Iris has grown up to be a handful of trouble, and managed to acquire three canine siblings. Now that the pack is made up of dogs that are all seniors, I'm learning a lot about managing the intense demands of dogs mainly in their teens on the budget of a journalist.

Sometimes it's really not pretty, but I've found plenty of ways to save on their care. Here are three of my top tips.

1. Buy your meds in bulk

Giving senior dogs the right medications can help offset the annoyances of aging. My pack has a mix of common old dog conditions and much more serious concerns like cancer and heart disease, so we really go through the medications. I was buying them one month at a time when one of my vet's nurses asked me if I was interested in bulk ordering medication we use often, like arthritis and anxiety meds.

Although the initial outlay was a giant punch to the pocketbook, I really am saving an amazing amount of money. For example, two of my dogs are on a drug called Clomicalm, which can be purchased generically as clomipramine. One bottle of branded Clomicalm from the vet's pharmacy is about $65 and it lasts about two weeks. However, I found an online pharmacy that will give me free shipping for ordering two bottles at a time, as well as an autoship discount, and now that medication costs me $76 for a month, including tax.

Another example of this is a liquid arthritis medication that Iris takes. It costs approximately $65 for a 32 milliliter bottle, which will last her about a month. However, if I special order the 100 milliliter bottle from my vet, it's only $84 and it will last long enough for her to use it all up. Your prices may vary based on your vet's supplier, but they can help you work out what meds are cheaper in bulk and tell you how best to store them so they last.

If your pet insurance policy covers medications, that's great, but even then you may be pushing up against your plan's caps, so it can be savvy to cut your prescription costs where you can.

2. Find a great vet and see them often

It might seem counterintuitive for me to tell you that you can save money by seeing your vet often, but the truth is that pet medicine is just like anything else -- the more proactive you are about your pets' care, the faster you can catch problems.

Take, for example, my dog Jasmine. Jasmine has mast cell carcinoma on her muzzle, where it's highly likely to metastasize, even if well-controlled. It's not a fun diagnosis, and it's really emotionally challenging, if we're being honest -- she's at the vet a lot. In August 2022, she had the diagnostic biopsy, my vet even sent it off to the University of Missouri's veterinary school so there would be no doubt. The prognosis wasn't the worst it could be, but it was middling and not great. All of this cost me about $800 by the time it was over.

Almost a year to the day of her diagnosis, after we'd started stepping some of her meds down to see if she was in permanent remission, another tumor appeared near the first one. I was absolutely shattered. So, of course, I took her to see the vet, and he came to the same gut-destroying conclusion I had feared: it was the cancer showing itself again.

But because she'd been monitored regularly, she'd been in for all her scheduled visits, and he was very familiar with her case, treating the second tumor -- caught when it was no bigger than the end of an ink pen -- only cost me about $75. I'm happy to report that increasing her medication dosage was all it took to get her cancer under control, and she didn't even have to have surgery because it was caught so early.

3. Look into rewards programs

Working with your vet and making sure to take advantage of every opportunity to shave those bills down where you can is really important to saving money on your dogs' care, but there's one other thing I do regularly that helps.

My vet primarily carries Zoetis products, and used to have a big display about the rewards program that the company offers. I signed up because, hey, who doesn't want a few extra bucks every year? Using the program really adds up. Most of my dogs' meds aren't covered by the Zoetis rewards program, but all the flea medications I use are -- and according to the website, I've gotten $500 back just for buying medicine I'd buy anyway.

You don't have to go broke because you have a senior dog (or four)

It's an honor and a privilege to have three dogs in their teen years, it really is, but it's also incredibly challenging, as their expenses just continue to mount. When they were younger, I had looked into pet insurance, but it was a very different product then, and I didn't end up getting policies. With or without insurance, though, there are still a few tricks to saving on their care.