Here at Applebrook Animal Hospital, we get a lot of calls asking for pricing for spaying and neutering pets. Oftentimes, people seemed shocked at our pricing.

There are important things that you should know to help you understand about animal surgery.

  1. At Applebrook, you can expect that your pet will receive the individual care that you would expect from us. We know you and we know your pets.  We take them time to recover them, hold them, and comfort them before and after surgery.  There have been many cases in which the actual surgical procedure was tailored to your pet’s needs. For example, if our doctors know that a pet is very energetic, they may choose a suture material that is even sturdier than the usual one. This is a special touch that comes from our team knowing you and your pet personally.
  2. Our surgeries are performed in a surgery suite with surgical lighting and a special surgical table. We have advanced monitors that check heart rate, oxygen, carbon dioxide levels and blood pressure. Our surgical patients are laid on a water circulating heating pad to keep them warm with no risk of a burn. We use sterile instruments and the procedures are performed by a licensed veterinarian with at least one additional trained team member monitoring the anesthesia. Comparable surgical procedures for humans cost tens of thousands.
  3. Prior to anesthesia, we always draw a current blood panel.  The tests check for adequate clotting values, organ function and much more. If your pet had an abnormality and we did not check, odds are we would find out the hard way…when they did not recover well (or at all). Pre-anesthetic blood work upholds our mission to take the best possible care of patients.
  4. We administer long-acting pain coverage to make their recovery period as good as it can be. We believe that being proactive about pets’ pain is part of our mission as well. We often give more than one kind of pain injection and send home oral medications to follow up. Pain control is not optional at Applebrook.

All these things cost us money and time, so we must pass this on to you. We wish that we could snuggle patients all day for free. We would because we adore our work, but we must pay for our products and team.

So how can Low-Cost Facilities spay a dog for $50 or even FREE?

Each low-cost facility is different and many may offer all the things listed above (although probably not to the level we do since we know our people and patients), but these groups are subsidized by donations and grants through groups like ASPCA. Grants mean that most of their costs are off set and they do not have to charge as much for their services. This is an important differentiator. Private clinics do not receive any grant money or donations so we must charge for all parts of our procedures.

It is understandable that people are confused by this and assume that their private veterinarians are gauging them, but the reality is that we just don’t have quite the support structure that the low-cost places do.