Keep Above
What a dog costs
Food by the week, insurance by the month, registration by the year — a dog's costs each run at their own rhythm, which is why one guessed figure usually misses. This calculator takes each cost at whatever rhythm you pay it, brings everything to a year, and reads it back per year, per month and per week — with a first-year figure that counts adoption, gear and first visits once. Every number is yours; the page holds no averages for any breed or size.
Adoption or purchase, gear, first visits — counted once
Your estimate, not the page's
Put in each cost at whatever rhythm you pay it. Nothing here is read from your budgets, and nothing is saved.
| A week | — |
|---|---|
| A month | — |
| A year | — |
| The first year, with setup | — |
| Kept for 10 years, all-up | — |
Why do two dogs cost such different amounts?
A dog's size is not one row on this form — it moves several of them at once. Food is the obvious one, but the same scaling runs through grooming, through boarding, and through anything dosed or fitted to the animal. So two dogs on the same routine can land on yearly figures nowhere near each other, and neither figure is wrong.
The other lever is how much of the day the dog spends alone, because that is what turns walking or daycare from an occasional cost into a standing one. Neither of those is a box you tick here; both show up only as the amounts you type, which is why the page carries no figure of its own for any breed or size.
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
Vet bills, registrations and boarding keep their own schedule rather than a monthly one — how budgeting apps handle money set aside for later bills.
About this calculator
Why doesn't the page suggest typical dog costs?
Because what a dog costs depends enormously on the dog — size, age, coat, health, where you live. Published averages span ranges so wide that a prefilled figure would be an assertion, not a help. Every box starts at zero and the page adds up what you put in, whatever kind of dog yours is.
How do the weekly, monthly and yearly rhythms combine?
Each row has its own rhythm switch, so a weekly food figure sits beside a yearly registration figure. Everything is brought to a year — weekly times 52, monthly times 12 — then read back per year, per month and per week. Switching a row's rhythm doesn't change the amount you typed.
What does the first-year figure include?
The ordinary year plus the one-off getting-started costs — adoption or purchase, gear, first visits — counted once. The kept-for total counts that one-off once too, so it never inflates the ordinary year.
Is the yearly figure steady across a dog's whole life?
It is an average, and the years behind it are not all alike. The first one carries the arrivals — settling in, the gear, the early visits — which is why setup has its own box and is counted only once. The middle years are usually the flat ones, and they are what the ordinary yearly figure describes. The far end of a life tends to run heavier than the middle, and an average spread across the whole of it makes those years look like all the others.
Where do daycare and boarding go on this form?
Both belong in the minding and boarding row, at whatever rhythm they are actually paid — a weekly daycare day and a once-a-year holiday board are the same row on two different switches. Daycare changes a dog's yearly figure more than an occasional board does, because it is a standing cost rather than an irregular one, and it scales with the dog as well. A dog walker sits in the same row and has the same weekly shape, so the three can only be told apart by the amounts you type. If more than one applies they have to share the row, so the figure to type is whatever they come to together at the rhythm you pick. A row left at zero is not counted, so a dog that needs none of them costs nothing extra here.