Woman Gets $800 Vet Bill After Her Dog Eats Roommate’s Food, Wonders Who’s To Blame
Some dogs are known to have a bottomless pit where a stomach should be. That’s why it’s important to make sure they don’t have easy access to lots of food or snacks.
The redditor u/slomuscletherapist’s pet named Bear is one of such dogs, so she made sure her roommate knew about it. Yet one day Bear found a way to help himself to a feast that resulted in a $800 vet bill, due to the roommate’s negligence. That made the OP wonder if she was a jerk for thinking that the roomie should pay the bill.
Some dogs seemingly have an abyss for a stomach, often becoming a cause for concern for their owners
Image credits: varyapigu (not the actual photo)
This redditor’s dog is the type “to eat itself to death” if you let him
Image credits: IrynaKhabliuk (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Pressmaster (not the actual photo)
Image credits: slomuscletherapist
There might be many reasons for a dog’s lack of restraint when it comes to food
There’s never a dull moment when living with a dog, whether it’s constant playtime or constant surveillance. And unless 24/7 monitoring is something the owner enjoys, they might have to find a way to make the environment safe for their pet.
In order to make the house safe for Bear—the beagle with no sense of satiety—his owner made sure he didn’t have easy access to the kitchen. (She also locked the trash cans, since, as quite a few dog owners know, they have no problem digging through the trash, whether out of hunger, boredom, or any other reason, for that matter.) The redditor also made sure that her friends and roommate know about Bear’s lack of restraint.
There is no one clear reason why some dogs seem perpetually hungry. According to PetMD, it could be related to psychological matters, such as anxiety or stress, aging processes, or metabolic and other disorders, among other things. It can also depend on learned behavior, or, as the OP pointed out, even on the dog’s breed.
The redditor suggested that her beagle is a type of breed to eat itself to death, and it’s not one of a kind when it comes to such a problem. According to a South Carolina–based professional dog trainer, others include Labrador and Golden retrievers, dachshunds, pugs, and Rottweilers.
Image credits: Mikkel Bendix (not the actual photo)
Visits to the vet can add up to quite a substantial amount over the years
While some dogs simply can’t stop eating or continuously look for something delicious to snack on, others might opt for inedible objects instead. According to the Animal Clinic of Benicia, it’s often related to pica—a common disorder stemming from the dog’s attempt to obtain nutrients it might be lacking. It often leads to canines eating or chewing on such things as shoes, socks, toys, or even sand or rocks in some cases.
This can understandably be pretty dangerous for the pet as items as such are unsuitable to consume and can get stuck in the digestive system. Consequently, it can also result in quite a costly visit to the vet.
Based on American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ (ASPCA) data, dog owners spend roughly $410 a year on routine medical care and preventative medication (cat owners typically have to cough up around $300). These expenses do not include the one-time costs of procedures the pup has to go through during its first year, which typically add up to around a thousand dollars (nearly $500 for felines).
The rather costly upkeep of a pet is something owners ought to consider before getting one; so, they can—and should—be expected. But quite often, it’s the unforeseen instances that end up hurting the wallet the most. Forbes revealed that in the recent years—2021 to 2022, to be exact—more than half of pet owners (63%) found it difficult to cover an unexpected vet bill due to inflation. A survey of 2,000 owners found that a bill of $500 would force 28% of owners into debt, while one of nearly a thousand dollars would cause 42% of them to go into debt.
Bear’s surprise vet bill of $800 might have understandably been not an easy one for his owner to cover. That might be one of the reasons she started wondering if the roommate should pay it, considering that she was the one to cause the situation. Such an opinion seemingly split the community into two camps about it, but the OP revealed in the comments that the cost was also split between the two.
Image credits: JUAN FIGUEROA (not the actual photo)
The OP was out of the house when the dog helped himself to the roommate’s food
Some redditors thought the OP wasn’t a jerk in the situation
Others thought the owner was to blame here
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Yeah, I know people whose dogs died of pancreatitis. After days of very expensive vet care.
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I have a dog like this beagle, food motivated to the point of being a hazard, and you CANNOT, like it is actually impossible as told to me by several professionals dog behaviorists, to train out. She was pregnant as a stray, and was starving so severely her puppies had birth defects because of it. She's been with me most of her life (she got pregnant basically as soon as she was physically able, so my family thinks she's wasn't even a year when I got her), she's fed regularly now along with treats, but if food is dropped around her, or left on a surface thats a bit too low so she can reach it, she goes back to the days of being a starving pregnant dumpster dog. OP knows how her dog is, and has taken every precaution to prevent something like this, but other people don't always think about it and they get careless because they expect her to be watching her dog like a hawk, something which is neither fair nor feasible.
It's not fair to the people around her that she has such a dog either. A pet is a choice, not for everyone else around you. Sob story or not (Plus, you're bias. Her beagle isn't yours.) the fact is it's HER dog. She was also TOLD already stuff was outside and never let it cross her mind again, wether she was told it was food or not. It's not exactly fair for others to have to worry about your animal, ESPECIALLY when they already verbally warned you anyways.
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Yeah, I know people whose dogs died of pancreatitis. After days of very expensive vet care.
Load More Replies... I have a dog like this beagle, food motivated to the point of being a hazard, and you CANNOT, like it is actually impossible as told to me by several professionals dog behaviorists, to train out. She was pregnant as a stray, and was starving so severely her puppies had birth defects because of it. She's been with me most of her life (she got pregnant basically as soon as she was physically able, so my family thinks she's wasn't even a year when I got her), she's fed regularly now along with treats, but if food is dropped around her, or left on a surface thats a bit too low so she can reach it, she goes back to the days of being a starving pregnant dumpster dog. OP knows how her dog is, and has taken every precaution to prevent something like this, but other people don't always think about it and they get careless because they expect her to be watching her dog like a hawk, something which is neither fair nor feasible.
It's not fair to the people around her that she has such a dog either. A pet is a choice, not for everyone else around you. Sob story or not (Plus, you're bias. Her beagle isn't yours.) the fact is it's HER dog. She was also TOLD already stuff was outside and never let it cross her mind again, wether she was told it was food or not. It's not exactly fair for others to have to worry about your animal, ESPECIALLY when they already verbally warned you anyways.
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