The real cost of owning a pet
Parents have revealed the true cost of owning a pet, with dogs causing on average £140.50 and rabbits £79 worth of damage in the home each year.
According to a poll carried out by home interiors www.hillarys.co.uk, children cause less damage around the home, totalling £75 in damage each year.
Those that say having children will ruin a beautiful home should turn their attention to pets, as owners confess that having cats and dogs costs more than the invasion of tiny footsteps.
They surveyed 2,341 British parents aged 18 and over, all of whom live in their own home (either rented or bought), own at least one pet and have one child under the age of 10.
All respondents were asked ‘Does your pet technically belong to you or your child/ren?” to which a third of respondents (34 per cent) stated that the pet belonged to their child and the remaining respondents (66 per cent) stated that the pet was theirs. Of those whose pets belonged to the child, 69 per cent confessed that they do more for the pet than their children do.
Respondents were then asked to state how much damage they estimate their pets cause in the home on an annual basis, whether they chose to arrange repairs or not. Once all of the responses were collated, the average amount of damage caused was revealed as follows: • Puppies/Dogs (chewing the furniture, soiling mattresses, etc) – £140.50 • Rabbits (chewing through cables, digging up the garden, etc) – £79 (per year) • Kittens/Cats (scratched walls & furniture, soiling carpets, etc) – £ 47
• Guinea Pigs (chewing through cables, chewing on the carpet, etc) – £33 • Fish (water spillage, damage to walls from tank, etc) – £30 What’s more, when asked to estimate how much damage that their children caused per year around the house, the average amount was revealed as just £75, less than the cost of the harm caused by dogs and rabbits.