If your pet gets sick, are you willing to do everything possible to keep them alive, or do you factor in the financial impact when making the decision as to how much medical care to give? It's an icky question, I know, but it's one that pet owners are faced with all the time.

In most cases, we do everything possible to keep people alive, and none of us would want the responsibility of deciding when another human being should die. But in most cases we are forced to decide this about our pets, and in some cases the decision could be influenced by the amount of money it takes to keep a pet alive.

Veterinary medicine is getting more sophisticated all the time. It used to be that your vet could pretty much tell you whether your pet had any chance of recovery from an illness or physical problem. But today you can give your cat chemotherapy, you can have your dog's tumor operated on and feed it through a tube for the rest of its life---in short, you can keep animals alive in the same way that most of us people will do whatever it takes to get even one extra breath of life.

But of course our insurance isn't picking up the tab for our dog's radiation treatments like it would if we were the ones having the treatments. (Although you can buy pet health insurance these days, another expense to consider.) So, especially as our pets near the ends of their life spans, in many cases we are forced to decide between going all out financially for them, or feeling like a jerk and deciding we can't afford to pay beyond X dollars to keep the pet alive.

I hope I'm not coming across as heartless. There are few things in life I have enjoyed less than the times I've had to decide it was time for a pet to die. Yes, they may have been dying, but ultimately I decided the exact minute they would die. It's very hard to play God with an animal's life, and, to be honest, it's made me less likely to want to have pets in the future. But I bring the subject up because it's a reality. Decisions have to be made, and sometimes people have to say, "am I willing to not have enogh money for the mortgage/rent payment this month in order to pay for a long-shot surgery for Rex?"

I titled this post "How Much Are You Willing to Spend on Your Pet?" But I don't really want an answer to that question. I guess I just wanted to acknowledge that sometimes it has to be answered, and I hope if you read this you'll see that other people have had to answer that question, too.