Why your clients are declining care

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Pets parents are skipping out on vet care

A new Gallup poll released this week reveals that over half (52%) of U.S. pet parents have either skipped or declined necessary veterinary care for their pets.

The full report has a lot of valuable insights, but it doesn’t take much digging to understand why pet parents are declining care… since it’s exactly what we would expect: rising costs, less disposable income, and lack of access to care. In fact, 71% of pet parents who skipped care said they couldn't afford it or didn't think it was worth the cost.

And the news this week did a lot to reinforce what the data from the poll tells us:

According to Fast Company and the veterinary teleheath company Dutch, 38% or 129 million Americans, live in a veterinary desert, meaning they don’t have accessible, affordable, or available care for their pets. Dutch’s 2025 State of Online Veterinary Care report also found that 22% of counties have zero vets per 1,000 households, and pet care is particularly hard to come by in parts of California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas.

The Gallup poll also showed that financial barriers were reported as a reason to forgo or decline veterinary care across different income levels. Pet owners in households with an income of less than $60,000 were most likely to avoid care due to affordability. But higher income earners, were more likely to decline services they did not believe justified the cost. Even in those earning $90,000 or more, a third reported skipping veterinary care due to financial constraints.

Headlines like this one in the BBC this week - Vets say they are under pressure to bring in more money per pet - aren’t doing much to improve the public perception that vets are price-gauging and artificially driving up costs. The BBC spoke to seven vets working for IVC Evidensia (IVC), one of the big six pet-care providers in the UK., who all say they are monitored and set targets by the company.

The vets say that colleagues are being encouraged to compete against other practices owned by IVC over the number of certain procedures they carry out on animals, through what the company calls "clinical challenge milestones".

And as Forbes reported this week, President Trump’s sweeping tariffs have pet owners and shelter advocates concerned about the potential consequences of spiking costs.

Over half of the pet owners surveyed for Rover’s 2025 True Cost of Pet Parenthood Report expressed concern that tariffs will increase the cost of having a pet. Over a quarter were already worried about paying for what their pet needs — with one in three people reducing spending in other areas of their life to provide for their dog or cat. And those same financial pressures are impacting animal shelters by increasing operating costs, as the BBC reported this week.

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Powering vet med with renewables

With Earth Day on Tuesday April 22, it’s a great time to be reminded that veterinary medicine, sustainability, and climate change are inextricably linked. Climate change is creating complex changes for veterinary medicine like the expansion of vector-borne diseases, shifts in infectious disease patterns, threats to wildlife, rising extinctions, and zoonotic risk.

This week, Margo Mosher, global head of sustainability for Mars Veterinary Health, discussed the company’s renewable energy initiatives with dvm360. One key initiative has been the commitment to source renewable electricity for 2,000 pet hospitals including Banfield, Blue Pearl and VCA by funding the development of a large wind farm in Illinois.

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Judgement-free care to the unhoused

In late 2024, BBC News shared a story about a vet clinic in the UK who provides free medical care to the pets of homeless and vulnerable people as part of their "together project”. But the Bath Cats and Dogs Home is just one of many similar projects around the world, including Project Street Vet, which “provides free veterinary care, treatment, and support to the pets of individuals experiencing homelessness and/or housing vulnerability.”

The non-profit was founded by Dr. Kwane Stewart, who has provided direct vet-to-pet services by walking city streets to identify individuals experiencing homelessness with pets and offer free exams, vaccines, flea meds, supplies, and more. Dr. Stewart has won the Elevate Prize and was CNN's Hero of the Year the year in 2023.

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Quick Hits

Here are some of the other stories that caught our eye and we're following this week from around the veterinary world and animal kingdom: