What I could afford to pay. If saving the pet cost $500 and I could only afford $300 then I wouldn’t pay, if it cost $20,000 and I could afford $20,000 I would pay. Part of financial solvancy is to ensure I have plenty of money available for emergencies, so any pet would do fine by me. This is assuming the payment is for healing an animal. I would not want to be kept allive in a bad state of health, and neither would I expect to keep an animal alive is such a condition. But any amount that I could afford to make myself or a pet more comfortable in such a situation would be reasonable. That said, I do not currntly have any pets, and I would only fell this way about a pet with personality (dogs cats etc) not a stick insect or a fish.
I have dropped around $1000 in catastrophic medical care for each of three different ferrets. I take that as part of ongoing costs. Our 2nd ferret to fall ill, we could have spent a great deal more on chmeotherapy, but it likely wouldn’t have extended her life (and certainly not her quality of life) by much over some steroid treatment (which we opted for). $2000 would be about my limit for any one illness, I think.
I racked up over $6000 in vet bills for my kitty, Bean. He died back in June after battling thyroid disease for 4 years then pancreatic cancer. I’m still paying on that bill. I will be for a while.
I don’t regret it. I currently have 2 dogs and 3 cats. No kids. My animals are my kids and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they are healthy.
Not everyone agrees with me but it’s my money, and they’re my pets.
Y’all knew I wouldn’t be able to stay out of this one, didn’t you? 
First a disclaimer: It is my opinion , and if you don’t agree, fine. I don’t wanna hear about how ‘animals aren’t people’, OK?
My animals are literally all I have in my life. They are what I am living for. I would pay whatever necessary to save one of them, I have been with my vet long enough that he allows me to make payments in desperate times.
BUT.
I would only do this if the dog or cat had a good shot at a full recovery and could live a good, pain free life after. If a $1000 operation was only going to give me another month with my baby, no, I would not do it. If a $1000 operation would save my baby’s life, but leave them in a huge amount of pain for a long period of time, no, I would not do it. QUALITY of life always comes before QUANTITY. It is kinder to end their suffering with a painless injection.
But all things equal, if a surgery will make them all better, I will pay whatever it takes.
I helped my daughter pay a $1,000 bill for a stray kitten she’d only had for about a month. That was four years ago and Oscar’s been healthy since, and he’s worth every penny.
For me, older (61 next month) and without a full-time job or much savings, the pet’s age would be the biggest consideration. For Ricky the cat, who’s almost 14, I don’t think I’d consider any long-term treatment, or treatment that didn’t have a guaranteed good outcome. For Micky the cat and Boomer the dog, who are 8 and 9, I’d max out the credit card and worry about how to pay for it later.
I’ll always pay for basic diagnosis. That usually has a cap of about $200 or so, anything more, and I have to start doing cost analysis.
For treatements, I’d probably pay another couple of hundred (seems anything at the vet other than basic shots is at least $100 anyway).
Beyond that $400 total, though I love my cats deeply, they are cats after all, I’d begin to look at “comfort measures” and their cost, and if that’s still too high (money and/or time investment) then sorry, but we have much higher priorities for our money at the Butler household.
We made just this choice for a 14yo diabetic cat. Diagnosis was around $200, treatment would have gone into much higher ranges to get the medication (insulin) levels correct (multiple visits & tests) and the effort of daily (perhaps multiple daily) shots was deemed too much for a cat that had already had a darn good run. We let him live untreated until we saw that his QOL (quality of life) was beginning to deminish, then had him put down. It sucked, but was IMO the right choice for the Butler household.
I might pay a bit more for my 9yo cat, or the wife’s 11yo cat, but not much.
Agreed, if the animal is relatively young and there’s a good chance of quality of life; of course I would. One of my Rotties has dysplastic elbows, at a little over a year old I was looking at a possible $2,500 surgery on his left elbow and I wasn’t about to hesitate.
Consults with an ortho specialist and surgeons at MSU led us to make some small lifestyle modifications and take a wait-and-see approach. I’m glad I did; the dog is five years old and competes in agility.
I adore this dog, he’s a wonderful animal. If he lives to be ten years old, that surgery would’ve amortized to only $250.00 per year. 
Very well worth it!
I have no kids; my dogs are extremely important to me and I would spend whatever I could if warranted, without going into real financial hardship.
I had a friend who kept a $5,000 credit card clear for vet emergencies. Her 13 year old Cocker got cancer and she opted for surgeries, radiation, the whole deal. She maxed out that card and then some to buy her old dog 8 extra months of surgery and dealing with unpleasant medication side effects. I thought that was not fair to the dog at all. Right about the same time I had an almost-ten year old Rottweiler with bone cancer. He was too old for amputation (relatively inexpensive and many dogs recover brilliantly, if it hasn’t spread.)
I could have put the old guy through radiation and all sorts of unpleasantness, but for what? He was old and had had a wonderful and full life.
We had a party for him with about 30 of his favorite humans to fuss over him, the vet came to my house and he passed on in my living room. As deaths go, it was very dignified.
To the OP, I would make sure to get second and third opinions. From a veterinary teaching hospital, if you can.
Yes, there’s a limit.
I’d make a decision based on the health and well-being of my pet, not the dollar amount. Besides, once the dollar amount gets up like that the chances of the procedure fully healing the animal with no further complications get slim. Paying any amount only to prolong suffering is wrong, but that’s a different question than money.
I am very fortunate in owning a home, and living in a marraige where both of us make enough money to be able to pay a vet bill without having to eat Spam for a month. I also don’t have human children. No actual vet cost would faze us. $20,000? We’ve got more than that in equity. I would rather be homeless with my wife and dogs than live with the knowledge that I chose to put down my loved one instead of paying a measly $3,500 to fix her.
Paying a vet bill would not cause me to lose my job. It might make me get another one, though.
Any grey area would come far beyond realistic vet bills.
And get the quote right: “I love my dogs…”
I agree with this. Frankly, I think it’s crude to spend thousands of dollars on a single animal when there are thousands of other animals (and, er, people) out there who only need a little food and a roof to have good lives.
I’d be willing to spend up to $1000 for my cat, but only because he is young, and that would be dependent on whatever he had being completely fixable. If it was an older animal, or one that was always going to be in ill health, I’d spend less, not because of the money per se (although the money would be part of it), but because past a certain point it just seems pointless. Animals don’t handle illness well, because they can’t think long term. They don’t know that their chemo will improve their lives; the only thing they know is that they are in pain, and I’d be the one administering that pain. And with a long term illness like cancer, they might be in constant low level pain their entire lives, with no way to contextualize the pain or rise above it. I think it would be a little cruel for me to subject my pet to pain just because I might miss him.
This is quite easy for you to say because in your world, you don’t have to choose between food and electricity and shelter on one hand and your pet’s health in the other hand. In my world, that is a real decision. I considered that buying a home would make kitty emergencies less affordable. I considered that there might be hard decisions about my cat and money before I even got a cat. I think it is incredibly irresponsible for people to have pets when they can’t afford simple maintanance costs like vaccinations and spay/neuter, but it is equally irresponsible to invest your life savings in a pet if it gets horribly ill or injured. I will not lose my home or my car to invest in feline care and maintanance.
That’s fine with me.
but
The OP asked “What would you pay…” [My emphasis]
My answer is “The vetrinarian medical care I choose for my pet will be judged on its medical necessity, not its cost.”
I also say I would pay any cost because I can pay any actual cost. I should not have pushed this to a hypothetical extreme.
I also tried to make the point that the most expensive procedures are also the ones less likely to result in a completely cured animal.
I couldn’t agree more; everyone has a realistic threshold. Like garygnu I own a home with plenty of equity. However, I wouldn’t jeopardize my home for one of my dogs…wow, that is a choice I hope I would never have to make!
I have a good friend, on a very limited income, with few financial resources. She’s got a chronic illness and struggles to pay for her own medical expenses.
She has to extremely well cared for and loved older dogs, but no way could she ever afford a catastrophic medical bill like $3,500. We’ve talked about it - if it came down to having one of her dogs suffer interminably for lack of treatment or choosing euthanasia, she would euthanise. And cry a lot. And then go rescue another Great Dane.
Probably not more than a hundred dollars, tops. One enjoys having pets around, but in the end they are just animals.
I’ve been averaging about 300$ yearly on my dogs. I have a boston and a mutt. I would spend whatever it took to keep them healthy. They are my kids. I would sacrfice the steak for some soup in a cup if it meant that I could have my wonderful dogs running around still.
Slight Hijack - Anyone use pet insurance? Is it a good deal?
I know a single mother who spent money she couldn’t really afford on surgery for her dog because her kids cried and begged her to. They couldn’t bear the thought of losing their buddy. So I think sometimes there’s an extra added guilt trip if your kids are very attached to the pet. I also think it can be a good learning experience for kids, though, too - in the case I’m referring to, the kids also thought up ways to help make extra money and they agreed as a family to cut back on some things for awhile.
My SIL has spent tens of thousands on her horse. She is also being buried with him (much to her husband’s dismay).
I don’t have that kind of money. I would probably do whatever it took within my budget to cure the little softies if there were good odds that it would actually work. But I’m not one to put an animal through medical hell if there is just a miniscule chance that it will do any good. Ya gotta be realistic for their sake as well as your own.
Try to answer the OP and not criticize the responses of others, please.
I think a good learning experience when you’re a kid is that when your dog is old and incontinent and not ambulatory and a little crazy. . .that’s a good time to say goodbye to Ol’ Shep.
Yeah, the death of pets does serve a learning purpose. When I was in first grade, my dog (a miniature poodle/beagle mix) got killed by a car in front of my eyes as I was getting ready to go to school. Mother made me go to school anyway. Sister Justina made me stop snivelling and get my classwork done. The very important lesson that I learned from all that was that even when “somebody” important to you dies, life goes on for everybody else and you still have responsibilities to fulfill.