how much do dogs cost to keep

If you have a dog how much does it cost to buy its food etc. I know some dogs have more health problems bigger dogs eat more but how uch does your dog cost.

This might be better in the animals and pets section, but anyway...

I have a Lhasa Apso cross Papillon.

She costs me about £3 a week in food, and £30 every 3 months at the dog groomers.
I also pay £12 a month for flea, worming, annual vaccinations, and annual vet general health check ups.
Now and again I replace her toys and buy her the odd treat, but that's about £20 a year at the most.

That's about it really though when I first got her there was obviously the initial outlay - buying lead, collar, crate (she was crate trained until she was about 18 months old), bedding, toys, bowls, microchip, initial vaccinations etc. Not to mention the fact that she cost me £150 herself anyway to buy.

Also once we went on holiday and left her in kennels which was £120, but now if we go away she stays with neighbours which costs us nothing more than a bottle of Sangria. (Plus she MUCH prefers it there anyway than the kennels).

Hi do you pay for your vetinary stuff as ventinary insurance also did you buy a small dog partly because it would be cheaper to buy its food.

I don't have insurance no. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I'd be eligible to use PDSA if I was desperate anyway.

No I didn't buy a small dog because of it being cheaper to buy her food, though obviously that's a bonus. Primarily we decided on a small dog for 2 main reasons :

1) We don't have room in the house or garden for a large dog
and
2) We have young children, and feel it's safer to have a small dog (preferably of non-terrier breeds as they can be a bit snappy), than a larger one. Any dog can be temperamental, but if a large dog decides to bite it can do far more damage to a child than a smaller one could, simply because a larger dog has a more powerful jaw and larger teeth.
We did research on breeds and so on and picked a dog which we felt would be suitable for our family and not prone to aggression.