Big spender's guide to Hong Kong
How much do you actually pay for your cars, pets and children? Tiffany Ap does the maths
Everyone knows Hong Kong is an expensive town. But you might be surprised by the total costs for even generic expenditure, such as owning a dog. The cost of owning a car or raising a child takes things to another, stratospheric, level altogether. The following is not for the timid. Money is earned and it must be spent. But it's always good to go into transactions involving large recurring expenses with one's eyes fully open.
The good news is that getting a dog is not necessarily expensive - in fact they are usually free. You can adopt from shelters including the SPCA and Hong Kong Dog Rescue, although you may not get your first choice of breed or sex. But the price is right and the dog comes licensed and up to date with shots.
From there, the big cost is food. You can expect to spend HK$10 to HK$20 a day depending on the size of the dog. Small breeds often live past 15 years. A larger dog's life expectancy is shorter - around 10 years - with some of the largest pedigrees like mastiffs living only about six to eight years. Assuming you pay HK$15 a day for food and your dog lives a full decade, you can expect to pay about HK$55,000 just filling your beast's tummy.
Dogs can also rack up surprisingly large medical bills. Bob McKercher, who has owned 10 dogs, says: "You can expect that a dog will need medical care at some point. Dogs get sick." Last year, two of McKercher's Pekingeses required surgery. One called Lady had bladder stones surgically removed and was neutered at the same time. The bill was HK$5,000.
His other dog Donna suffered a seizure which required several nights in a vet hospital as well as surgery to remove what they thought was a cancerous lump on the liver and neutering. The total cost for everything relating to that emergency came to morethan HK$9,000, including emergency vet fees, hospital charges and surgery.
You'll likely pay more for your dog's medical consultations than your own. A standard veterinarian visit runs to about HK$250 (compared with an average HK$150 for a person to see a doctor). An emergency consultation after-hours or during holidays is about HK$800 to HK$2,000. Cataract surgery for a dog costs an average of HK$11,000 to HK$20,000, according to Tom Mangan, president of the Hong Kong Veterinary Association.