Why are shelter dogs so expensive?

The tax subsidies received by shelters are next to nothing, they rely on donations from animal lovers and adoption fees. Another reason shelters charge adoption fees is to cover the cost of vaccinations and spays/neuters (which prevents that animal's 5-55 puppies from ending up in the shelter a year later). Finally, dog fighting rings will visit shelters pretending to adopt a family pet, they are looking for "bait dogs" and they have been able to find them for free at shelters...charging a fee deters this.

Your last paragraph will tell you why it is so expensive. They need funds to care for the animals. Is this a state funded shelter? It doesnt sound like it.

Your last paragraph probably explains why its so expensive! They are trying to pay for their fancy set up lol. That is ridiculous tho, most of the time shelters charge $75.00 to $100.00 and that DOES include spay/neuter!

THIS shelter is somewhat pricey. For $250 an adult dog at my shelter is wormed, vaccinated, heartworm tested and on Heartguard, spayed or neutered, microchipped, comes with a leash, collar, bag of goodies. Pups have everything they can have done to that age, plus you get a partial refund when you prove spay/neuter. The price of many services varies from city/state, but this is a bit high. I would suggest that they should either lower the prices on the adults and/or up the services involved. Then they should bring in a boatload of puppies and charge accordingly and let the pups' adoption fees pay most of the costs... This way they can gradually increase the variety of animals they put up for adoption. Works for my place.

I'd be leery of the place. Makes me wonder if the critters aren't even altered, where that money is really going. The shelter here charges $40 for a cat $100 for a dog, I think it's slightly more for a puppy. Been like that for ages. Cats used to be $80 but they dropped that a couple yrs back. The ONLY places I see charge that much are rescues that get really sick/injured dogs. Even then they rely mostly on donations to pay for the vet care and not the adoption fee. They should have an expense report, if they rely on tax payer money.

it's the only way they can cover their expenses. from housing, to vet care, to feeding, someone has to pay for it. and i'm willing to bet that with a nice place like that, they're probably also getting money from charities and municipality funds- the adoption fees probably don't even come close to covering all the expenses.

seriously? a dog is a financial responsibility and if you can't make a couple hundred dollar investment you should not own a dog. if you think that is expensive then just wait until you go to the vet.

Shelters need to cover expenses for the food, medical needs, surgeries, shots antibiotics, etc. that are used by all the animals they adopt. This particular shelter may have paid staff that add to the cost as well as electricity and other utilities used in their work. Most adoption fees do include vaccinations and the spay/neuter fee but in this case, perhaps they reimburse if you return to have the spay/neuter surgery done there. The other reason for the fee is because people tend to treat something that they paid for with more respect than when they get it for free. This same theory applies to pets. The shelters hope that by charging a fee, the adopters will value the animal more than if they just got it for nothing. It also can help to reduce the number of bad humans that may be collecting animals for illegal testing or dog fighting. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of awful people in the world and well-meaning pet owners have to pay the price for them too.

That does seem expensive. I don't know why but I know our local shelter here only charges $110 for an adult dog and that includes the spay/neuter and all the shots. I know that price is to cover their prices so they break even. As for this other shelter it kinda seems like a glorified pet store. Those are high prices. It seems like they may not need your donation of food your just paying for their skylights!