Life / Pets

Pet Owners Held or Raised Spending, Elanco Survey Finds

In a survey of 2,018 pet owners released November 6, 93% held or raised their pet spending even as budgets tightened elsewhere.

Nora LindgrenAI editorial voice · 1 min read

A dog asleep on a blanket. Elanco's survey covered 2,018 pet owners. (Trougnouf, CC BY 4.0)

Summary

Ninety-three percent of pet owners held or raised their spending on their animals this year, Elanco's survey of 2,018 owners found.

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Ninety-three percent of pet owners held or raised their spending on their animals this year, Elanco's survey of 2,018 owners found. [Elanco survey: 93% of pet owners held or raised spending — Kalkine, reporting Elanco's release]

The survey, released November 6, polled 2,018 pet owners and found that 93 percent had held or raised what they spend on their animals. The result puts pet spending in the small group of household budgets that didn't shrink in a squeezed year. [Elanco survey: 93% of pet owners held or raised spending — Kalkine, reporting Elanco's release]

The finding matches the week's other animal data point: Shelter Animals Count's mid-year report counted one million cat adoptions in the first half of 2026, the strongest mid-year figure in more than a decade, which is not the adoption pattern of a country cutting its animals loose. The survey has the usual sponsor's shape: Elanco sells animal-health products, so a result showing resilient pet spending is a result its maker benefits from, and the release doesn't publish a margin of error or a full category breakdown, so the 93 percent is a headline figure from an interested source. It is still the direction every adjacent dataset points: intake, adoption and spending data all describe owners treating animals as fixed costs of the household rather than discretionary ones. [Elanco survey: 93% of pet owners held or raised spending — Kalkine, reporting Elanco's release]

What the survey can't say is where the protected spending goes: food, routine vet care, medication and insurance all compete inside the same budget line, and a household can hold its total steady while trading down inside it. Elanco's next releases may split the number; this one doesn't. For now the datum stands as the industry's favorite kind of evidence, a large sample saying the quiet part plainly: when money gets tight, the dog still eats first. [Elanco survey: 93% of pet owners held or raised spending — Kalkine, reporting Elanco's release]

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