Cost of Owning a Pet

I found a graph on Petfinder.com that estimated the cost of owning a pet breaking down the average costs for all animals from a lizzard to a cat, small dog, large dog etc. I consider owning a medium & large dog 20lbs & 50lbs but they are honestly probably a small dog & a medium dog. The average for owning these two dogs a year should run about $1245. I also use mint.com to keep track of all my spending, you just upload your bank & credit card accounts into the system and it keeps track of everything you spend than you can sort it into catagories. So I just looked real fast to see and I've spent $761 on Pet related expenses since 9/20/08. I consider this to be extremely below average especially since about $400 of that was Vet expenses for Winstons allergies or flea treatment because we had serious issues with fleas all summer. We feed the expensive food & spoil our dogs with treats. Which makes me wonder how someone can spend $1245 on dogs... WOW! I think that everyone who considers adopting or buying a dog should have to look at this form and sign it stating they understand the costs of a dog. $1245 is about $100/month for two dogs so it doesn't seem that expensive but when you add it up, 2 dogs = cable + internet + phone line. EVERY MONTH! And than when people say they have to give up their dogs because they can't afford them...no one ever said Dogs were cheap animals, maybe you should have gotten a goldfish for 18cents.