Caring for multiple pets

Many families are lucky enough to have multiple pets. There are several periodic preventive tasks that families need to perform for their pets such as deworming and vaccinations. What we want to see is whether families tend to care for all their pets at the same time or have a separate schedule for each one of them. We focus our analysis on families with cats and dogs.

Preventive care for dogs

Internal Deworming

Internal deworming is very important for dogs as it can prevent many unpleasant medical incidents. Treatment is typically done with a tablet and in most of the times is done at home. It is not uncommon for owners of multiple dogs to purchase one tablet (for the total weight) and split it among all the dogs. This is both convenient and cheaper.

Looking in the numbers it becomes obvious that families try to group this type of treatment for all their dogs. A 63% of families with multiple dogs provide internal deworming preventive care at the same day for all. A 6% does it in the same week, an 8% in the same month and a 23% have different schedules for their dogs.

External Deworming

External deworming is also mainly done at home. The products can be in the form of pipettes, tablets or even antiparasitic collars. The products are usually shared when they are in the form of pipettes or tablets.

We observe a very similar trend as with the internal deworming. A 62% of the families deworm all their dogs the same day, a 7% within the same week, 8% within the same month and a 23% use different schedule for each dog.

Vaccination

For the majority of the cases, vaccination requires a visit to the vet. However, oftentimes, for families that have a large number of dogs or dogs that are difficult to move with a car, they prefer to bring the vet at home. The same “group-care” behavior that we saw for deworming can be observed for vaccination as well. A 60% of the families with multiple dogs vaccinate all of them in the sameday, a 7% within a week, 10% within a month and a 23% have a different schedule.

Preventive care for cats

We perform a similar analysis in order to see whether the grouping of care is common for cat families as well.

Internal Deworming

We start from Internal deworming for which we observe the same “group care” behavior as with dogs. A 62% of the families with multiple cats deworm all of them in same day. A 7% of these families deworm their cats in the same week, a 9% in the same month and only a 22% have a different schedule for their cats.

External Deworming

The external deworming also follows the same “group-care” behavior as the other preventive care activities. The vast majority of families with more than one cats, a 67%, deworm all of them in the same day. A 4%deworms their cats in the same week, a 6% in the same month and only a 23% have different schedules for each cat.

Vaccination

The vaccination for cats also follows a similar group-care behavior. It is worth mentioning that for families with many cats, it is more common to have the veterinarian coming at home. A 60% of families with many cats vaccinate all of them on the same day, a 7% in the same week, an 11% in the same month whereas a 24% maintain different schedules for each cat.

Conclusions

From our analysis it is obvious that families with multiple pets try to group the preventive care actions and perform them at the same time for all. This allows savings coming from sharing medications (such as deworming tablets), getting better prices at the veterinarians or oftentimes having the veterinarian coming at home.

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