Every practicing veterinarian carries a version of the same intuition: Some pet owners will approve almost any recommendation, and others exist largely outside the realm of veterinary care. This second group has been coined the “lost pet owners,” drawing on data from the American Pet Products Association’s (APPA) 2025 National Pet Owner Survey. The label is not a judgment; these owners are not simply careless or indifferent about their animals’ welfare. Rather, they are a sizable, identifiable population whose relationship to veterinary care is mostly quiet — and whose needs the veterinary profession has generally ignored.
For a practitioner, the value of this framing isn’t in the underlying statistics so much as in the story they tell: who these clients are, why veterinary care is not on their priority list, and where the profession’s assumptions about them may be wrong. That last point turns out to matter a great deal, because some of the most useful findings complicate the easy narrative.
A Market Sorting Itself by Income
U.S. Census Bureau data spanning 2013 to 2023 show that — on a percentage basis — every income quintile gained ground, but the gains were dramatically uneven in real dollars. The lowest fifth of households gained about $2,890 over the decade, while the top 5% of households gained more than $100,000 (in 2023 dollars). In fact, households in the top 10% gained more wealth in the past five years than the bottom 90% combined.
This matters because the pet products and services industry — including veterinary medicine — has largely responded to that widening gap by “premiumization.” Premiumization means designing products, services, and price points aimed at the upper end of the household income spectrum, such as higher-end diets, advanced diagnostics, specialty referral care, and boutique retail offerings. It has been a successful strategy, reflected in 2025 industry-wide figures showing $158 billion in consumer expenditures and a $437 billion total contribution to the U.S. economy. But a strategy aimed at the top of the income distribution leaves a large population behind. If clinics, manufacturers, and service providers are increasingly building offerings for the upper tiers of pet-owning households, it raises an obvious question: What happens to everyone else?
Defining the Lost Pet Owner: What the Spending Data Show
In this realm, the most clinically relevant analysis looks directly at total pet-related spending and, separately, total veterinary spending, broken out by dog- and cat-owning households.
For dogs, total annual pet-related expenses showed a median of $1,045 and a mean of $1,557 per dog, but the bottom quartile of owners spent only $560 or less per year overall. Looking at veterinary spending specifically, the data showed a median of $201 and a mean of $483 per dog, with the bottom quartile spending $88 or less annually on veterinary care for their dog.
For cats, the gap was even more pronounced. Total pet-related expenses showed a median of $575 and a mean of $929 per cat, with the bottom quartile at $298 or below. Veterinary spending for cats showed a median of $100 and a mean of $225, but the bottom quartile spent virtually nothing on veterinary care. That last figure is worth noting: A meaningful share of cat-owning households reports close to zero annual veterinary spending. For practicing veterinarians, particularly those who have long suspected that feline patients are underrepresented relative to feline ownership rates, these data offer a quantifiable explanation.
These quartile-level numbers, more than the means or medians, are what define the lost pet owner. This is not a niche group at the absolute margins. It represents roughly a quarter of all dog- and cat-owning households, a population large enough that most practices likely have hundreds of these households already in their client database, identifiable not by a single visit but by a pattern of minimal engagement over time.
What Predicts Being a “Lost” Pet Owner?
Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to identify which demographic factors most strongly predict membership in the lost pet owner segment, examining this separately for total pet ownership expense and for veterinary expense specifically, and separately again for dogs and cats.
For dog owners, the factors most associated with being a lost pet owner concerning total spending were:
- Owning more dogs (a mean of 1.60 dogs among “lost” owners versus 1.26 among others)
- Male gender
- Non-white race
- Lower household income (with risk increasing progressively up to about $75,000)
- Lower educational attainment (with high school education carrying the highest risk and a bachelor’s degree or higher carrying the lowest)
When the analysis narrowed specifically to veterinary spending rather than total pet spending, the significant risk factors shifted somewhat:
- Owning more pets
- Non-white race
- Generation (with Gen Z and millennial dog owners showing the highest risk)
- Income (highest risk below $45,000, lowest above $75,000)
- Education
For cat owners, the picture differs in some important ways. Risk factors for being “lost” on total spending included:
- Owning more cats (a mean of 2.20 cats among “lost” owners versus 1.50 among others)
- Male gender
- Non-Hispanic/non-Latino ethnicity
- Being a baby boomer or Gen X cat owner specifically
Income followed a more nuanced pattern for cats than dogs: Risk declined progressively up to $75,000, sat at an intermediate level between $75,000 and $150,000, and was lowest above $150,000. Lower educational attainment again predicted higher risk.
When the analysis isolated veterinary spending specifically for cat owners, the significant factors simplified considerably to income and education, both following the same general direction: lower income and lower education correlate with markedly lower veterinary spending on cats.
Although these correlations are real, it would be a mistake for a practice to read it simply as “lost clients are lower-income and less educated.” A meaningful proportion of lost pet owners sit well outside that profile. Looking specifically at veterinary spending, roughly three in ten lost dog owners and a comparable share of lost cat owners report household incomes above $75,000 — some considerably higher. A similar share holds a bachelor’s degree or better, and a real (if smaller) slice holds graduate or professional degrees. In other words, income and education shift the odds, but they don’t determine the outcome. There is a well-off, well-educated portion of the lost pet owner population that a purely socioeconomic profile would miss entirely — clients whose lack of engagement with veterinary care has nothing to do with an inability to pay, and everything to do with habit, trust, prioritization, convenience, culture, or simply never having been given a reason to change course.
For veterinary practice, that nuance is arguably the most actionable finding from this work. It means outreach built purely around price sensitivity — payment plans, discount wellness packages — will resonate with only part of this population. A comfortably upper-income, college-educated client who isn’t bringing the cat in isn’t waiting for a lower price. They’re waiting for a compelling reason, a relationship, an open door, or simply a nudge.
Generational Differences: Dogs and Cats Tell Different Stories
One of the more genuinely surprising threads in the data is that the generational pattern behind lost status is not the same for dogs and cats, and it shows up specifically when veterinary spending is the focus.
For dog owners, younger generations carry the higher risk. While controlling for income, Gen Z and millennial dog owners are disproportionately represented among lost veterinary spenders, while baby boomer dog owners are noticeably under-represented in that same group — meaning an older dog-owning client is, if anything, less likely to be a lost veterinary client. This tracks with a plausible clinical story: income notwithstanding, younger dog owners may be newer to pet ownership, still building the habit of routine preventive care, more price-sensitive early in their careers, or simply less acclimated to what a normal veterinary visit cadence should look like.
For cat owners, the pattern reverses. On overall pet spending, it’s baby boomer and Gen X cat owners who are overrepresented among lost owners, while millennial cat owners are comparatively less likely to fall into that group. But when the analysis narrows specifically to veterinary spending for cats, generation drops out as a meaningful predictor altogether — the story simplifies down to income and education alone. In other words, an older cat owner may well be spending less across the board independent of income, but once you’re looking specifically at whether the cat gets veterinary care, age stops being the explanation and socioeconomic factors take over.
Put simply: With dogs, lack of veterinary engagement looks like a generational and habit-formation issue, concentrated among younger owners. With cats, lack of veterinary engagement looks like a socioeconomic issue that cuts across generations fairly evenly. A one-size-fits-all outreach message aimed at “younger clients” or “older clients” will land unevenly depending on which species it’s targeting.
What This Means for Veterinary Practices
For a veterinary practitioner, several lessons are worth taking away from these data, independent of the broader industry market framing.
First, the regression results offer a rough but actionable profile of clients who may be under-utilizing veterinary care, not necessarily because they don’t care about their pets, but because of income constraints, educational gaps in understanding preventive care value, or because they own multiple pets and face cumulative cost and/or logistical challenges. A multi-cat or multi-dog household with lower income and a high school education is statistically more likely to be deferring or skipping veterinary visits than a single-pet household with a college-educated, higher-income owner. Recognizing this pattern in your own client list, even informally, may help target reminder calls, wellness plan offers, or tiered-pricing conversations more effectively.
Second, the data are a useful counterweight to the industry’s broader premiumization trend. If product manufacturers and many service providers are intentionally building toward the top of the income distribution, veterinary practices have an opportunity, and arguably a public health rationale, to build relationships with the bottom quartile as well. Flexible payment plans, tiered wellness packages, transparent pricing, and clear communication about the value of preventive care may resonate disproportionately with this population, particularly with lower-income, lower-education households who may not have had previous exposure to the rationale behind routine veterinary care.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the instinct to equate under-utilization with inability to pay is only partly right, and leaning on it exclusively risks missing a real segment of well-off, well-educated clients who are simply not committed to routine veterinary care. These clients may respond far better to a direct, relationship-based conversation about the value of preventive visits than to a discount offer they don’t need.
Looking Ahead
Broadly framed next steps for the pet care industry include clearly defining the target market — species, number of pets, demographic risk factors — and building a textbook marketing plan addressing product, price, place, and promotion tailored to that population. While these next steps are written from an industry and manufacturer perspective, they translate well to practice-level strategy. A clinic that wants to capture more of the lost pet owner population should think in similar terms: What is the right service or wellness product for this client, at what price point, communicated through what channel, and with what kind of promotional message?
Finally, premiumization has been, and will likely remain, a successful strategy for the upper end of the pet-owning population. But the lost pet owners are not a rounding error left over from that success — they are a large, varied, and only partly income-driven population, made up of both budget-constrained and comfortably well-off households that simply don’t engage with veterinary care. For practices willing to meet this group on its own terms rather than assuming a single explanation fits everyone, the opportunity is twofold: real growth in caseload and revenue, and a genuine reduction in one of the more persistent barriers keeping pets from getting the care they need.
THE ORIGINS OF PREMIUMIZATION
The pet industry didn’t invent premiumization. The term originally gained traction in the alcohol, coffee, and airline industries, where companies realized they could drive revenue growth not by selling more products, but by convincing existing customers to trade up to luxury tiers (think craft spirits or premium economy seats). In the pet world, this translates to human-grade organic diets, wearable tech, and boutique doggy daycares.