Veterinary care without the bite. (CR Investigates).

If you've been to the vet lately, you may have walked out wanting a distemper shot for yourself. Since 1997, veterinarians have been biking prices at more than twice the rate of overall inflation.

At the same time, great leaps in veterinary medicine are making expensive treatment options a reality. Dogs with potentially fatal cardiac problems routinely get a $3,000 pacemaker. Cats suffering renal failure can have an $8,000 kidney transplant. Veterinary drugs treat everything from separation anxiety and arthritis pain to epilepsy and cancer for $0.66 cents to $16 a day--often for the life of the pet.

Even if your pet is perfectly healthy vets are now ready with a battery of tests, shots, and even X-rays for the annual wellness checkup, costing up to $140 for kittens and puppies and as much as $340 for geriatric cats and dogs.

Together, those trends--increasing prices and advances in treatment-pose new dilemmas for owners of the nation's 143 million cats and canines (not to mention 43 million birds, reptiles, and other pets): How do you afford the high cost of 21st-century veterinary care? And when do you say no to heroic treatments?

Spending on veterinary services jumped to $18.2 billion in 2001, nearly triple the 1991 level. Plenty of consumers are happy to open their pocketbooks. "I'll do whatever it takes to save my pet; especially today with terrorism and war, pets are more important than ever," says Blake Brossman, chief operating officer of PetCareRx, an online pet drugstore. Brossman spent $1,400 for two grueling regimens of chemotherapy after his rott-weller, Lou, was diagnosed with cancer in 2001. Lou died four months later, after Brossman carried him five New York City blocks in a last race to the vet.

But many other pet owners resent the sticker shock. "I told my vet I thought I was being taken advantage of," says Darlene Klein, a dog breeder from Ithaca, N.Y. who in December spent $1,674 to repair the broken leg of her 3-month-old greyhound, Patty. In February, Jean Coy a homemaker from Renton, Wash., spent $614 on her orange tabby Tiger, after he was hit by a car. That included X-rays, stitches, anesthesia, monitoring, drugs, a shunt, and a fruitless attempt to reset Tiger's dislocated leg, "I was robbed," says Coy who finally got another vet to surgically repair Tiger's leg properly

These consumers are among scores who responded to our online query about their vet-care experiences.