How much is too much to pay for your pet?
That's the question Dr. Mehmet Oz and his wife Lisa recently faced when their Siberian kitty, Baby Cat, injured her paw and required surgery to fix it.
"[She] fell off some kind of a high ledge and tore a bunch of these bones," explained Dr. Oz, using the back of his hand to illustrate where Baby Cat was injured. "I saw the X-rays. Do you know how hard it is to fix the itty bitty bones in her paw?"
"We had to have metal plates replace all of the bones," Lisa added.
While the procedure proved successful, with Baby Cat now on the mend, the couple admitted their course of action is not an option for every pet owner.
"I can guarantee that normal people would not have been able to pay for it," Dr. Oz said. Lisa added, jokingly, "You have to choose between sending your kids to school or ... "
Despite the hefty financial commitment, Dr. Oz is not in alone in going to extraordinary lengths for his family's furballs. His mentor, Oprah Winfrey, recently shared a video of her cocker spaniel, Sadie, receiving acupuncture treatment at the vet.
"On the right side, it's very tense," the practitioner says in the clip, where Sadie is seen being treated for an inflamed disc. As a needle gets placed in Sadie's back, the pooch looks a little startled by the feeling.
Acupuncture for animals has been growing in popularity over the past decade, with more vets around the country offering the treatment as an option for chronic problems. The practice draws from traditional acupuncture practices, with adjustments made for an animal's specific anatomy and physiology.
While Sadie's treatments wouldn't have cost as much as Baby Cat's bone replacements, they probably cost Oprah a few hundred dollars.
"What vets charge for acupuncture varies widely," Vikki Weber, executive director of the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society, tells PEOPLEPets.com. "Acupuncture treatments on a dog can range anywhere from $40 to $200. If a dog has an inflamed disc, it's going to be several treatments, usually over a period of weeks."
See more celebrity pets on PEOPLEPets.com:
Bo Goes to the White House Easter Egg Roll!
La La Vazquez's Furkids Took a Backseat to Her Son
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