There’s an old line about every dog having its day. For the pets of the ultra-wealthy, every single day is that day. We already know the one percent lives in a reality most of us can barely picture, but the genuinely absurd part is that their animals do too, sometimes more comfortably than the rest of us ever will.
Plenty of us splurge on the fancy treats or spring for the extra conditioning at the groomer. This is not that. This is estate-sale, reality-TV-mansion-tour spending: sums lavished on pets that dwarf what most people spend on themselves. We sorted the wildest examples into a rough hierarchy of excess, from the jewelry to the real estate to the actual inheritance, so you can fully appreciate the range.
The wearables that cost more than a car
Start with what these pets put on in the morning. Tiffany & Co. will happily sell you a leather pet collar in their signature blue for a few hundred dollars, but at this altitude, three figures is peasant money. For the truly committed, there’s a diamond-encrusted collar that runs about $195,000, the kind of piece designed to make every other dog at the park feel underdressed. Prefer a chain? Jeweler Nadine Ghosn built a 50-carat diamond dog-leash chain for Drake’s “First Person Shooter” video. The only real risk is you and your dog freezing under all that ice.
A tiara worth $4.2 million
If a collar is too casual, there’s headwear. Thai jewelry designer Riwin Jirapolsek made his Maltese, Kanune, a $4.2 million tiara fashioned from emeralds and diamonds that had been gifts from his mother, a process that ran nearly two months. Whether Kanune grasps that she’s wearing a small fortune in generational wealth is doubtful. But that has never been the point of a tiara.
Perfume, because a clean dog isn’t enough
We are, apparently, living in a golden age of canine fragrance. Dolce & Gabbana released a $108 scent for dogs called “Fefé,” and dedicated houses like Les Poochs sell colognes priced right alongside the human stuff. For a certain kind of pet parent, a hundred dollars for a better-smelling dog is a reasonable Tuesday. For everyone else, it smells faintly like a scam.
A personal chef
You could argue every pet already has a personal chef in their owner, and honestly, most of us would accept that job title. But at this level, “chef” is literal. A pet of real means isn’t eating premade human-grade food; they’re eating fresh meals from a private chef, or a caterer for larger gatherings. The patron saint of this category is Choupette, the late Karl Lagerfeld’s Birman and one of fashion’s most famous cats. Lagerfeld once described her dining across the table from him on four freshly prepared dishes a day, served in fabulous bowls. Anything less than pristine, he said, and Mademoiselle would sit in front of her biscuits for the better part of an hour, refusing to eat and shooting him filthy looks. A cat with standards, and the staff to meet them.
A Swarovski crystal bathtub
Bath time is not a hose-in-the-yard affair for a pet of status. It calls for a soaking vessel worthy of a diva: a clawfoot tub covered in 46,928 Swarovski crystals for a cool $12,000. The engineering marvel here isn’t the price so much as the logistics. If a modest apartment already feels crammed, it’s genuinely hard to imagine where you park a crystal-encrusted tub built for a dog.
Their own square footage
Rich pets don’t just live in the house; sometimes they own real estate. This goes well beyond a fancy doghouse. Kylie Jenner built her dogs a separate air-conditioned guest house. Paris Hilton’s dogs have a two-story “doggie mansion.” And then there’s Gunther, the canine mogul of the Netflix series Gunther’s Millions, who reportedly bought Madonna’s former Miami home after inheriting a fortune, and later floated buying a Bahamian island once owned by Nicolas Cage. Everyone, it turns out, wants a guest house of one’s own.
Cosmetic surgery
Here’s where the excess turns a little uneasy. Cosmetic surgery on pets is a real industry. Some procedures connect to genuine, breed-related medical needs. Others are purely superficial, including testicular implants for neutered dogs and tummy tucks for droopy stomachs. As one Los Angeles veterinarian bluntly put it, sagging bits and bumps make some owners uncomfortable. Which says a great deal more about the owners than the dogs.
A multimillion-dollar inheritance
The ultimate flex isn’t something you buy for your pet; it’s what you leave them. For plenty of the very wealthy, estate planning includes the animals. When the heiress Gail Posner died, she reportedly willed her dogs an $8.3 million Miami mansion plus a $3 million trust fund. As of 2007, Oprah Winfrey’s will earmarked a reported $30 million for her dogs. And the designer Alexander McQueen reportedly left his three English Bull Terriers close to $82,000. One can only hope these well-endowed pups keep a good lawyer on retainer for the estate taxes.
