According to the American Pet Products Association annual report, "Americans spent $58 billion in 2014 on their 397 million pets."

Fido says "cha-ching!"  (But it probably sounded more like "RUFF!")

The 397 million pets include all animals - from dogs to cats, reptiles, fish and everything that can be domesticated in between ... To put things in perspective, there's approximately one pet for every person in the US today.

Good thing we have that whole opposable thumb thing going for us...

As we have reported on the SportBlog in previous posts, the pet industry is one of the only industries that has been virtually recession proof - with revenues having increased year over year since 1994.  (In fact, the industry has grown more than 3x since it saw revenues of 17 billion in '94.)

And this upward trend will no doubt continue.

Why?  Because pets have become legitimate family members - and for that reason, "pet parents" are more than willing to dip into their wallets on their behalf.

The five categories and breakdowns of pet spending, according to the APPA's annual report were as follows:

Food                                                      $22.62 billion 
Supplies/OTC Medicine                        $13.72 billion
Vet Care                                                $15.25 billion
Live animal purchases                          $2.19 billion
Pet Services: grooming & boarding      $4.73 billion 

The only area of pet spending that showed a slight decline was the pet sales sector, which is understandable due to a variety of factors, but mainly a surge in pet adoptions and rescues that have resulted from stricter pet sale legislation and ethical principals.

There's two morals to this story:

1.)  The pet industry is alive and well.  And 2.)  If you have a pet, you better have a job.  Or a fairly healthy savings account...

For more pet news stories, be sure to check out our SportBlog and stay connected with us @SportLeash on: