The number everyone compares is the one that matters least
A Pug costs $30,209 over its life on this site's model. The puppy itself, at our midpoint, is $2,100 of that.
That is 7%. Saving half of it saves you about $1,050, once.
Here is what the other 93% contains, using rates measured in Pugs specifically and prices from a study of veterinary costs across all 50 states.
- 72.7%Hip dysplasia$2,350
- 36.0%Elbow dysplasia$4,000
- 13.2%Obesity$258
- 6.5%Corneal Ulcer$722
Hip and elbow figures come from OFA screening, where breeders submit dogs voluntarily, so they describe dogs whose owners chose to test. See the Pug page for every figure with its source and population.
What the discount is actually buying
Health testing is not a formality a breeder can skip without consequence. It is most of why a tested puppy costs more.
Hip and elbow radiographs, cardiac and eye examinations, and genetic panels run to hundreds of dollars per breeding animal, repeated for every dog in a breeding program. A breeder who does none of it has a materially lower cost base and can price accordingly. That is the entire mechanism, and it is not mysterious.
So a puppy priced well below the tested range is not usually a bargain that someone missed. It is a dog whose parents were not screened for the conditions its breed is known for, sold by someone who saved that money and passed a fraction of the saving on.
On 11 of the breeds we cover, the median asking price across the open market sits below what health-testing breeders charge:
One listing page, looked at closely
A single snapshot rather than a dataset, taken by hand on 18 August 2026 from a page titled “Pug puppies, Fairfax, Virginia” on Lancaster Puppies. It is here because of what it shows, not because it measures anything.
The page is named for a Virginia city. The nearest dog was 62 miles away in Maryland, the median was 142 miles, and the farthest was 318 miles away in North Carolina. Twenty of the 42 were in Pennsylvania. It is a keyword page, not a local search.
The pricing runs backwards
The cheapest dogs on that page were $625. The most expensive were $2,500. The premium was not being charged for health testing, pedigree or titles. It was being charged for merle and “panda” coat markings.
Merle does not occur in the Pug. Its presence means another breed entered the line somewhere. The merle gene also carries documented risks to hearing and vision when a dog inherits two copies, which is the same mechanism behind the 17.8% congenital deafness rate in Dalmatians.
So the most expensive puppies on the page were the ones least likely to be purebred and most likely to carry a known defect. Other listings on the same page described a dog as “a mixed pug breed, shiz tzu and pug”, and another stated that neither parent nor puppy was registered.
One page on one day. It proves nothing about the platform as a whole, and it is not used anywhere in our cost figures. It is an illustration of a price signal that tracks novelty rather than health.
What to actually do with this
Ask for the parents' test results by name and registry number, and check them yourself. OFA and PennHIP results are public and searchable. A breeder who has done the work will hand them over without being asked twice; the claim “vet checked” is not health testing and means almost nothing.
Treat an unusual color as a question rather than a feature. If a pattern does not appear in the breed standard, something else is in the line, and the premium is being charged for exactly that.
And compare the right number. Every breed page here gives the full lifetime figure with the health risks priced in, which is the only comparison that reflects what you will actually spend.