There is a sentence that every pet owner has said at some point — usually when someone who does not have a pet asks why they spend so much on food, or vet visits, or a bed the animal refuses to use in favour of the sofa.
“They’re family.”
It is said casually. Defensively sometimes. Often as a conclusion to a conversation that was never really going to go anywhere productive. And for the person saying it, it is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a precise, literal description of how they experience the animal who shares their home.
Now there is data to back it up. A lot of it.
The Survey That Confirmed What Pet Owners Already Knew
Lillie&Lee, a pet and human wellness company founded by animal rescue advocate Lee Asher, published its Pet Wellness Consumer Trends Report 2026 on July 22 — a comprehensive survey conducted across 4,095 qualified US pet owners over a two-week period in June 2026.
The headline finding is one that will surprise no one who owns a pet and will surprise everyone who does not.
Ninety-five per cent of respondents said they strongly agree that their pet is a full member of the family.
Not a companion. Not a household animal. Not a responsibility. A full member of the family — the same category of relationship that most people reserve for the humans they were born to or chose to build a life with.
That number is significant in itself. But the survey did not stop there.
Purpose, Routine, and the Quiet Wellbeing Benefit Nobody Talks About Enough
The second major finding from the Lillie&Lee report is one that deserves more attention than it typically receives in pet industry conversations focused on spending data and market growth.
More than 83% of respondents — 83.4% to be precise — strongly agreed that caring for their pet gives their day a meaningful sense of purpose.
Read that number carefully. Not a simple majority. Not a slim lead. More than eight in ten pet owners, across 4,095 surveyed individuals, said that the act of caring for their pet is one of the things that makes their day feel purposeful.
This is not a niche finding. It is a statement about what pets do for human mental health and daily structure that public health researchers, gerontologists, and mental health professionals have been documenting for years — but that rarely makes it into conversations about why people buy premium pet food or invest in pet supplements or choose veterinary care with the same seriousness they bring to their own healthcare decisions.
The data is telling a story about motivation that goes well beyond consumer preference. When 83% of pet owners say their pet gives their day purpose, they are describing a psychological and emotional dependency that is healthy, functional, and real — and that makes every decision they make about that animal’s health and wellbeing a decision filtered through that emotional lens.
A pet owner who feels that their dog or cat gives their life purpose does not make purchasing decisions the way a person buying a household appliance makes purchasing decisions. They make decisions the way a parent makes decisions for a child: with emotion, with commitment, with a tolerance for cost that rational economic models consistently underestimate.
Lee Asher: The Voice Behind the Numbers
The person who commissioned this research is not a market analyst or an industry consultant. Lee Asher is, first and foremost, an animal rescue advocate — the founder of The Asher House, a nonprofit sanctuary that currently cares for more than 150 rescued animals and documents that care for a social media following across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok that numbers in the millions.
Asher built Lillie&Lee — the wellness company that produced this report — around a belief that the wellbeing of pets and the wellbeing of the humans who care for them are not separate topics. They are the same conversation, approached from two sides.
His interpretation of the survey data reflects that philosophy. “Our relationship with pets has evolved beyond companionship,” Asher said in response to the report’s findings. “For many people, caring for a pet creates routine, responsibility and purpose. This survey shows that pets are deeply woven into everyday life, and that emotional connection influences how owners approach their pets’ health and wellbeing.”
That final clause is the commercially critical insight: emotional connection influences how owners approach health and wellbeing. Not merely whether they buy a product. But which products they buy, how much they are willing to pay, and how they evaluate the trustworthiness of the brands they choose.
A pet owner for whom the animal is a full family member and a source of daily purpose is a pet owner who approaches veterinary care, nutrition, and supplementation the way they approach their own healthcare. Not as a discretionary expense but as a non-negotiable investment. Not as something to minimise but as something to get right.
The Veterinary Trust Data: Who Pet Owners Listen To
The Lillie&Lee survey extends beyond the emotional dimensions of pet ownership to capture something equally important for the pet industry: who pet owners trust with their animals’ health.
Nearly half of respondents — 48% — reported taking their pet for a routine, preventive veterinary visit within the previous six months. This is a significant figure in a country where veterinary costs represent a substantial household expenditure and where the question of whether to invest in preventive care or respond only to acute illness is one that many pet owners navigate constantly.
The 48% figure suggests that nearly half of US pet owners are operating in a genuinely proactive health management mode with their animals — not waiting for problems to arise, but investing in the relationship between their pet and a veterinary professional before illness or injury creates urgency.
That relationship with veterinary professionals appears to be a strong one. A full 71.6% of respondents said they trust their veterinarian “a great deal” or “a lot” — a level of institutional trust that most healthcare systems struggle to generate in human patients. The veterinarian, for the majority of US pet owners surveyed, is not a service provider visited reluctantly in emergencies. It is a trusted professional whose recommendations carry genuine weight in purchasing and care decisions.
For the pet industry, this is important context. The path from a veterinarian’s recommendation to a purchasing decision is shorter and more reliable in pet care than in almost any other consumer health category. A vet who recommends a supplement, a diet, a therapeutic food, or a healthcare product is speaking to an audience that has confirmed it trusts them — and that trusts them in the context of a relationship the survey has established is one of the most emotionally significant in the owner’s daily life.
The Supplement Story: Pets Are Following Their Owners Into the Wellness Economy
One of the most commercially revealing sections of the Lillie&Lee report concerns supplements — for both pets and their owners.
More than 71% of respondents reported that they personally take supplements as part of their own health routine. And 65.2% said they regularly give supplements to their pets.
The proximity of those two figures is not coincidental. It reflects a well-documented pattern in consumer behaviour: pet owners adopt for their pets the wellness practices they have adopted for themselves. When the human health and wellness market normalises supplement use — when fish oil, probiotics, joint supplements, and CBD become standard parts of an adult health routine — that normalisation migrates to the pet relationship. The logic is straightforward: if this supports my health, why would it not support my pet’s health?
According to national market research from Packaged Facts cited in the Lillie&Lee report, approximately one in three US pet owners purchases pet supplements annually. Given that the supplement category in pet care is one of the fastest-growing segments of the pet market globally, that one-in-three figure likely represents a baseline that has been growing steadily and will continue to do so as the generation of health-conscious, supplement-taking pet owners ages and deepens its investment in pet wellness.
The 65.2% figure from the Lillie&Lee survey — substantially higher than the national Packaged Facts estimate — likely reflects both the self-selected nature of a wellness company’s survey audience and the direction of travel for the broader market. The gap between 33% and 65% is not a discrepancy. It is a preview.
What “Pets as Family” Actually Means for the Pet Industry
The Lillie&Lee data, read in full, is not primarily a feel-good story about how much people love their animals. It is a commercial and strategic document about where the pet industry is going and why.
The 95% family membership finding explains premium pet food pricing power. When an animal is a full family member, the question “is this worth spending extra on?” applies to that animal with the same logic it applies to every other family member’s nutrition, healthcare, and wellbeing. The answer, for most families, is yes.
The 83.4% purpose finding explains the emotional durability of pet spending. Consumers who are spending because of financial aspiration or social signalling are vulnerable to economic pressure — they trade down when budgets tighten. Consumers who are spending because their pet gives their day purpose are spending in service of something much more fundamental. Research on pet spending consistently shows that it is among the most recession-resistant categories in consumer goods, and the purpose data explains why: people do not cut the things that give their life meaning in the same way they cut other expenses.
The 71.6% veterinary trust finding explains the pathway from scientific recommendation to consumer adoption in the pet supplement and therapeutic nutrition categories. It is not advertising that moves this market. It is the trusted professional in the examination room.
And the supplement data — 65.2% giving supplements regularly — explains where the next wave of pet industry growth is concentrated. Not in basic food commodities. In science-backed, health-focused, functional products that serve animals the way wellness products serve the humans who love them.
Why This Data Matters for India’s Pet Owners and Industry
The Lillie&Lee survey is US-specific, but its implications reach well beyond American borders — and they reach directly into the Indian market that PNN covers and serves.
The emotional and psychological dynamics captured in this survey — pets as family members, pets as sources of daily purpose, the parallel adoption of wellness practices for pets and humans — are not culturally unique to the United States. They are the natural outcomes of urbanisation, changing household structures, and the deepening of the human-animal bond that follows rising discretionary income and declining household size.
India’s pet industry is tracking those dynamics with a lag of several years, but the direction is identical. Urban Indian pet owners in 2026 are not far from describing their pets as family members with the same frequency and conviction that American owners do. The supplement market is nascent but growing. Veterinary trust is a variable that varies enormously across cities and economic backgrounds — but is uniformly strong among the premium-pet-owning urban demographic that is driving market growth.
The data from Lillie&Lee’s 4,095 US respondents is, in the most important respects, a preview of what India’s pet consumer surveys will show in five to seven years. The brands, retailers, and service providers building for that future now — building for the Indian pet owner who considers their animal a full family member and finds purpose in caring for them — are building for the largest and most commercially valuable segment of a rapidly growing market.
Ninety-five per cent of pet owners said their pet is family. That number is climbing globally. And it is changing everything about how the pet industry needs to think, build, and communicate.
Pets News Network is India’s first dedicated media platform for the pet and animal industry. For breaking global pet news, brand coverage, and advertising enquiries, contact: ankur@petsnewsnetwork.com
