Hi all
to all the dog owners, we are shortly gaining a small bundle of fluff called Maisie (but she might be a Millie) as our newest family member and we are very excited. She is about 2 weeks old now and we get to meet her this weekend.
We want to do the right thing so will be getting her a health plan for injections, worms, check ups etc with our local vet. Then we want to take out insurance.
Would dog owners care to share their advice about insurance. I think we want to get a life cover policy which I think we need to renew each year with the same insurer. Is that the standard approach or do you get to shop around each year? What level of cover should we aim for?
i think we want to be on the look out for cover that rolls on into following years if she develops a condition but other than that, we have no experience so would welcome any advice.
tia
An official Foo liked guitarist since 2024
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There is obviously a gamble here in that your x pounds per month may not accumulate enough of a pot to pay a huge vet's bill in the worst case scenario but you will have to weigh that up yourself.
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If you can't, don't ponce about, go with someone like PetPlan. They're not cheap, but they pay out, and they don't cut you off after the first 12 months of a long term issue.
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As for insurance, get cover for life early (PetPlan or whoever) if you can, suck up all the premiums & unfairness, unless you can just pull £2,000 out of a hat at a moments notice & then keep repeating it.
Or, put reasonable money aside on a routine basis & do not dip into it.
Your choices, pets can't make their own.
The only absolute bottom line is that it isn't acceptable to let a furry family member suffer for lack of money.
I was out walking her the other day and bumped into another dog walker. She spotted my dog's scar and asked what had happenned. Turns out her dog had exactly the same thing, but it got infected, needed skin grafts etc. Total cost £12k.
Obviously these are unlucky scenarios but the old rule on insurance applies, i.e. can you afford it if the worst happenned? If not, insure.
Pet Plan are expensive on the face of it, but they are excellent. I now have the three dogs insured with Pet Plan but I know that they are covered.
Not being insured is a nightmare 3rd party insurance in the current climate is a must. The £1000 bill I had was for 3 hrs stay with less than 20 minutes of actual vet work. As soon as you go for any biopsy or scans, the prices soar.
However, also put money aside for vet bills where an insurance claim isn't worth it.
When choosing an insurer, the best option is to talk to your vet, essentially to find out who they'll deal with directly (thus avoiding most of the pain of sorting it out yourself). Your vet won't be allowed to recommend an insurer - in fact, they won't even answer the question. However, they will tell you who they personally insure their pets with - and you can be 99% sure it's the one they deal with directly.
Then maybe a few small claims later and over the years your dog is 10 and suddenly it’s over £100 month with a £100 + excess and you question if it’s worth it.
At that point we just switched to a basic cover elsewhere..
As stated by others, if you haven’t got four figure sums going spare it’s sensible to insure dogs.
Anyone remember the old zero excess policies? Ours was with M&S but they soon changed their cover to include an excess.
Next time we get a dog I’ll probably start with a two grand float and put £50 a month into an account rather than buy insurance.
Whilst you have to treat the animal correctly and do all the right tests - anyone else notice their vet’s eyes light up when they ask if you have insurance and you say yes?
She had a knee ligament injury on her back leg likely caused by a small deformity plus wear and tear, cost around £2k to fix, on the insurance. The other leg started to show symptoms, and we found that some policies (bizarrely) do not cover symmetrical defects, i.e. the same injury on the other back leg, or exclude cover for 2 years.
Fortunately, her other leg seems to have recovered, and it's been 2 years now
I have a Boston Terrier pup which required £3800 of scans and treatment for meningoencephalitis which will shorten his life. He is thankfully living a pretty good life at the moment on a course of steriods but he will relapse at some point and require £100-£400 per month of medicines in the future.
An insurance premium of £22.50 per month has me covered for £6500 for the total duration of this illness incident.
Had we not had it we would have had to get him put down or die a slow unhappy, blind life at home. As my wife and I can't have children our dog is our world and a decision like that is a devastating one to make.
And in any case getting a dog put down and disposed of is still a hefty cost which you would loathe to fork out in midst of bad news.
Lots of people on here recommending PetPlan, but I had the same problem with them. My dog was a rescue from the Dogs Trust, and she came with one month free PetPlan. I extended it and was paying £16 a month, but within a few weeks, my dog started dripping urine, which eventually came in big puddles. Monthly meds for it meant calling PetPlan to see if they'd cover it. Their first response was no, pre-existing condition, but I successfully managed to argue that they'd been happy to insure it for free, why were they getting arsey now I was paying for it?
They then paid up, every year, but the premiums and excess began to rise. Then a few years ago, we found she had arthritis, too, and they paid for that. But for some reason known only to the dog, her incontinence dripping stopped when she started taking the arthritis meds.
However, by the time I gave up on it all a couple of years back, the premiums and excess far outstripped the cost of the meds, so I stopped paying in. Then a few months ago, she developed what turned out to be terminal cancer. Whether they'd have paid up for that, I don't know, but overall it cost us about four hundred quid.
During the first 9 years it was worth paying for, but by the time we stopped paying, the premiums were £36 a month and the excess £150, so we'd have had to have had bills over £500 a year to have justified the insurance.
Then again, there's this thread -
https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/169078/an-appeal-for-help-after-a-dog-attack-warning-a-bit-graphic#latest
She was rushed into the vet hospital in Glasgow one Friday night as she’d a ruptured ulcer as a result of the years of pain medication. The total bill a week later was £8k - again, covered by JL less the excess.