To insure my dog today and claim this week?

[Swerab]

My dog has hurt his paw . I can't see anything immediately wrong with it but its clearly hurting him.

He's not insured. If I take out insurance today can I claim straight away?

We've had dogs for years and have always just put £20pm away for bills. We never have pedigrees and to be honest the biggest bill we usually have over the dogs life (apart from jabs and 6 month MOT check) is when we have them put down. All have lived well past 15!

We now have about £5k and don't bother putting cash away.

My last insurance for my elderly dog was £84 a month. We basically laid out only as much as it cost to have the ops he needed towards the end of his life. So we looked on it as a payment plan.

My £41 a month is for a pedigree, completely healthy puppy.

Dh thinks we should cancel it actually as we can afford to fix anything and he thinks we should instead bung it in a savings plan for when she needs it when she's older.

I read the £5 per month pet insurance policy and thought I'd been massively overcharged until I read the later comments.

My perfectly healthy kittens cost £28 per month (joint policy for the two of them) for anywhere like decent cover worth having. PetPlan didn't offer me a joint policy and wanted over £30 per month for each of them.

My Labrador has suffered with sore paws in the past, to the point where he was limping quite badly. I mentioned it to a local dog trainer who recommended using Sudocrem on his paw pads. I rubbed loads of it into and between his paw pads, then placed a sock over his paw whilst it soaked in (I also had to put a cosycone on him to stop him trying to eat the sock - but that is typical of my dog). Within a couple of days his paws were fine - could be worth a try?

love sudocrem. will try. thanks.

vets bills can be extortionate

And they've got worse since insurance became the norm e.g. a friend was charged for £5+ for a 50ml bottle of Hibiscrub. It's about £* for half a litre at the chemist. At one time the vet would have just told you where to get it. to now.

Petplan offer instant cover for injury and a 2 week exclusion for illness
Strictly speaking though the OP's dog wouldn't be covered as the injury as already occurred.

I suppose she could say that it happened just after she started the insurance but perhaps the vet would be able to tell otherwise??

To a pp:
Please be careful renewing pet insurance with a different insurance company each year. Anything you have claimed for in the past will be left out of the new policy - and they are stingy about it!
For example, if you dog has arthritis in one joint (even if you haven't claimed for it, but they some how know) then any joint issue may not be covered in the new renewal.

Even my cats are about £15/month insurance! Despite the £85 excess its still been worth it. Constantly injuring themselves and it means that if it's serious enough for a trip to the vets then can get any treatment necessary without worrying about how much it's all going to cost. Perhaps there is cheaper cover out there, but is very easy to claim and nothing has even been quibbled.

God, I bore myself ...

To those who think that only those inbred pedigrees get ill ... do crossbreeds not have accidents then? Many years of pedigree dogs here, but my extensive vet bills have never (touch wood) been anything to do with health - all have been accidents which occur naturally by exercising dogs regularly and extensively in woodland and rough terrain.

Happyflappy

As I mentioned above, we pay cash. However I once went to different vets to get a dog stitched after running into barbed wire. We were asked if it was to be paid by insurance and were left in no doubt the costs for an insurance company would be a lot higher.

We have no insurance for our cat, we were told that due to a pre-existing condition (basically had one whole side of his skin re-arranged, leaving him with a permanent hernia) we wouldn't get it. Also most cat insurance doesn't cover dental work, which until Oct/Nov were his only issues. After about £2k worth of investigative treatments / operations, he's been diagnosed with cancer (inoperable). We can afford this, it was a conscious choice, not being irresponsible.

Our other cat was not insured either, she was 13 when we got her and we had no history, so again, unlikely to be insurable. She died in October from thrombosis, cost us about £300. Again, we were able to afford this.

If we were to get kittens in the future, we would pay for insurance from the start, but difficult with stray adoptees.

I've just checked and my petplan policy (life cover) costs a shade under £34 per month. He is a 3 yr old springer. Had the same cover for my previous springer and in one year alone the vet's bills would have been in excess of £3000 (the chump ate a stone and had unexpected problems post surgery). My first springer was costing about £80 per month in his last year. His final illness cost £1500 plus cremation costs. All taken care of by insurance. It's excellent cover, but way more than £5 per month!

I'm amazed at some of your premiums.

I pay £76 per month - for a 7 year old pedigree dog. I dread what it will increase to this year. We may consider not renewing.

I have a London postcode. When we first got him as a puppy I was shocked at the price. I searched using the same criteria but my sister's postcode (she's in Cambs) as a sort of test and it was less than half the price.

My dog is always bruising his pads, unless we can see an injury we wait 24 hours. We stoped insurance but save the equivalent in his doggy fund. He split a nail and the vets took full advantage of insurance and the bill was 3x more than other dog owners had been charged privately for similar.

Offler that's interesting re dental work, and kind of what I meant about having a policy worth paying for - we specifically went for a policy that did include that (with caveat that you need to take them for a dental hygiene visit annually, though our vet seems to have frequent offers eg this month it's a vaccine amnesty, last November it was free dental hygiene checks, so am hoping to be able to be vigilant to those opportunities )

I haven't read the whole thread so sorry if someone has already said this but have a look of there's an rspca vet near you, they are much more reasonably priced

I think what posters mean when they say pet insurance is a must, is that as a responsible pet owner you must have insurance OR be able to financially cover any vets bills.

OP what you're suggesting is fraud and I'm sorry, but people like you really piss me off! I've paid for pet insurance whenever I've had animals and it's situations like yours that push up insurance prices for responsible and honest pet owners!

Get your dog to the vets and pay the bill, then take out insurance so this sort of thing doesn't happen again.

If you want to be a pet owner then you SIMPLY must be able to provide treatment whenever they need it.

YABU and won't get away with it. He should have been insured already.

We are responsible owners and binned our insurance 6 months ago (saved £480 to date on two dogs). They are both 8, healthy and unlikely to escape into a road. We also wouldn't put them through invasive treatment anyway.
Unfortunately £400 of the £650 has had to go on having a big cyst removed but we are still well up when you take into account the excess.

my previous dog had to be put to sleep after a long illness and he was only 5, the total bill came to over £8k. I was insured with Tesco and I can't recommend them enough, the free nurse helpline was like having your own private vet nurse they helped me through it. Tesco paid out £6k and the vet waived the final £2k as he was so upset he couldn't save my dog. The vet also said that Tesco were the easiest to deal with, most knowledgeable and most likely to pay up.

I've just insured my new puppy through Tesco costing £22 a month for £10k cover and would recommend it although I know as he gets older premiums will go up.

My dog used to twist her nail whilst digging - unfortunately it was £350 later after a trip to the vet that we discovered this when we took her because she couldn't put her foot down for a couple of days!! The next time she did it we bound her foot with vetwrap from the shops (£3) and let nature take its course! Thankfully she has now stopped digging for rabbits on every walk so the problem hasnt recurred.

Our vet offers their own scheme. Find one that does.

Swerab I guessed as soon as you said poultice that you were a horse owner

I have never insured dogs, and for the past 10 years haven't insured the horses either (all are covered third party with BHS Gold though). We have a contingency fund now.
The final straw of extortionate increases was when my oldest pony reached 15, his premium almost doubled but much of the cover was taken off?!