to insist we have pet insurance?

[Springersrock]

We have a dog and a cat. DD has a pony. All 3 are fully insured.

I’ve always insisted on having insurance as I never want to make a decision based on what we can afford, rather than what’s best for them (plus DD has rider insurance, liability insurance, her tack is insured, if pony dies stuff like removal, etc are all covered as well as injury and illness).

Both vet practices deal directly with the insurance company so other than paying the excess, we don’t have to worry about anything.

Most people I talk to seem to think it’s a huge waste of money - we’d be better off getting an emergency credit card, or putting the monthly premiums away in a bank account and DH is coming round to this idea too

For me, putting the money away each month is ok once you’re a few years in, but if pony got colic tomorrow we wouldn’t have enough money put away yet, and I don’t want to be paying off a massive credit card bill for years to come

So, AIBU to think the insurance is non-negotiable?

Thanks all

Our previous cat was PTS at 16 following a brain tumour. She was fully insured so we could have had the works for her, but in the end decided it just want fair on an old lady. She spent one last summer snoozing and pottering in the garden before it got too much for her and she was PTS.

For me, having the insurance meant we could put all consideration of cost to one side and just focus on making the best decision for her.

The thought of not having insurance scares me to death

If we didn't have the NHS then we'd absolutely have medical insurance for every human member of the family. Can you imagine having to find budget for your child's dialysis?

Obviously I'd push the cat off a cliff to save any of my children, but I agree with OP that I want to make medical decisions in a medical situation, not financial decisions.

We had four cats at one stage and self insured. We had one £450 bill in 13 years so saved £ thousands. A horse is a completely different ballgame though.

I'm torn by the insurance question.

We have Leonbergers - enormous mountain dogs that are pretty hardy but tend to be expensive when they do go wrong. With one of our previous girls, once her premiums reached £750 a year, we started self-insuring and put the premiums in a savings account. Even after her cancer treatment we still weren't out of pocket and we lost her at the age of nine.

Our current dog had a gap of three days between puppy insurance and normal insurance when he was twelve weeks old and it was in that three day window that he followed my husband up the stairs, turned round, missed his footing, bounced back down them and broke his front leg, just above the elbow.

Cue a trip to the vet hospital, several hours of operating by one of the professors of canine orthopaedics, a four day stay, masses of meds, an implant and a £6k bill. Full on Supervet experience for him.

Eighteen months on, he's insured, it costs £50 per month and although I wince at that I do suspect he's just accident prone and it's best to have him insured than risk another big bill.

What to do depends on your financial situation. If your pet got hit by a car or something else big happened, could you economise and find the money for his treatment or would you have to have him/her PTS? And how would you feel about that?

Springer we made the same decision for our girl. I didn't worry about the money because i knew i could get it; they offered an extensive stay at the vets until surgery to keep her comfortably medicated. Then exoloratory surgery. Then probably surgery to remove the cyst. Cost would have been maybe £4kish? But she had a cyst that had gone from 2cm to the size of a melon in less than 4 months & even with meds was clearly uncomfortable.

When you don't have to worry about where the money is coming from you are free to focus on the welfare of the animal

My dog is 19 months old and so far we have claimed over £4500 in vet costs for various accidents and illnesses.

Although we could have found that amount ourselves if we hadn't had insurance, the fact that we didn't need to 'sacrifice' any holidays etc to find the money was a blessing.

For the people that put money away each month that only works if you don't need expensive vet care at all or you only need it in the later years of the pets life. Vet fees mount up very quickly, especially as we expect the same level of care and investigations for our pets as we do ourselves.

Depends on the pet. We have tortoises. They rarely "go wrong" -and when they do there is very little that can be done for them. So no insurance here. For a dog or cat I probably would, until they got to an age where pts would be kinder than lots of intervention.

Most people I talk to seem to think it’s a huge waste of money

Then they are silly and irresonsible

AIBU to think the insurance is non-negotiable?

You are correct.

I've had cats, rabbits and dogs over the years, to me if you can't afford the insurance you shouldn't have the pet.

I always had my dog insured and then missed a renewal (completely my fault- had a very sick husband and didn’t even open a lot of post). When I realised, I figure “ah fuck it, we’ve never needed it before and we can cover whatever she needs”.

Within a year, she needed an emergency operation (£1,800), and treatment for a series of tumours (£1,600).

Luckily, we were able to find from savings but o don’t know what we’d have done if we didn’t have access to that kind of money.

Have to admit our cat is the first pet we have insured. I wasn't brought up to insure pets and our previous cat was my childhood pet. By the time I was with my DH and an adult she was too old for it to be financially viable. She was an outside cat but never needed to see the vet but we may hand been just lucky.

We do have two guinae pigs that are not insured but I think the risk to them is small.

I'm your position the horse would be a no brainier to be insured. I could maybe see the logic of putting money away instead but it's a risk.

I’ve probably spent £2k on pet insurance for my two cats in their lifetime, which is roughly what their vet bills to date would have cost (one nasty accident each). It’s one thing if you have the one off cost of an accident, but if your pet develops an illness that needs ongoing treatment when you’re uninsured then you’re scuppered.

We have a dog and a cat. DD has a pony. All 3 are fully insured.

if you have a cat/dog/horse, then I hazard a guess that money isn't the biggest of your problem. There is no need to literally sit on your high horse and slack off those off who are not able to afford an insurance for their cat or dog. I agree, in an ideal world every pet owner should have it but sometimes life is a bit shit and something gotta give.

I don’t think it’s a case of not being able to afford the insurance, more that it’s a waste of money if you don’t claim on it

With DD’s pony - I’m not that knowledgeable about horses so I did an equine first aid course and can deal with minor cuts and stuff and don’t need to call the vet out every 5 minutes, but anything else I know I don’t have to worry about money if we do need the vet. I do see some owners getting quite stressed and panicked when trying to deal with things themselves because they’re not insured

When we worked out if we could afford to keep a horse, insurance was as important as livery and food as far as I was concerned

For the people who save though it's not the cost of the insurance that should be saved it's how much the insurance would pay to that needs saved.

My insurance pays £7000 per year

I took out insurance at £250 plus £250 excess p/c

Turns out she has developed 3 chronic conditions.

This year my cats yearly insurance cost £450 plus £250 excess per condition.

She has just spent 5 nights at the specialist hospital after a crisis plus tests and meds at a cost of over £1000 so far!

She's used twice the cost of the insurance in 2 weeks!

Had I not had insurance I would be liable, if I'd been saving I might have some of it but definitely not enough to cover it plus the rest of the year.

I have insurance on 2 of my 3 rescued dogs. Unfortunately the third is uninsurable due to a pre-existing condition.

I am a member of Dogs'Trust so he has public liability cover through this. It is not just the cost of treatment that insurance covers. My three are big, bolters and if they got loose may cause an accident on the road. No matter how long I save I couldn't pay the £million or so that may cost me.

That said I didn't have insurance for the first roughly ten years of her life so I was very very lucky I took it out when I did because pre existing conditions aren't covered!

I don’t think it’s a case of not being able to afford the insurance...

We were hit hard times, I had to cancel pet insurance (among other things) as I did not have the extra tenner a months It does happen - believe it or not!

X-posted,

There is no need to literally sit on your high horse and slack off those off who are not able to afford an insurance for their cat or dog.

I’m not, I’m talking about people who think insurance is a waste of money and think I’m stupid for paying for it

MIL's dogs (3 of them) each ran up bills in the thousands. She always had insurance so never had to choose between finding the money or having the dogs put down.

We also have insurance but I keep the premium down by having a $1000 per year deductible.

I think you should definitely have pet insurance for a younger animal. We didn't renew our dog's insurance at the age of 11, as it went up to over £1000 a year. Our previous dog was insured up until the end of his life and in retrospect the vets probably kept him alive longer than was best for him and he didn't have much quality of life in the last few weeks. Our existing dog has a couple of chronic health issues, hence the high insurance premium, and we continue to pay the vet's bill for the existing conditions. If and when, he develops more problems, we will make a judgement call on what to do at that stage.

I would have rather 'wasted' my money paying premiums and have a healthy dog but instead I have had many weeks of worry through various illnesses and accidents. Fortunately having pet insurance I only worried about him rather than him and the cost.

I suspect those that think you are daft for having pet insurance have never been unlucky with their animals health.

Both my dog and cat are insured. When Puss was five months old she 'went down hill' - only way to describe he not behaving like a kitten, but with no obvious temp or injury. She turned out to have an in-growing bowel. £1,800 or so later, she's fine, but the insurers didn't want to pay due to a previous case of diarrhoea she or one of her litter mates had at the rescue centre. I earn a reasonable salary, I would have paid it, but I did have a few sleepless nights. Fortunately, our wonderful vet argued that the two were unconnected so the exemption for stomach complaints wasn't relevant. They not only paid up but removed the exclusion and lowered our premiums.
Our doggy doofus is a working cocker spaniel, in his three years so far he has had repeated corneal scratches from running through the undergrowth, and a Friday evening dash to the emergency vet when barbed wire and a wooden stake nearly perforated his bladder - Insurance and vets were so good I never even saw the bill, but know it was well in excess of £1,500. He also needs PLI to come to work with me. I never resent the premiums, even if I do occasionally wince!

I have two dogs and a horse insured at £100 a month

I really begrudge paying for it as I’ve never claimed for any of them (one dog is 8 and never claimed a penny!) however knowing my luck the second I cancel then someone would break a leg.

I work for a vet and get considerable discount however still insure as I would like the option to send to specialists wherever I wanted without money being a concern.

I think not insuring yet having no access to money in an emergency is very irresponsible. Lots of people have savings but don’t realise how much treatment actually does cost when things go wrong!

There is no need to literally sit on your high horse and slack off those off who are not able to afford an insurance for their cat or dog. I agree, in an ideal world every pet owner should have it but sometimes life is a bit shit and something gotta give.

For us, being short of money meant not having pets. If our income dropped now then the cost of having him (£30-odd a month) would have to be reviewed, obviously, but having a pet isn't a biological imperative like having a baby so we chose not to take on that financial responsibility when it was beyond our budget.

Public liability insurance for larger animals can't be substituted by savings, nor can you decide not to take on the expense (compare choosing not to give your cat chemo v choosing not to pay out when someone else is injured or their property damaged).

My dog has recently been quite ill. The treatment came to nearly £700. Not a lot of money for treatment for a dog in the scheme of things (not an operation) and something I can easily afford. But if I'd been putting away the £53 pounds a month I spend on her insurance the whole of the last year's savings would have been more or less wiped out.

She also has an chronic condition that needs checking up on from time to time so that's more money to lay out. And as she gets older I imagine she'll be needing more treatment of some kind, as happened with my cats.

If a dog needs an operation you could be looking at ££££.

Why anyone would put themselves in the position of having to come up with a large sum of money, possibly at short notice, or having their pet put to sleep is beyond me.

I've had buildings and contents cover on any home I've ever owned because it's the sensible thing to do, just in case. I think in nearly 40 years I've probably claimed no more than 4 times. I still think it's worth the expense.

Same with my dog. I want to do the best for her, just in case.