to ask how much your biggest dog vet bill was?

[Friedbanana]

Paying £35 a month for pet insurance at the moment and it seems a waste as weve (very thankfully) never had to use it for our 3 year old golden retriever as she’s luckily in perfect health! i have decent savings now and im wondering if we should cancel and ill just pay bills out of my pocket if she ever needs it? it seems to go up by £7 a year despite no claims so if she lives to 12 i’ll have forked out £6300- do vet bills even go higher than that?
So just asking to help me to decided whether to keep the insurance/ maybe look to swap to cheaper!

My cat has just had a bill of 3k... little git

£350 dog 1 emergency out of hours for pain relief injection and hip examined after an slight accident. Thought it may come to full leg op which we were looking at maybe £1500-2000ish? Fortunately it righted itself, Ddog was pup we'd had 24hrs at that point so no insurance in place yet. Old girl I paid up until 12yr I think? then just put a savings pot in place as the ins price kept hiking, and seemed to cover less things? Beyond boosters and the odd ear infection was very robust until PTS at 15 after a sudden stroke. Vet was absolutely wonderful, but I will say they were pretty quick to initially offer sedation, blood tests, CAT scan and I was a bit dubious as I wasn't prepared to put Ddog through all of that trauma when PTS was clearly the best option for her. Already deaf (1yr) at that point, immediate brain damage and blindness. No way I could have left her alone at the vets/took home in that condition to risk another stroke in the house if I wasnt there. I'm very much of the just because it medically can be done, doesn't mean it always should be done with animals.

Just shy of £10k for a health condition that came out of nowhere. One day she was fine, the next it was someone had flipped a switch. Half of that was for a five day stay in a specialist vets to diagnose the problem, the other was medication, blood tests and a few trips to the emergency vet over the year she lived with it.

Had I just put the premiums on one side I wouldn't have been able to pay even a tenth of that. Keep the insurance.

£4000 for x rays and an op on leg plus same year about £1000 on stomach bug and tests, I was very thankful we had insurance - really necessary for a dog not so essential for cats that don’t roam too much

Two ruptured cruciate ligaments, £8k in total
Haemorrhagic gastroenteritis £1k
Pancreatitis £800
Mast cell tumour removal £500
On medications that cost about £40 per month.
All the same bloody dog

However my other dog has never cost more than about £200

Neither are insured, probably should've been though...!

£2,000 for gastroenteritis, that’s scans, IV drips, antibiotics and an overnight stay.

On two separate occasions my hound ripped her dew claws off (first one leg then the other a year later). That’s two lots of antibiotics and painkillers, numerous bandage changes and a sedation to remove the damaged claw. I lost count of how much it all cost and just directed the bills straight to the insurer.

Yes, pet insurance is pricey but do you really have thousands of pounds just sitting around in case your pet needs medical attention?

About 2k for a badly bitten leg. We stopped insuring ours three dogs ago when she turned 5 and the premium quadrupled overnight. We always have money available to cover emergencies. If/when we get a puppy again I would consider it though. Our get also does a sort of subscription service that we might look at.

I'd keep it if I was you, I was thinking of cancelling my beloved dogs pet insurance a few years ago but thankfully didn't have the time to do it that particular day. The very next day my dog ate something she shouldn't which blocked her bowel and ended up claiming £4600, this year we've just claimed £7900 for varied problems. Without insurance I'd probably have to have her PTS which would have been heart breaking

7k all in for a cruciate problem and replacement.

Thing is, the other leg will need done at some point, so it will definitely be 14k all in. I paid for really good insurance in the first place, so his second leg will be covered, but I would never be able to get his second leg insured otherwise.

He's also had a stomach op, loads of X-rays, he has arthritis and he's had to have drugs to make him throw up 3 times (table surfing lab). My insurance is now £70 pm but it's worth every penny!

I wonder about this, both my dogs are insured, they're 5 and 10. The 5 year old has never needed any treatment. The older one didn't until he was 8 then had a epulis removed. The vet said it's cancer but not a problem and very common. Which means the insurer has said it's now co-pay for the older dog.

I think there could be another way if I was starting again. Maybe have third party and accident only while they're young and less likely to get ill.

It seems unfair to pay years and years of premiums when they don't need it and when they do start to need treatment the premiums become very high and co-pay to the point they're almost uninsured really.

A friendly society type vet costs savings cooperative would be a good idea.

I’d transfer your cover. Lifetime cover only matters if they have underlying health conditions. If they don’t, swap. I moved from £25 per month to £7 per month and it covered me 9 months later for a £300 bill. In later life stick with lifetime or take your chances.

thanks everyone, poor puppas go through a lot dont they!! and ours certainly loves to eat anything she spots before i even see what it is so yes i think we’ll keep it! currently have £25k savings so we would be able to cover it but then i guess it would feel a bit rubbish having savings wiped away like that! looking at compare the market so i might swap to something cheaper! i’m just generally quite frugal so the pet insurance seems quite big to me but as PP has said, you don’t need it till you need it!!

£6500 but it was for a horse and covered by insurance.

Vet bills can easily run into thousands.

OOH fees will cost into the hundreds just for consultation and basic treatment.

And if yours is a scavenger, Intoxication, or especially blockages, can really get expensive very quickly

Cat got a blade of grass stuck in his nasal cavity. £2k.....last cat had thyroid, blood pressure and heart problems. Meds were £180 per month for about 7 years. DH had him before I was around. Needless to say, this one is insured!

£16k Dalmatian spinal surgery and associated hydro/physio

I got a 9 year old rescue dog last year. He’s cost us 10k so far. 7k on a cancerous lump removal.

It seems unfair to pay years and years of premiums when they don't need it and when they do start to need treatment the premiums become very high and co-pay to the point they're almost uninsured really

You could say the same about car insurance or house insurance, I've been paying both for 35 years and never claimed yet it's compulsory. People don't seem to have an issue with insurance unless it's for a live animal.

OP I work in a vets, you'd be insane to cancel insurance for a retriever. I can assure you it's no fun having to euthanise animals that could be easily treated because it's owners haven't bothered with insurance.

Bright yes, I thought that too. This is the nature of insurance overall.

OP what does your insurance cover? Many insurances have a time limit of a year per condition, not so great if you have a dog with a heart condition or diabetes. Others have a fixed ceiling price.

Im a vet nurse and shudder at people's vet bills. I feel genuinely bad for giving people such expensive bills but veterinary medicine is not cheap and thete is so much more technology and advanced medicine.

Referrals are what cost the money, if your vet is a good all round surgeon, cherish them, it can mean savings of thousands!!!

Ive seen people spend thousands on rabbits and refuse to spend out at all on dogs, it is all very individual.

Our bills rarely exceed 2k but ive seen people spend in excess of ten grand on their pets.

The bills i find most cringeworthy are the £300 because its got an upset stomach bills. However we don't KNOW its just an upset tummy without expensive testscor waiting. If a person has bought their dog to the vet it is the vets duty to investigate. Wait and see isnt really an option our pets cant talk.

Our dog has just cost us £12k - we weren’t insured. My husband made the decision when she was young not to insure her. I could go into the ins and outs of this decision (I think because I’ve had horse insurance before and they’ve not paid out or have had a small problem with a limb say and then that whole leg is exempt from further claims). In hindsight I wish I had just kept up a policy because it should have paid out on this occasion. Thankfully we had the money. We have mentally added up what premiums we would have paid over the years and I think we would have broken fairly even.

£2000 for tail amputation after he snapped it on a wall.
£300 when he ran into a fence and cut his side. Luckily they were able to just staple it, they wanted to put him to sleep to stitch but we were worried as he had just had the tail amputation and 2 general anaesthetic in a month already.
£200 for tests on a lump that turned out to be an infection.
He was bitten but they said it would be better to leave it open with no stitches so it didn't trap bacteria. That was £120 for consultation and anti biotics. Could have been worse.
He's 4 years old, and we pay £30 a month!!!

On the other hand we had our old dog 10 years, paid average£30 a month the whole time. Only claimed once and that was £500.

I had to pay out of pocket about £150 for an out of hours vets appt for my cat when she hurt her paw. Was sent home with painkillers and was told to bring her back the next morning if she was still unable to weight bear. No Insurance and was told that if she had xrays and it was broken and needed surgery it would easily be around 3K. Thankfully for all concerned it she was able to walk the next day and was completely fine after about 3 (presumably just landed funny when she jumped). But I immediately got pet insurance and learnt much lesson!!

£9000 in one day. But there have been others before/after! I’m a big fan of pet insurance 😂