How much are you paying for dog insurance and cover?

[BeatricePotts]

How much are you paying for dog insurance and what are you covered for?

We have a 5 year old dog and his insurance is £45pcm for £16k cover. It’s a lifetime policy and is very good but we have never needed it and it goes up yet again this month.

Is £16k necessary or am I over insuring? My car and house insurance are both cheaper than this 😂

Paying £25 a month but isn’t lifetime cover. Ddog is 10 now and premiums just went up too much once he turned 8. Have him covered for 5k. Made a claim for surgery last year when he had a lump that turned out to be cancer. Insurance covered it and fortunately no further treatment required. I wouldn’t put him through such a surgery again so not worried that cancer is no longer covered.

8 years old vizsla who had MMM four years ago, lifetime policy £75 per month. £5000 cover.
5 year old vizsla who, no health conditions £7500 cover £40 per month.

Gave up on insurance when our wonderful boxer’s insurance hit almost two hundred pounds a month at the age of 10. We took out an interest free credit card and opened an account in her name to pay vet fees. We hardly spent a penny of the money until sadly this year we had to make the heartbreaking decision to let her go. She was fourteen. It sounds to me as if you are vastly over insured but only you can decide if it is worth it.

Thanks all! I’ll reduce cover to £10k this year and perhaps go even lower the year after which should reduce the overall cost.

I pay £20 a month for a puppy and £45 a month for my 13yo dog. Both life time policies. The older dog has 8k worth of cover and the puppy a bit more. I have 20% copay rule with the older dog.

had to claim for the older dog a few months ago. First time ever. Animal friends only paid £700 out of a 2k bill as they said the vet fees were excessive. It was out of hours and life saving iv fluids were needed. 🤷🏻‍♀️. I agree it cost a lot for what she had but it’s hardly my fault. So read the small print.

friend has a 13yo dog and pays £145 for a good policy. Dog has been chronically ill for the last few months. First incident. Friend is nearly at the 8k limit of the insurance and still needs blood tests twice a week with no end in sight.

Out of hours vet fees are insane. Animal friends covered the full cost of of our dogs surgery but that max out out his cover. Had to take him to out of hours the evening we brought him home for stronger painkillers and tranquillisers. £400! 😩 given the size of his wound with hindsight I think the vet should have sent us home with more than paracetamol.

The thing is, if your dog gets something like hip dysplasia...you're looking at £4-5K per hip. So £10K gets eaten up pretty fast in those circumstances.

Mine range between £80 - £150 a month for my dogs, and about £15K cover. I've never needed it but that doesn't mean I wouldn't one day.

Someone posted a while ago about how 'great' their insurance was. It gave them £3K cover and only for accidents (i.e. wouldn't cover dysplasia, cancer etc) and cost £7 a month. But point is, you get what you pay for.

We pay an eye watering £168 a month for 10k of lifetime cover. We did have 15k but the premiums were £200 so we reduced it. I wouldn’t reduce it any further. On top of that we pay 20% co payment and £99 one off payment a year. Tbf dog has needed a lot of vet input due to hip dysplasia and is now being considered for a THR. He is 8.

I was paying £125 per month for a labrador. He had a joint problem which cost £7500 so it easily paid for itself.

Its madness! It’s why we have always had premium insurance. He’s a spaniel so energetic and also, they are a breed known for hip and elbow dysplasia. His parents had good scores but that is no guarantee!

I don't think £16k is over insured these days unfortunately.
Mine is insured for £15k at almost £200pcm.
It's a lot! But what can you do? There's no way I could put away enough money to cover her and 0% interest credit cards only give me a fraction of the £15k so that's not an option. I just don't want money to be a deciding factor in whether to pts or treat if anything really bad was to happen.

This is exactly how I feel. We pts our lab when he was 11 due to cancer. We reasoned it was kinder than treatment however we had very low insurance and didn’t have the funds to pay for it ourself. If we truly had the option I’m not sure if we would have opted to pts. It was a horrible position be in and one I won’t make the mistake of happening again.

We’re paying £27 a month for lifetime cover up to £5000 for our 4yr old cockapoo. We didn’t have cover for our last dog who we had pts aged 9 after a sudden diagnosis of liver cancer and pancreatitis. But even this current cover wouldn’t have been enough for the suggested cost of that treatment which wasn’t even guaranteed to be successful. But we are getting enough insurance cover to hopefully cover the costs of most common things which may crop up.

I think you could get much better cover for £27pcm. Mine was around £35pcm at 4 years old and that was for £16k cover. It does go up every year which is annoying!

I pay £165 a month for my 11 year old springer but she is an allergy dog and needs monthly treatment. Her cover is £15K. When she was just over a year she needed lifesaving treatment when her allergies flared very dramatically and we nearly lost her, the insurer paid for everything which was in the region of £12k. So we expected they would start increasing costs and they did. It’s worth it despite being a high cost, for our peace of mind.

Sorry to be that person, but hip dysplasia, PRA, and heart defects all of which are incredibly common in cockerpoos (often a result of parents not being health tested i.e. bad breeding, and, in some cases, just bad luck) and can cost upwards of £8K to treat.

Your insurance wouldn't cover that. Unless you're 100% sure of your dogs breeding (going back at least two, ideally three generations) I would really up that insurance.

@BeatricePotts I feel your pain! Mine are prone to similar health issues and although I bred them, so should be confident, there's always an outside chance something happens! There's a Spaniel owner on Doghouse and I think she's used £8K cover in the last year on various issues on just one dog. Always better to be cautious

Tbh starting to wonder if I should have Spaniels and not Retrievers. Much cheaper to feed, insurance and easier to pick up when they're being idiots...

I researched the most common issue for my breed - IVDD - and looked at how much it would cost to fix and that is the level I insured to. Mine's a rescue and will be 10 next year. I'll probably insure him for another year if it's not silly money (currently £78), but after that, probably not. I know its controversial nowadays, but I think when they get past a certain age, putting them through a painful intervention and a long recovery when they only have a couple of years left is cruel.

Spaniels are so energetic. Bad genetics is one thing but they also launch themselves off walls and are generally accident prone so that doesn’t help their hips/ elbows. I was neurotic about mine, carried him up and down stairs and anytime I thought he might fall down/ slip for a whole year.

Funnily enough, we are starting to look for a lab/ golden pup! We prefer working lines and people seem to care much less for health testing. It’s a minefield. I’m particularly fussy, so that isn’t helping matters!

Just cancelled Pet plan for Muddy Paws, it was cheaper for more cover. Our dog is 9.

I’ve never had insurance since I was quoted £297 per month because of size and breed . Having said that as others have said I now have 2 dogs and have an account for vets fees / surgeries that has £60k + in it having been invested for so many years . I pay for day to day expenses out of income but if both were unlucky enough to be in an accident and broke all 4 legs the money is there . If something even more catastrophic happened it would topped up from my own money .

5 yo Labrador. It went up to 137 per month after an accident where she had an amputation. However we had 4.5k worth of care covered for her accident and physio etc and prior to that were paying 68 per month.
I would say we have had 7k worth of payouts in her lifetime so far. It did originally start at 28 per month before she had various claims over the years.

I pay £98 a month for 10k lifetime cover so to me you’ve got a bargain ! It’s very breed dependant I find , I’ve got a 4 year old Rottweiler, & unfortunately they tend to have health issues so are more expensive .

213.50 this year for a 14yr old Dalmatian . However every year , it’s been less that her vets bills !

We pay £168 per month combined for one 12 yr old and one 7 year old dog
I think it gives £3.5K a year who can renews every year for life. So if one of them needs something big which costs 5K we will be out of pocket but the amount will reset the next year. I think it’s £3.5K I don’t actually remember it might be more maybe it’s £7.5K, we haven’t needed to use that much yet and it doesn’t matter as we can’t change the insurance as not one thing we’ve taken them to the vet for in all the years will be covered by a new policy. Even if it’s not related they’ll find a way to link it no doubt if it remotely resembles anything.