Dull factor defcon 5. Dog insurance. I'm starting to confuse myself (easily done)

[Slubberdegullion]

I've had a read through the threads about it on here too.

I'm stuck on covered for life vs pay outs on a per condition basis.

So with Sainbury's (option 2) it's £7,500 per condition FOR LIFE but that's it. What happens if the dog gets hip dysplasia, is that going to cost more than £7,500 to fix?
£12 per month

The petplan one is £4000 per year and is £26 per month. So does that mean that she needs operation after operation on the same thing they'll keep paying out until you've spent £4000 (for that year) but then you get another £4000 pot the following year?

gah

£4k a year is not much, so yes, if dog is unlucky enough to need various treatments and then has a serious accident you are likely to run out of funds

think the £7.5k is per incident/illness per year but with ongoing cover for lifelong conditions (if you stay insured of course)

I phoned up Sainsbury's and the £7,500 is not per year, it is per condition.

So if the dog gets hip dysplasia and mange and is hit by a car and gets diabetes (am overthinking the doom scenario) then they'll pay out £7,500 for each diagnosis but if the hip dysplasia end up costing £15000 (over her entire life) they'll still only pay £7500.

I think that's what sainsbo's lady said. I don't know if that is good or bad tbh.

Can hip dysplasia cost that much? I know there are some surgical procedures and a few medical options but think mainly it is a lifestyle thing - you know, weight exercise careful nutrition etc?

We're with healthy pets and get £5k per condition per year, not a fortune and I sometimes think about just putting all the insurance money aside each month to build up a pot - apart from anything else I forget to claim

I don't know Mitchy.

MrsL has had a time with her dog's elbow dysplasia. I'll have to ask how much it has cost them/there insurers so far.

their insurers

I was just popping back to say something about elbow dysplasia! Do you have a breed especially prone to these conditions or from dam/sire with v poor scores?

A vet will correct if am wrong but think the majority of cases are either partly preventable (care not to over exercise when young) or largely manageable through supplements and careful feeding, exercise etc

petplan used to do unlimited lifetime cover for any condition on their super duper deluxe package but don't seem to offer this any more - on balance probably best to get good annual amount per incident as this puts you in much better position even if you do have high excess and/or have to top up bills?

There's a good thread on Moneysavingexpert on insurance. At the time I was sorting it Axa was coming out well. 7.k per year, excess £75 came out at £15 something a month. We've had to claim and they were find paying out. Was going to do M&S but people were reporting big premium hikes at renewal after reasonable first year quote.

Mitchy - yes I've got a lab. Dam and Sire hip and elbow scores are great and I'm going to try my damndest to follow all the joint protection rules but you just never know do you.

Thanks for that Wynken. I'll try and find that info.

Slubber, her elbow dyslpasia has so far cost around the 2k mark - initial x-rays and 2 months of meds were about £280, and her operation including the follow ups with the specialist was about £1,600. She now just has a Seraquin joint pill every day (£16 for 60 online). We thought she might need hydrotherapy but thankfully she didn't - that was £30 a session including physio. She'll be on the Seraquin for life but we're not even claiming for it anymore, didn't seem worth it for £2 a week!

The insurance (tesco) covers £4k per condition for life, rather than an annual limit. But we did that on purpose because our pets are accident prone and it's very likely they could need treatment for more than two conditions in one year! The elbow claim was paid in February, so we'd have had a whole ten months of worry that she'd get hit by a car or some other major thing that would use up the other £2k. Obviously we still worry about that (!) but we know each condition will be covered. It really is a balancing act with insurance - for us, we know we could afford to pay for medications each month but would struggle with the initial vet bill, so per condition suited us better than lifetime cover. Either way, try to go for the highest cover possible - I do worry sometimes that £4k won't be enough if something major happens (although I suppose her ED was a 'major' thing and we didn't even come close to the limit). But tesco were by far the cheapest, to get a higher limit for all four of our pets we'd need to spend an extra £20 a month.

BTW holly's ED was found to be injury-related from a stupid non-incident when she was tiny (jumped out of the car before we could catch her, literally 18 inches). So you're doing a good thing planning in advance - all the health checks in the world can't avoid vet bills, unfortunately!

Thanks for that MrsL. I knew you had had some hefty bills but had no idea how much they were.

Does the vet think she will need any more surgery in the future for the ED? Is she doing ok now, post op - poor thing

She's absolutely fine, like a different dog! It's only been 10 weeks but she never limps now, her muscle tone has come on a treat and she bounces about everywhere like a nutter - obviously making up for lost time! Her coat still hasn't grown back properly yet but you can't tell unless you know to look. Hopefully the problem will never reoccur - the problem was a small fracture at the top of the 'ball' part of her elbow joint, caused by her landing too hard when she jumped out of the car. Because of her soft puppy bones the fracture created a kind of flap in the bone, which restricted the blood supply to the surrounding bone causing it to die, then the dead bone cut off the blood supply to more bone, and so on. Luckily we caught it quickly or it could have been so much worse. Such a freak thing!

Our other dog sliced her front paw to the bone about 2 years ago - some bastard thug had smashed a bottle and half buried it in the ground, and she ran straight into it at speed. She was sliced to the bone, from between her toes right up to her wrist - it looked as though her paw was going to split in half and it was pouring blood, and she went into shock on the way to the vets. She needed two blood transfusions, emergency surgery and was in a cast for months, but the bill was only around £800 in the end. She's actually going back in for more surgery at the end of May because the wound formed a lump of hard scar tissue which keeps swelling up. We've put up with it this long but it's gradually getting bigger and seems painful, so she needs to have it cut out. The vet reckons about £250 for that, which will be covered on the insurance without an excess because it's a continuation of the old claim.

Goodness MrsL, your poor dogs, and what bad luck for both of them. As you say what a freak thing. Glad that Holly sounds back up to full speed .

Thanks for telling me how much each thing cost. The £7,500 per condition with Sainsbury's sounds pretty good then.

AXA, M&S and Sainsburys are all the same by the way.. just branded differently, all underwritten by AXA Insurance. May be some tweeks to the policy limits etc, but suspect the bones of the policies are the same.

That must be the most boring fact posted on MN today!

boring and yet strangely interesting wine