Not taking out pet insurance...

[HolaWeenie]

We collect our dog in 2 days, I've spent quite a lot of time looking at insurance policies. It seems a total swizz!

Ideally we would like a lifetime policy with around £2-3k per illness, no annual policy limit and around £100 -200 excess. That looks to be available for around £15-20 per month, which will increase each year. As I understand it with lifetime policies you're unable to shop around like car insurance as it's based on you renewing, so by the time dog is 6yrs old we could be paying quite a lot more each month.

We have low risk lives, fairly sensible kids for their ages and I'm at home all the time. I plan to train the dog well. He's a toy breed so will be on lead most of the time. So whilst you can't foresee accidents, I think we're quite low risk.

We'd cover vaccinations and neutering and small things, just like we do with our house and car insurance, we don't claim for small things. So the insurance would be for big things that run into the thousands. The policy will then be capped at £2/3k anyway, so we will be exposed for amounts above that.

We do have credit available to us if something should happen, so my question is are we nuts to consider not taking out insurance!?

Our Labrador was a healthy boy from the day we brought him home as a pup right up until he turned 4 and started having epileptic fits. In the first year of this illness he's racked up around £3.5k in vets bills. This is a lifelong condition needing drugs which currently cost £160 a month (and will probably continue to rise).
He's always been insured. We pay around £20 a month for lifetime cover with no limit. We've only covered a small amount of his bills so far - £180 excess and a few costs (eg he's covered for £40 a night at the vets but we are charged £60 so we cover the extra £20 a night)

I've just had his renewal and the premium has only risen a few £'s a month.

Worth every penny. He's still young and we could be paying out for years to come yet (hopefully!)

My 3 year old retriever has just been diagnosed with cancer. Vets bills for the tests have come in at £2k. The surgery she will most probably need is £2.5k, and if she goes on to have chemo, about £3k....I have been thanking my lucky stars she is insured. Friends have just had a bill for over £4K after their dog suffered an abscess after a grass seed got into his lung. They aren't insured and have had to find the money.

Bit of a no brainer as far as I'm concerned!!

We can absolutely handle paying £20 a month, but the decision is shall we put that money away each month and cover the bills ourselves if they arise? we're not exceptionally wealthy, but we have a buffer.

Our dog has hip dysplasia - didn't know till she was 4 and her hip just dislocated... cost us about £10,000 to have her hip done and £7,000 of that was insured. The other could go at any time - but thank god for the insurance. We wouldn't have been able to afford it without it.

Don't forget that most decent plans also cover liability insurance should your dog injure someone so it's not all about illness and injury.

“they cap policies“

It’s set amounts per condition or per year... what the cap is depends what policy you take out, it’s really no different to setting an amount any insurance will pay out for.

Mine is 7.5k per year, only once have I had to pay more after that, and I’ve trademarked mine as the most expensive dog in the world... ok, maybe not, but I feel like I should, lol.

£5000... at the end after the vets did all they could for my boy..Tesco paid up within a week...I'd still be paying it off if I hadn't had insurance..but your call obviously

OP even if you put £40 a month away in an account you'd still not have enough in a year to cover any major incidents as many have described. And if you are getting two dogs (hope i read that right) then you need to be painfully aware that you could face double the costs

'expat do SSPCA not cover existing conditions as serious as that? I know the RSPCA sometimes does'

Just said he may need future treatment. Bet you can't get insurance for that. A pity as we need a house cat and although we'd prefer one a bit older (this wee guy is only 9 months old), he fits the bill in every other way . We didn't have an insurance on our very old cat, who had come to use as a stray over 8 years ago, but he was also, according to our vet and by the way he behaved, well into his teens when he went for his last health check last Autumn.

There's another lovely wee chap just on, he's 11, but he requires outdoor access and we have only balconies. Would definitely take on and insure if possible.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the fact that if your dog causes an accident, you're liable as the onus is on you to keep your pet under control. If your dog runs in front of a car which then hits another car, they could sue you.

No that's why i couldn't insure my dog. Good job we loved her dearly! Maybe worth asking if you're interested in the cat tho? It's always a shame when health conditions prevent new homes - but totally understandable. Big organisations such as the SSPCA/RSPCA can definitely afford to cover the severe issues such as heart problems!

Just one dog for now!

Thank you everyone, have read all your posts out to dh, it's helping!

The risks of illnesses aside, even if you lead a 'low risk life' things can still happen inside and outside the home that you just wouldn't expect- a child once handed a piece of chicken on a skewer to my dog and before i could do anything to stop it my dog had swallowed it whole. If it hadnt been for our insurance we would have had to pay a small fortune for the xrays and following treatment.
She also once glued her mouth shut after chewing the post which again was another expensive vet trip. Our insurance is actually one of the cheapest deals and it has covered the treatments both times with no issues.
You just can't predict what a dog will do or what will happen. For your dog's sake as well as your own, get insurance. Surely it's worth £20 a month not to worry about ever being in the position of not being able to afford the medical treatment your dog might need.

Thanks nickmylipple, I was going to ask if people can claim on your insurance like car insurance and or sue.

@HolaWeenie - our dog - a rescue lab-pointer cross - ruptured the crucial ligaments in both knees, and had to have major orthopaedic surgery on them, plus surgery for a dislocated kneecap (possibly a side effect of th surgery on her knee) and an admission with a gastric ulcer caused by the pain killers she was given for the dislocation.

All this added up to over £10,000!!

Luckily we had insurance, and PetPlan paid out for almost all of it, without a murmur - and paid the bills directly to th vet hospital so we didn’t have to find that money ourselves and wait for them to pay the claim.

We have had cats for most of our married life, and now have two dogs and a cat, and we have insured all of them - and the dog’s knee surgery alone has cost several times what we have paid in premiums for all our pets - and we have had other claims too, over the years, so the insurance is a complete no-brainer in my view.

Unless you can afford to find up to £10,000 for vet fees, if something serious happened, then you would be very foolish not to insure your dog, and you can tell your dh I said so.

And whilst policies do have caps, if you look at PetPlan as an example, their cap, on the highest level of policy is £10K in any year. Our dog’s treatment took over a year in all, and we did have to pay a second excess, but even so, we got the vast majority of her bills paid.

And we did expect that, when the policy renewed, the premiums would shoot up, but they didn’t. The excess went up a bit and so did the premiums, but it is still affordable and, for us, it is an essential part of caring for our pets.

Ddog (collie) broke her foot very badly falling off a bale of hay aged 8 months and had to get pins in at the vet hospital. We had tesco insurance, it was around £8 a month and the claim finished up around £4k. When she was 5, she got hit by a car and got a dislocated hip and broken pelvis. 3 weeks in the vet hospital including an operation to wire up her pelvis - that came to about 2.5k. The insurance was around £12 a month then, even with the previous claim. Well worth the cost and no quibbles with payment

We have two semi feral house cats who are almost 8. We got them at 1yr old and can't have insurance because we can't keep the vaccinations up to date (they can't be handled by the vet without sedation). So we stopped paying after the first year as no point.

Only had to take our boy to the emergency vet once and just paid out of savings. Being house cats minimises the risks massively.

However for a dog I would say it is essential.

Dogs trust do a £25 a year membership which covers 3rd party issues.

We don’t have health insurance for our dog. Don’t see the point but there’s not many on MN with this viewpoint...like mentioned by a previous poster I have a rather pragmatic approach...

Everyone in my family and extended family have dogs. One of my aunts is the only one who didn't have insurance. Her boring lazy sensible low risk dog one day fell over carrying a stick. It went into the roof of his mouth. To get him patched up it cost them over £7000 up front plus follow up monthly payments.

We've had everything from cancer to diabetes to hormone inbalances to recurring ear infections infected dew claws etc.

None of this is down to bad pet owenership or broken bones and clumsiness. Just like humans dogs get sick and have accidents.

If you can come up with thousands of pounds at a moments notice or be able to afford for a monthly payout for recurring treatment (our shepherd with diabetes cost us £50 a month in treatments for 4 years) then by all means don't bother. But honestly I think you're daft not to

We don't. Because we are pretty callous people who would put our dog down rather than treat for cancer etc. I don't think it I necessary to treat an animal in the same way as a human and throw every conceivable vetinary procedure at it in the hope of prolonging life. We had 6 months free puppy insurance but didnt renew. Our dog is 4 now, we've taken her to the vets a few times, had chest x-ray once, paid for some meds here and there, and definitely not cost us anything like the money we'd have spent on insurance so far. We may insure once the dog hits 7 or 8, but it will depend on the cost.

Interestingly, I remember reading something a while back from a vet (anonymously written because of the impact on the practice) who basically said that the insurance and vets industries were basically in cahoots at this point, eith vets pushing insurance, pushing high cost treatments on the basis that owners must have insurance, when in reality, were it their animal, they would put it down. Let's face it, if insurance wasn't a thing, would vets be recommending treatments costing 10k plus? Doubtful.

So PetPlan is good? Just thinking ahead to when we can get a cat again.

“can't have insurance because we can't keep the vaccinations up to date”

No, you’d just not be covered for illnesses that you’d usually vaccinate against, you’d be covered for everything else... though how much use that would be if you’d not treat stuff because it would be too stressful for them is debatable

Our dog is nine this year and we’ve never insured her. It’s a total rip off.

Definitely want a rescue animal. We've never had a puppy/kitten, always adopted older pets (except Syrian hamsters).

you also need third party insurance.

“Because we are pretty callous people who would put our dog down rather than treat for cancer”

No matter what the treatment actually was or the likely outcome? Really?