Better to save, rather than insure, as dog gets older?

[littlepeas]

Just sorted the insurance out for our new puppy and it made me realise how much we are now paying for our older dog! He is only 7, so I guess it's going to go up even more in the years to come and probably quite steeply!

I am pondering whether it would be better to put the money into savings instead. We do have a decent amount of other savings, so could manage a surprise vet bill while we are building up the pot.

What does everyone do?

I was thinking the same regarding our 6 year old, the insurance has almost doubled. However, I'm pleased I renewed as we were stuck with a £7k bill after she developed brain disease and will be on medication at £200 per month forever. We will certainly get our moneys worth.

How much are you paying pa? We are paying nearly £800.

Yes, about the same - just under £800 and about to come up for renewal. It is pretty much twice what we are paying for the puppy (retriever and a lab, so not the same breed, but very similar).

@Snakeplisskensmum

I was thinking the same regarding our 6 year old, the insurance has almost doubled. However, I'm pleased I renewed as we were stuck with a £7k bill after she developed brain disease and will be on medication at £200 per month forever. We will certainly get our moneys worth.

This is what scares me. He is super robust and healthy still, but you just never know what is around the corner. The only things we've used insurance for is a GA and removal of grass from his ear and a GA and removal of a tiny but of twig from his tonsils...

It's such a hard decision. Are you with Petplan? I'm wondering what we will be charged for a 10/12 year old dog!

I think it depends really - what breed is your dog aswell? Our last dog was 16 when they died and the one before that 17. Our older boy now is 9 this year so potentially still a good few years yet! I wouldn't want to have to put down sooner than was needed because of being unable to pay vet bills. Obviously bigger/giant breeds tend to die younger than small/medium breeds.

I think it depends how much you can realistically save. Having enough for a surprise vet bill while saving is good but could you afford if it that surprise vet bill ended up being thousands and then needed ongoing treatment that costs hundreds every month?

We have enough savings to cover surprise vet bills but if it's something ongoing like that, especially with the initial tests to get the diagnosis being thousands, we'd soon be out of money and have no choice but to pts if we couldn't get the money from somewhere. I wouldn't want to be in a situation where my dog could still live a long and happy life on treatment and have to pts because I can't afford their bills

@UnUdderOne

It's such a hard decision. Are you with Petplan? I'm wondering what we will be charged for a 10/12 year old dog!

Yes, pet plan.

It's controversial but we save for our elderly lab not insure.

@Lou98

I think it depends really - what breed is your dog aswell? Our last dog was 16 when they died and the one before that 17. Our older boy now is 9 this year so potentially still a good few years yet! I wouldn't want to have to put down sooner than was needed because of being unable to pay vet bills. Obviously bigger/giant breeds tend to die younger than small/medium breeds.

I think it depends how much you can realistically save. Having enough for a surprise vet bill while saving is good but could you afford if it that surprise vet bill ended up being thousands and then needed ongoing treatment that costs hundreds every month?

We have enough savings to cover surprise vet bills but if it's something ongoing like that, especially with the initial tests to get the diagnosis being thousands, we'd soon be out of money and have no choice but to pts if we couldn't get the money from somewhere. I wouldn't want to be in a situation where my dog could still live a long and happy life on treatment and have to pts because I can't afford their bills

He's a golden retriever, so I would hope and expect him to get to 12 (hopefully older!). We can afford to save quite a lot and do have a decent pot of general savings too - I could save more than the cost of the premium.

Maybe I should renew it this year and save alongside.

I used to think the same until my 10 year-old dog needed ops, x-rays, scans, post-op treatment, painkillers. It doesn't take much and it all racks up really quickly. I ended up spending thousands over the course of a few months - and I'm fairly pragmatic about not over treating animals. I worked it out and that short but intense flurry of medical activity cost me more than I had paid in to PetPlan over the years and that wasn't counting the cost of the ongoing medication needed. It made me feel slightly better for all the pets I've had and have never /rarely claimed.

I think it probably depends on how risk averse you are. Past a certain age you're unlikely to put them through a huge amount of surgery and treatment and if you've got a good sum saved up then that might take you to the point where you would want them not to go through anymore in any event. But that only works if you've been saving for the 10 / 12 years up to that point and not had to use it.

I regard pet insurance as something I get for peace of mind - and I say this as someone who doesn't even have contents insurance.

Personally I wouldn't cancel DDog's insurance until he got elderly enough where anything requiring serious invasive expensive treatment wouldn't be in his best interests and I would choose to PTS instead.

I'd still want to make sure I had some savings though in case something readily resolvable came along.

We don’t insure, too many exclusions, put an amount away per month and have done every month since they were puppies.

I have a 16 year old dog who is still insured with PetPlan. At 7 he was robust and healthy and he stayed that way until just before he turned 15.

He now needs meds for his arthritis and another daily med for something else, plus regular monitoring and bloods and even with the extra percentage of costs we have to pay due to his age, we are still better off insuring him than not. I put in a claim every 6 months for his meds and consultations and because it’s an ongoing health condition and he has lifetime cover, we only have the one excess to pay per year.

It’s not always big tests, ops or treatments that cost, as they become older, it can be ongoing monthly costs to keep them comfortable that add up. If you have a decent policy it can also mean access to things like physio, hydrotherapy or acupuncture for arthritis, which can really help some dogs. At his age, I wouldn’t put my old boy through anything invasive or major, but it’s still been worth maintaining his insurance policy.

He’s a crossbreed (Lurcher) so probably a little cheaper to insure than a pedigree Golden, but for reference, we pay £75.00 a month for the highest cover and it hasn’t gone up much in the last couple of years.

I also had another Lurcher who we lost at 7 after two years of eyewateringly expensive specialist treatment for an auto-immune condition. If he hadn’t been insured we would have lost him so much earlier and he would have missed out on two happy years while his condition was well managed, as there was no way we could have self-funded over £20,000 in vet fees in under two years. (One med alone used to cost us £400 a fortnight, he needed monthly vet checks and bloods and spent the first week he was ill as an ITU inpatient at a specialist vet hospital.)

I did this when my large dog was about 10 as I had decided then never to put her through general anaesthesia again and she wasn't very energetic by then so her chances of bone fracture were small. I thought any vet bills would therefore be more affordable than the much increased premium. She went on another 3 years (just) and I didn't regret that decision.

I’m really really pro insurance.

But with multiple or older dogs sometimes it isn’t worth it. Especially if you wouldn’t do heroics or your dog is an unsuitable candidate for long term medications.

For example I’m paying £150/month now for 3. I can only claim £3k
If I had 9k in a pot I would not be paying it!

Our dog got sick at 9 months old with immune mediatedpolyarthitis; in 6 months he's cost over £6,000. One of his medications is over £200 a month.

Insurance allowed us to have the diagnostic tests to get a diagnosis and to then choose the most effective treatment with the greatest chance of a cure, rather than the cheapest option.

Without the diagnosis and knowing that there is a good chance of a full recovery, we would have considered euthanasia when he relapsed after a couple of months, as it looked really bleak. Knowing more about the condition enabled us to make an informed choice to continue treatment and we hope he'll be medication-free by the end of the year, with a good chance of it not reoccurring.

We have a savings account and have never had pet insurance. Looking back on a couple of decades of dog ownership, we are definitely quids in - to the tune of about 15k given what I know about the cost of insurance. It was the same with the cats.

In the same quandary. Ddog is 11, diabetic, blind, deaf and has a heart murmur. He had a 3k claim for pancreatitis, that sent the premium to £75 per month for 4kpa cover. I don't claim for his medication as it will push the premium even higher. I pay around £100 per month for the meds but I've kept the insurance in case he gets another condition I need to claim for.

I don't think we made the best choice with the original policy tbh.

It’s difficult. Had two dogs prior to my current dog and they never needed any costly treatment their entire lives.
Current dog I’ve had to spend thousands. He was insured, tore his cruciate but the premiums after that were extortionate. Tearing one means the other back leg is guaranteed to go and they won’t pay out a second time.
However when I told the vet that he’s no longer insured the MRI I needed for his ear infection was suddenly no longer required and steroids were given. The MRI was over 1k, the steroids were £70. He gets a prescription for pain killers and I use pet drugs online to obtain his medication as it’s so much cheaper.
I’ll be using savings for any further treatments he needs.

@Maneandfeathers

I’m really really pro insurance.

But with multiple or older dogs sometimes it isn’t worth it. Especially if you wouldn’t do heroics or your dog is an unsuitable candidate for long term medications.

For example I’m paying £150/month now for 3. I can only claim £3k
If I had 9k in a pot I would not be paying it!

Ditto - got 3 dogs from 2yrs to about 11ish. I don't think I will renew for the older dog next time - if anything major happened to him then I wouldn't put him through complex / distressing treatment. He's a rescue and was pretty traumatised when I got him 6 yrs ago, he's now generally a very happy dog and I wouldn't want him to go through any more trauma, I would do palliative care only. His insurance has shot up and I almost cancelled it this time, but decided on one more year.

I've always done this with older dogs.

I took a chance, stopped it and whacked loads into an account instead.

My 7yo greyhound got cancer. We weren't insured, it cost us 18k for full remission. Then she got ill again a few months later. A different cancer. Another 8k for tests and surgery, she died a week later. If we were insured, this wouldn't have hurt quite as much. RIP my favourite pet.

I had pet insurance with my last dog and had terrible problems trying to claim when she had cateracts. After refering my complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service we received the full amount back but it was extremely stressful and worrying. With my new dog, I save the equivalent amount in a separate account.

@Snakeplisskensmum can I ask who you're insured with? We have just been hit with a huge bill for treatment for our dog, but there were so many exclusions we didn’t get much back. Looking to move insurers now.

Some real food for thought here - thank you. Weighing up the number of dogs with the amount you can claim is a particularly interesting one.