Vet fees

[SurreyHillsinspring]

Out of hours fees round my way are minimum £290 ,and that's just for the initial consultation. I thought best get insurance, but DW sais too expensive. When I rang the nearest one had just closed ten minutes away.So fourty five minutes away was all that was available.

Just a note on dog insurance, don't even think about insurance for less than £5k; go for at least £10k if you can afford the premiums. If they become ill you can rack up £2k just in initial tests and scans, before treatment even starts. A back operation for one of my customer's dogs cost £18k. We are so lucky we don't have to pay upfront for human health care.

Is it just one vet that covers a wide geographical area?Excuse my ignorance but do you have a sort of triage nurse/additional vet if alot of emergencies arrive at the same time?

@SurreyHillsinspring thank u....yes, it's been an awful time....very sad 😔

i have had pets since 1994 and never claimed on insurance.
i have only had insurance since 2013 and got away without needing any pet insurance at all.

Yes, you'll usually have atleast one vet and a couple of nurses, often with another vet on call for if shit really hits the fan.
Exceptions may be rural practices, but in the city / suburban practices I worked at there were always several staff at night for safety reasons if open to emergencies overnight, & so emergency surgeries could be carried out (vets operate but nurses usually monitor anaesthesia).
This is probably why it wasn't local practice - not practical or cost effective to staff every small branch overnight (nor do all the small ones have appropriate facilities for emergency care), so many either outsource to an emergency overnight service or consolidate their overnight service at their larger hospital location.

It's worth remembering that veterinary care has come on no end.

In the 80s, my childhood dog had a slipped disc. It was diagnosed on the basis of symptoms - no scans available. The only treatment was painkillers, rest and, when that didn't work, euthanasia.

Fifteen years ago my dog had similar symptoms. She had an MRI (which found it was something else), steriods, and physio. We had to travel to London for the MRI, as it was unusual for a pet dog to have back then.

This autumn my current dog also had neck pain. My own vets has a CT scanner. She's had multiple CTs and MRIs, including with her moving, and might have had neurosurgery. Fortunately she didn't need it, but it was on the table as a possible option.

Clearly those options carry very different costs.

The reason vets bills can rack up in a way they never used to is because vets can do so so much more than they ever could. If you're not insured, then you need to be able to handle an unexpected bill in the tens of thousands. Because, if you can't, you may have to find yourself saying 'no' to a lifesaving option because of cost.

Where we live all local practices outsource to a specialist out of hours provider in a town 10 miles away. They have state of the art facilities operating in evenings and weekends all year round. But yes a schlep to get to from some places. We had to have a dog put down there one Sunday afternoon.

Re the sparse cover of out of hours vets - I think there's a shortage of vets (partly due to brexit as I understand it) so I guess there are now few who want to work unsocial hours?

You pays your money or you takes your chance re insurance. So long as you've got savings which you can access quickly and are willing to unhesitatingly spend it if the need arises, then maybe you don't need it. However, there is another aspect which is overlooked - a good pet insurance policy should include substantial liability cover. If your pet causes a life-changing accident (it may be highly unlikely but it can happen) then you could be liable for many millions.

I think there have been cases where a dog has tripped a runner over and the owners had to pay out for lost earnings etc arising out of injuries sustained. My own doh once ran in front of a cyclist on a path through woods who was unseated as a result. Nothing came of that thank goodness but it could have been terrible.

^ This

Out if hours is a bit different, but is it out of hours? I couldn’t get a routine appointment in the middle of the day and had to pay £500. You got off lightly.

YANBU because owning a dog shouldn’t cost this much. It’s why dogs are being handed in to shelters. Medication is grossly over priced at veterinary practices. Give over with the “you can’t afford a dog if you can’t pay hundreds out on a whim” argument.

There was a case of a medium size brown dog last year that knocked over a lady last I heard she was seriously ill.My puppy will be large and he's already very fast and i've finally last trained him to stop leaping at people so it's obviously now sensible to get insurance. The slim chance of a bill for millions having to sell the house as the only option would not go down well with the kids...inheritance wise.
I did have a daft old brown rescue lab that would often walk in front of people and stop.He died of a stroke at nineteen according to the vet ,but luckily no incidents occurred.
I'll have to set it up.Unfortunely I can't show DW the thread she won't be impressed about the fact I'm on mumsnet, I really will be in the doghouse.🙂

Out if hours is a bit different, but is it out of hours? I couldn’t get a routine appointment in the middle of the day and had to pay £500. You got off lightly.

If you couldn't get a routine appointment in the middle of the day, that indicates you're in an area with a shortage of vets. There's been an upsurge in pet ownership coinciding with a decline in number of vets (I heard quite a lot were Europeans who left following brexit. ) .

I don't know how anyone could even consider owning a pet without having insurance - it's irresponsible.

Mine comes with a 24 hour helpline where you can speak to a vet online for free. We had to use the service this week and they were fantastic.

I honestly think a lot of people don't realise how easy it is to suddenly be faced with a four figure vet bill especially if they had dogs years ago when vet care wasn't anywhere near what it is like today.

It's only when people are faced with a decision to PTS simply because they can't pay the bill do they realise how important insurance can be.

My dog is 4 in 2 weeks. So far we have had almost 2 years of medication for allergies at £80 every 4 weeks, & we just had a diagnosis of IBD which has so far cost over £2000. So yeah although my premiums have gone up significantly I'm still lucky I took out insurance, as I have only got a yearly excess of £120 for both conditions

That's usually covered on your house insurance.

That's usually covered on your house insurance.

The max payout on most house insurances isn't actually enough to cover lifetime care if a child is grievously injured nowadays. Separate pet cover should give a larger sum. Similar applies to the wisdom of cycle insurance.

I don't have pet insurance now as it's astronomically expensive - I (stupidly) paid £90 a month to Petplan for two years until I cancelled it 4 years ago (first 2 years of this dogs life)

I've saved £40 a month every month since then and dog is now 6 - so I have a good amount saved up

I've had pets for 30 years and spent thousands on insurance- I'm not doing that anymore

There's also loads of treatments I wouldn't do now after horrible experiences (for the pet and me) because it's 'covered by insurance'

Both of our dogs have had their share of problems over the past 7 years.

yes insurance can be expensive (£60 a month per dog…) however PetPlan have been brilliant. We’ve claimed about £12,000 worth of treatments and operations for both dogs during that time, which is a lot more than we will pay in premiums, and they’ve covered every penny (minus the excess per claim).