Vet bills. Where would you draw the line?

[AsSureAsTheSunlight]

This is all purely hypothetical; the news about the cost of vet treatments has made me wonder where I would say no to treatment.

I have a 4.5 year old small-medium breed dog. I love the bones of her and she is my companion. She is insured under a lifetime policy up to £7000.

The insurance premiums for her are around £45 per month. I’ve seen in an article today in which a small breed surgery cost £10,000. That would be an additional £3000 for me to pay. I do not have that kind of money to top up treatment.

Hypothetically, in this situation I would need to PTS due to cost.

However, I see others paying £5000, £10,000 or more to top up treatments; this seems insane to me.

I wondered where others would stop?

We were in this situation when our dog was 2, he was insured for £4K (first time dog owners and quite naive) and he managed to eat a kebab stick, emergency surgery, touch and go and in intensive care for 8 days.

We had to make the decision weather to pay up or let him go, luckily we went with the former and he is now a happy 7yo with a bit of a lung missing. But bloody hell it was tough and the final bill was about £10K.

Of course now that he has previous claims, we are stuck with the initial insurer (Tesco, which were great tbf)

Dogs trust to fabulous liability insurance for £25 per year by being a member of the companion club.

Also includes over the phone vet advice for 5p a minute. Handy for out of hours.