Insurance cost for 10 week old puppy?!?

[7catsforthewin]

Hi there

We recently got a 10 week old long haired basset hound puppy. I have always used petplan for our cats but the lifetime insurance for £7000 is coming in at £75 a month?!? Is this typical? Others such as many pets for the same is £45 a month but I just don't know if they are any good?

Pet plan are excellent, pay out reliably and the lifetime insurance is great. I've never heard of many pets. Is the policy directly comparable? I suspect the lifetime policy premium for pet plan is high because basset hounds are prone to a lot of health problems. Personally I'd stick with pet plan because it's important to me to know that my insurer will pay out when I need them to. It's also worth asking your vet - they will know which insurance companies are reliable and which are a waste of money.

Many pets are very good. We have been with them for 8 years. Never any quibble about paying out on claims (we had quite a few!) . Our insurance now he is 8 is however very expensive but it’s worth it to have decent cover. We also have lifetime cover.

Petplan are amazing. I pay £75pm for our labradors for £12000 lifetime cover. I've claimed almost £10000 for my not yet two year old lab. That's 11 years worth of premiums.

Part of it is down to breed of dog and also your location. Basset Hounds aren’t the healthiest and the conditions they are prone too are incredibly expensive to fix.

I used Pet Plan for all mine. My boy is 3 and costs £85 a month. Dsis has his litter mate…20 mins down the road, £100 a month.

I wouldn’t trust any other insurer - I’ve heard some absolute horror stories about quite a few of them. The reasons Pet Plan is expensive is because they pay out where others don’t. You get what you pay for IMO.

This is starting to sound suspiciously like an advert for petplan. But we used them for our cockapoo as the lifetime insurance seemed important as they can often have lifetime allergy conditions. She has and it pays out significant sums every month without complaint.

A puppy is likely to be more expensive as they don’t have any history yet, also likely to get into things they shouldn’t, I don’t have any experience with petplan but I would say look at the excess and make sure you have lifetime cover , I got stung on that with my first dog & he was diagnosed with bad hips at less than 18 months old and then they were excluded for rest of his life .

I had an awful experience with Petplan, just to counter all of the above. I'd never go with them for that reason (refusal to pay for a claim - it was the insurance you get with the puppy from the breeder). Luckily that was the only claim we've had, so I don't know what my current insurer (Many Pets) is like.

I’m with Animal Friends and I think pay something like £6-£10 for our dachshund puppy.

We’ve got a 12 week old standard poodle pup and have gone with petplan, £12k cover is £44 a month so I assume it must be the breed pushing yours up.

It’ll be the breed. Nowhere near that for a spaniel puppy.

PetPlan are good, but expensive. We went with Kennel Club insurance for our Vizsla in the end which comes out at around £50/month compared to the £80 PetPlan wanted. Needed to use the KC insurance a couple of times already and not had any issues.

The other thing to consider is that with or without claims being made, the premiums will definitely go up over time as the dog ages so consider this now, because if you chop and change insurance companies, each time you move you’re potentially ruling out cover for pre-existing conditions. For example, by the end of her (10-year) life, we were paying PetPlan £250/month for £7,000 lifetime cover for our Rottweiler and couldn’t really change as she was on medications for a couple of chronic conditions by that point. I probably wouldn’t use them again for this reason.

Prices are area dependent as well as breed dependent. You'll generally pay more if you live in more expensive areas.

That'll likely be because you're covered for nothing, no offence. I just ran a quote for Animal Friends for a 2 month old Dashchund using my address (as mentioned above, prices near me are typically lower than other areas nearby).

£6 a month covers £1K of insurance with lifetime cover.

£30 a month covers £10k of insurance. Lifetime £5K cover is £25 a month.

Even factoring location changes, there is no way you can be paying £6-£10 a month for any sort of useful coverage i.e. coverage that will actually cover serious issues (like IVDD which can cost £3K+ at a minimum and which your dogs breed are incredibly pre-disposed to).

Actually, that’s not true. I am covered for a lot. My excess may be considered high.

I get vet fees for up to £2,500 per accident per year, up to a lifetime condition limit of £15k, in fact, here’s a screen shot. Excess is £250. Animal friends just deduct that from the total cost, rather than us paying it up front as my other dog (9 years old) is also insured and just had dental work of £500, but they’ll just reimburse us £250 out of that.

We rarely claim on our insurance. A healthy puppy will be a lot lot lower to insure compared with older dogs.

Also just fyi, my other dog is a daxie and we pay a premium for her due to her age and risk of IVDD, but I think we can afford to go for a lower package for a healthy puppy. That’s my view anyway.

Many Pets are reputable. They paid out my claims including TPLO Cruciate Surgery.

The only thing is sometimes they pay within a day, but sometimes it takes several weeks. They also seem to request verification from the vet surgery even for fully itemised receipts on an already approved claim. A little frustrating, but the saving on premiums vs Petplan was worthwhile.

At 6 years old I am STILL paying less on premiums for my dog with numerous claims over the last 5 years (for the same condition) than Petplan quoted for comparable cover when he was a healthy young puppy. I dread to think how far the premiums would have risen at his age.

Sadly lost my lovely dog this year but he was with animal friends on a platinum lifetime plan and they were excellent at paying out, direct to the vet, didn’t quibble things I honestly thought they would and were very sensitive in their comms when we lost him and immediately cancelled the policy and my monthly DD despite me having already claimed more than once for his “lifetime” condition against that year’s policy. I was paying around £100/month for a 9 year old pedigree breed and think that was for £4K per condition per year with an excess of £169 and a pre existing condition of seizures.

when the time is right and I get another dog I’d either go with them again or pet plan and I’d definitely get the lifetime policy again as you’ve done. Sadly vet costs are extortionate so I’d also increase the cover per condition as I think my £4K was too low (though luckily fine for my boy). Although you may get it cheaper elsewhere once you’ve committed to an insurer it’s hard to move if your dog develops something that’s long term and costly so depends on how risk averse you are and your access to other means like savings or interest free credit card etc.

when they’re younger they may be less at risk of health issues cropping up but if they do, or an accident or eating something they shouldn’t you may be more likely to want exploratory or invasive diagnostics or surgery which often costs a fortune.

What is not insured? Any claim for veterinary treatment of an illness

I would imagine that most people wanting insurance want cover for illnesses...

@RowsOfFlowers Bloody hell.

Not included is 'any veterinary treatment for an illness.' You do realise how broad-ranging that is, right? What that actually means in practice?
That could include even basic things like x-rays, blood tests, surgery. I really hope you have checked that's not the case...exclusions should be specific.

That's not pet insurance, it's accident only. That's them taking the royal piss out of you because that's not proper pet insurance. An accident, if your dog is run over, could be £10k so the low cover you have isn't going to do anything...

That’s accident insurance and most people looking for pet insurance want vet costs for both accident, illness and dental.

My dog has had all three and if it had just been accident we would have been seriously out of pocket.

Hard agree. My older dog is insured with animal friends and when I tried to make my first ever claim for her recently they were useless. Baring in mind she is coverd for 8k worth of cover they barely paid out for the 2k claim

they have something in the small print about not paying any part of the bill they consider to be excessive. So will pay max £28 for a blood test, if it cost £80 bad luck. &120 max for a consultation fee, if it was out of hours and £350 then bad luck. I had to pay £1300 !

Good job I take very good care of my dog then! I am not looking for a pile on here, I’ve taken out the level of cover that I think is appropriate to my dog and our circumstances!

@RowsOfFlowers It wasn’t a pile on.

But you were being disingenuous to say your insurance was so cheap on a thread clearly about comprehensive insurance. Your insurance its cheap because it doesn’t cover anything other than accidents and only £2.5K worth at that. It’s not at all comparable with the level of cover OP is presumably looking for (I don’t imagine many people would want insurance like yours - a broken leg, cancer treatment, IVDD treatment, cataracts, dysplasia etc would all not be covered under your insurance T&C). It might suit your circumstances but it wouldn’t suit 99% of dog owners. It’s also insanely expensive for that level of cover and that amount of exclusions - even if you’re happy with it, you are massively being taken for a ride.

@NorwichMom thats bloody terrible! Hope your girl is okay now ❤

Respectfully I have to disagree! I was simply offering an alternative. I wouldn’t want to spend more than £50 on a healthy puppy’s insurance! That’s extortionate, and I’d say that’s being taken for a ride actually. We will be claiming on her insurance shortly for an accident and had, so like I said, it suits our circumstances currently and I’m happy with that level of cover. As she ages, I’ll take out different options as I have done for my older dog. ☺️

We're with Petplan for our 7 year old golden retriever, she was a very healthy pup, working line with excellent genetic and congenital test results from both parents. She's still mostly very healthy and is a happy energetic dog who has only once had an accident that caused significant injury (i.e. needing vet treatment). That was when she was a pup and an older dog jumped on her, causing a very swollen eye (she was fine after painkillers and anti-inflammatories). So if we'd had your insurance we'd have paid for years for that one injury and had to cover virtually all other vet fees ourselves.

Over the years we've had about £10k worth of vet treatment (separately for a grass seed injury and a sore leg, both several years ago) and she costs Petplan around £75 each month for an anxiety medication, thanks to the Covid lockdowns! Her insurance is now £92 a month, so Petplan have still paid us more than we've paid them overall, though I appreciate that we/our dog have just been unlucky. We were with Kennel Club for our previous golden and they were a lot more expensive than petplan (they started off cheaper but rose very steeply each year).

If I were you OP I'd stick with Petplan and even consider upping to the higher cover because vet bills can be really astronomical now.