Pet insurance – putting your pooch first is barking

I don’t have pets either, but I understand the point of the insurance and the psychology of having a pet. Owners actually see pets as their no.1 concern because when things are going bad or your depressed, your pet still loves you regardless and they show it more than a child or relative.

Also pets are way more fragile than humans and we have much stronger immune systems.

I do think that the evidence presented for this article is a little sketchy and circumstantial though. Pet insurance overall is to protect against the high costs of vet bills and that is something worth doing if you own a pet. Whether or not you are a single parent or earning a low wage is irrelevant and I don’t think it is a choice between your children and your dog.

It depends on how much you value “peace of mind” – I prefer to plan for problems beforehand.

I have a fair experience about dogs as pets – I have helped to find homes for unwanted dogs for many years and help run a kennels..

I have a contingency fund based on the lowest premiums I could find for my three large dogs. As I found the pet premiums were not cost effective as most usual problems like annual vet visits and teeth are NOT covered nor are pre-existant injuries – my dogs are greyhounds (a naturally healthy long lived breed) so if my dog injured a leg playing at home the insurance company would refuse to pay out on the ground the injury was caused or exacerbated by a “pre-existed” injury (leg injuries are common for racing greyhounds)..

But dog problems can be expensive – one cost me over £3000. But another only cost £80 for an injured foot with premiums at over £200 a year for that one dog – in her 13 year life I would have paid £2600 for an £80 injury.- not to mention a vast increase in premium when she reached 8 years old.

I realised this and stopped paying the premiums saving a fortune. The injured paw cost was paid very quickly by the insurance company.

In fact I have a large “profit” from the savings I made. The interest used to cover all vet expenses including annual visits. Actually my last 15 dogs have cost very little including euthanasia. which again isn’t covered anyway.. Normally around £200 per dog for it’s 10 year life at home. But this only works well if you have several dogs.

Many people have insurance because they know the cost for their single dog will be limited to a single annual premium.

But most of my dog owning friends use the contingency fund – which invariably works well even for a single dog (though the amount needed to be saved is higher proportionately than for multi dogs)

I recently made my first claim on my dog insurance. The total bill was £200+. By the time I’d paid £99 excess, and a 35% co-payment (should have read the small print) I actually received £66. The company required details of all my dealings with my vet in the 11 years of my dog’s life, and have excluded absolutely everything we’ve ever discussed – any heart condition, because of a minor heart murmur discovered at her first immunisations; fatty lumps; any joint condition (because we’d considered she might get arthritis with age) and any eye condition (because she has a thickening of the liquid in the eye). What exactly is it worth insuring her for??

Pet Insurance does not pay – unless the illness or injury occurs when the pet is young.

The charges are designed to return a profit for the insurer.

All existing problems are not covered. – nor are routine inoculations and inspections or problems such as teeth decay. In the main it is a con – but you do get peace of mind that some (not all) of the exceptionally high costs will be covered.

We do not recommend pet insurance for anyone who can afford to save the premium instead – as many problems are not expensive to treat – and a couple of incident free years will pay the cost.

We encourage those multi pet owners (as many of our adopters are) to make a contingency fund.

The only things that are worth insuring for are some cancers and very serious long term injuries – but these are only worth it they occur at a young age, Premiums increase enormously (triple) when a dog reaches 8 years old.

All in all it is not worth insuring them. The only dog I “lost” money on was one greyhound who had an anal cancer which cost £3000 to treat unsuccessfully. He was 11 y o and had £1890 in his “account” but I had also been using the account to pay for all the treatments and examinations that were not covered by the standard insurance.

Every single other dog has cost me less than the insurance premiums. So I made a “profit. Have not needed to save anything in recent years as the fund covers running costs (though recent low interest rates have caused capital to reduce)