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Flo, our miniature labradoodle, is 10. When she was three she had a mass cell tumour off her neck. Aside from this, in good health.
We have been with RSA since getting her (now rebranded as John Lewis) and the renewal premium has come through at £1,006.49. This is for £3,500 of cover, lifetime and pre-existing, but that is the annual limit, not per condition. £350 excess.
So in the event of a claim, we will have £2,150 of net cover. If we cancel, save the grand and, touch wood, no issues this year, then next year we put a grand away and we are at £2,000 in the pot.
Further concerns from this line,
“Unfortunately, once a pet has been taken ill, in general they’re more likely to get ill again. That’s why, if a claim is paid, the price you will pay next year can double”.
Comforting.
Plan B is to not renew and just get a new policy, which will exclude pre-existing, for around £400 annually, so saving £600 a year.
Appetite for risk, not great.
Seems daft money, same premium as pretty much what my daughter will pay in insurance for her first car.
Not sure if I’m asking for advice, or sounding ideas, or pointing out the bleeding obvious aspect I have missed.
Everybody is different - if it were me in your shoes I’d go for a new policy in case anything new emerges, and self insure for the existing condition. I’m fortunate though in that if push came to shove we could cover it. In practice we don’t have any cover. My initial rationale for that was we paid £180 for the dog (retired greyhound), so could just get another - how things change 😂
When our last retriever passed 10 years old we stopped the insurance as it was getting over £700 (in 2009) and put some money ( much less than the premium) aside each year to at least partially cover any major bills. As you say, it’s a balance of risk and she hadn’t really had any problems (other than swallowing tubigrip requiring an op to remove as a youngster and then some theraband) She was nearly 17 when she died and so we were very lucky that we didn’t actually need any of it. We are currently thinking about doing the same for our current dog in a couple of years time
Have you shopped around for quotes?
Maybe it's a bit like cars/ phone insurance where if you stay with the same provider, you'll just get ripped off year on year.
We stopped ours ages ago, our border terrier is 15. Insurance well over £100 month? we've had to spend 2x £700 in last few years for dental work, which guess what?? Insurance doesnt cover?? I always tell people if your forward thinking enough I reckon its better to put £X a month into seperate account. Its there if you need it? (But we never followed our advice 🙂
We stopped paying pet insurance premiums about 15 years for our 2 hounds. We’ve accumulated £10k in premium bonds which is there to cover us. In that time, we’ve had 2 dogs pass - but neither required expensive procedures. We’ve had 6 dogs - basset hounds and Labradors - in around 30 years and I doubt their entire vet bills over that time would come to £10k.
Recently got a dog so did the whole insurance thing. It makes car insurance look transparent! But yes there are comparison websites.
Mind you glad we did as the dog needs a hip replacement, at almost 7k. Unfortunately insurance tops out at 4k, so the bike fund is taking a hit. As he's just a year old only cost us £130 for the year. Expect it will rocket next year!
Between insurance and personal money 2 swallowed tennis balls and a steroid responsive meningitis problem my dog has cost £15k in the last 18 months.
Insurance capped at £5k per year, blew through it last year and already spent it for this year too.
She'll be 2 next month and I'm not sure she'll see 3 at this rate!
Stick £100/month into a separate account. Guaranteed £1,000 payout after the first year, 100% cover of every condition including pre-existing and an excess payment of zero on any claim, no-claims bonus of all of it back. Do the same for anything else with an "extended warranty" or such.
It's very very individual.
About 17 years ago we did the "oh we'll rely on savings" thing - £5k later and one dog down, we decided we preferred to lose the money at different times from losing the dogs.
It does seem a bit pants that you're paying £1k but claims capped at 3, so tbh it might be worth spending £1.2k if claims then get capped at 2 or 3 times that and/or per condition!
We pay £131/month for our elderly dog but the cap is something like £7k/condition/year - it's one of the higher end Petplan schemes.
Or possibly £7k/year?
As a slight aside, do any of the self insurers have any sort of third party insurance for their dog?
That's the thing that bothers me. I'd be OK covering his vet bills, but a big third party claim could be very painful...
Great if you can afford to self insure, but my dog sliped a disk and incurred a £14k bill, all told.
If I didn't have the insurance, it would have been lethal injection time.
we actually had to pay 2k cash to top up the insurance payment, and he's my best friend, and still a very happy very alive dog.
Third party cover typically falls under the Contents/ buildings policy if not held elsewhere.
That £14k is some money, but we have £3,500 of cover. The premium for that cover must be eye watering.
3 scans, 3 spinal surgeries was the bulk of the cost.
Our experience with pet insurance is that it generally pays for its self, our dog is around £350 pa to insure and is 6yr old. Has had around 3k in insurance claims.
One of our cats had a 5k claim on insurance after a 'christmas' illness so our of hours and a stay at the vets at the most expensive time of year. The other was hit by a car a few years back, again thousands insurance claimed.
As a slight aside, do any of the self insurers have any sort of third party insurance for their dog?
Membership to the Dogs Trust provides 3rd party insurance.
It is like all insurance - you never know if you'll need it and some will gain from it while others lose.
I would definitely insure a new puppy for at least a year as they are an unknown and could have issues. After a few years you know if your animal is generally healthy or has ongoing issues and can decide to take the risk or not.
As they get much older the risk gets much higher, just like people, and they are much more likely to have medical needs and the insurance goes up accordingly.
If you have self insured since year 1 or 2 then you should be able to cover it but if you haven't then you may not have the spare £5k or so in which case the £1,000 (spread monthly) may be worthwhile to cover the risk.
Unlike all other insurance, as I'm sure you know, if you jump ship to a new insurer the new policy doesnt cover previous claims so any claims in the past 10 years. You say you've had to claim for a tumor to be removed so I'd be checking with new insurance possibility whether cancer will be covered as we all know the huge prevalence of dogs passing away with cancer related issues. If it were me it would be a choice between continuing to pay the current insurance or not having any insurance.
At 10 my ridgeback was costing a smidge over £100 but with a £4k per year limit and only a £100 excess. That excess seems really harsh.
It's tricky because although you say 'in good health' you just dont know that and dogs have a habit of hiding stuff, seeing as they cant talk. Ziva was fine symptom wise other than slowing down but seemingly happy it was only really me who pushed the checks as something didnt feel right and then suddenly her symptoms were obvious and she had a mass at the top of her lungs putting pressure on her windpipe.
I think at this point at 10 if it were me I'd carry on with the insurance but as I'm bringing home a puppy in June I'll be considering just putting the money to one side from day 1 instead but that gives me at least 10 years worth of saving. Different if you can find the £3.5k at the drop of a hat but I certainly can't.
I had a look at pet insurance when we got our first dog 11 years ago, but it seemed to be the opposite of what I wanted. On average you will always lose on insurance, otherwise the insurance companies wouldn't make any money. I'd be happy to pay a premium to cover the very unlikely but very expensive bill, but all of the policies I looked at had a cap on what they would pay. So, most of them just looked like a savings scheme where you'd probably get less that you paid in.
My general policy is only to take insurance on stuff I really couldn't cover (so car and house basically). I might lose on the dog, but gain on all the other stuff I haven't insured over the years.
Is it time to forget it?
Maybe. As above, it's about how comfortable you are with risk.
Flip a coin OP, it's as good as you'll get.
Reminds me, our dog is just about to hit 3 and with no issues to date we discussed knocking PetPlan on the head and saving the cash. I like the premium bonds idea.
Between insurance and personal money 2 swallowed tennis balls and a steroid responsive meningitis problem my dog has cost £15k in the last 18 months.
Insurance capped at £5k per year, blew through it last year and already spent it for this year too.
She’ll be 2 next month and I’m not sure she’ll see 3 at this rate!
I've had dogs most of my life, never paid for insurance (and we've horses too, again never insured).
I wouldn't spend anywhere near the kind of figures been quoted for vet bills, even though we could probably afford it, they're crackers amounts. I'd just get another dog.
We have a moggy; she cost £100 upfront including jabs etc.
I told my daughter's (semi-jokingly) when we got her that if the very bill was going to be more than the £100, we'd probably put her down. I quite love the little cretin now and logical spending would probably go out of the window. Nonetheless, the premiums in the OP sound like a rip-off by any measure.
Have you thought about looking into accident only cover? That may be a fair bit cheaper, gives you some cover, and you can still put some money aside for other health issues.
Ill health is one thing and with older dogs I probably wouldn't. Our old dalmatian passed last year and the insurance was no use really as vet bills seem to always be magically the same as the excess. Had we operated the insurance would have been useful but he wouldn't have recovered anyway.
We've insured our puppy though. Local person who we bumped into has a rescue and it ate something that required £3500 to be spent at the vets. So insurance is fine for us.
Eldest dog (now 8) wasn't insured to start with, I'd always joked that a shovel was much cheaper. When she was 6 months old she hurt her leg, I had nightmares, we insured 🙂 By the time we got the second dog (now 3) the premium was eye watering so we switched to something a little less comprehensive. I think we now pay about £60 per month for both dogs and a reasonable amount of cover.
As above, toss a coin.
I’d just get another dog.
Easy to say, much harder to do in reality. We didn't know what was wrong with our 6 month old pup when she just stopped moving one day, finding out involved 4 vets visits (turned out our local vets are less than useful), an MRI and a spinal tap plus several rounds of x-rays. The cost for that alone was more than most people would want to spend, I wasn't prepared to just terminate her there and then.
Getting a dog has been heart-breaking costly and I have no idea why people think this is a good idea. I love her, but I really can't see what would ever motivate me to do it again aside from utter madness.
I'll sell you a new dog for £500.
toby you have been very unlucky.
In 25 years of dog ownership we have paid less than £1,000 in vets fees, i guess we have been lucky too.
Breed can make a massive difference ours have been rescue whippet/lurcher types and a Patterdale terrier and they are generally very healthy.
I think if I was 'buying' a puppy at the moment I would consider insurance because such a high proportion of dogs must be effectively coming through puppy farms to feed the growth.
Membership to the Dogs Trust provides 3rd party insurance.
That's really good info - thank you!
We took the decision not to insure our dog until she was six (taking the risk that she wouldn't be as likely to need a vet when she was younger/fitter).
She was six last December.
Last November she ate half of a homemade chocolate brownie (so we knew exactly how much cocoa she had eaten). That was an expensive trip to the emergency vet and subsequent overnight stay for observations :-O
Our Spaniel cost us about £240 for his first year and then about £260 for his second year, he's nearly 2 years old now.
In that short space of time he's had a rope toy surgically removed, and ingested an unknown amount of cannabis (from the park). Which has made the insurance make sense, as both times it's cost between £1000-3000.
But our excess is only £85, if I was in your shoes I'd definitely consider self-insuring with the premiums you're looking. It also depends massively on your ability to foot a mega bill whilst you accumulate the capital, or whether or not you want to make a difficult decision.
We look at it a slightly different way with our dogs and their insurance. Our 2nd dog was diagnosed at 12 with cancer, which was operated on and treated with injections (£500 / injection and 4 required). That cost £5k total and he lasted another 2 years.
Having insurance takes money out of the decision as to whether to continue with the dog if/when it gets ill. Ask yourself whether a £5k bill would result in paying for treatment or euthanasia..... And then whether the euthanasia option would be what you would be prepared to go through with.
And can you afford the £100/month it costs now?
If you can afford it, and the dog is part of the family, then keep paying...
We did find that stopping & restarting insurance and/or trying to get a new policy with a different provider after the dog was aged 10 or so was incredibly difficult or expensive. They are high risk at this age.