Pet Insurance – a few things to think about
Do you need insurance for your dog?
Public
Liability
The
simple answer is Yes because you are liable for your dog’s actions. If it
causes an accident, say by running out in front of a car, attacks livestock
or bites someone, a claim can be made against you. Where you might be able
to placate a farmer with £10 for a dead duck, compensation to a young family
for the death of their mother could easily hit the £1million mark. Provide
your dog is not one of the breeds listed under the Dangerous Dogs
legislation, the public liability section of your householder’s insurance
will often cover you for third party costs in respect of your dog, or it can
be extended to do so at a fairly low cost. But you are not responsible for
your cat, an interesting point of law.
What
else do I need insurance for?
You
don’t need medical insurance for your dog but it would be sensible to
consider having a policy. There are basically two options, pay for
treatment yourself, as and when problems arise or have an insurance policy
to cover some of the costs.
Paying for treatment yourself
If you decide against a medical insurance policy, it’s generally a good idea
to have a separate account or a sock under the mattress where you put away
enough money to cover regular bills such as shots and an extra amount for
emergencies. Perhaps £250 per year, and if you have a healthy dog, perhaps
after ten years you will have £2000 saved. If your dog has a problem that
was not obvious when you bought him as a pup, hip dysplasia for example,
medication and treatment could cost several hundred pounds per year and an
operation £2000 -£3000 per hip. If you are buying a puppy, asking to see
the sire and dam’s health screening certificates will help you to minimize
the risks. But you may have a rescue dog or a friend who has already been
with you a couple of years. If the dog has an existing condition it is much
harder to get medical insurance at a reasonable price and usually the
existing condition is excluded anyway.
Thinking
about an insurance policy
There
are a lot of them out there, some good, some moderate and some rip offs.
The first thing to consider is not the price but the cover. No insurance
policy will cover you for preventive medicine, such as annual shots and even
for unexpected conditions, accident or disease there will generally be an
exclusion (fixed sum per condition, say £50 -£100) and then an excess
perhaps 10% -20% for ongoing treatments for that condition. The worst
policies operate like this: there is a low exclusion and a low excess but
if a condition develops you are covered only for twelve months and after
that, if you continue the insurance, that condition is excluded. The better
policies cost more, generally, but the condition that has developed is not
excluded after twelve months and you can continue the insurance for the
whole life of the dog. There is of course a catch, the insurance can
continue but the premium will almost certainly go up, perhaps considerably.
Once your dog has an existing condition, as noted earlier, it is much harder
to change insurers and most will not take on a dog over the age of eight
anyway.
Heres’s a couple of examples from my own two dogs for the same 12 month period.
Glen
Jodie
Regular Shots £ 40 Regular
Shots
£40
Lacerated tongue £ 15 Extra shot
for whelping £80
Dislocated toe £ 40
Worm and tick treatments £
40 Worm and tick treatments £40
Cut tail £ 65
Histiocytoma (operation cytology) £180
Histiocytoma (receded naturally) £25
Pet
insurance £230 Pet
insurance £230
Totals £610 £415
Claim – Histiocytoma £117 No claim £ 0
£493 £415
The preventive treatments are excluded, all the others apart from Glen’s operation and cut tail were separate conditions and under the first £50 exclusion limit. I claimed for the operation but not the £13.50 I could have got for the cut tail as I didn’t want the renewal premium to increase too much. If I had put £500 each away for them and not taken insurance I would have had £120 left in Glen’s account and £315 in Jodie’s. But I would not have had the peace of mind knowing that if a major accident happened, the majority of the costs would be covered.
Further information
There are a lot of insurance policies around and the levels of cover vary, costs for recovering a lost pet, kenneling if you have to go into hospital, purchase price refunded if a young dog dies or has to be pts, some alternative therapies can be included if you vet recommends them and so on. Also, there’s public liability included for third party claims. You do need to read the small print and compare the premiums if you are thinking about insurance.
Which? did a report on Pet Insurance in December 2003 that covers the basics and gives information on best buy policies at that time (outdated now of course). A lot of people in the forum have pet insurance and Marks & Spencer seems to be a favoured one at the moment, April 2006 please note this is not a recommendation – but if you are thinking of insurance, start a thread in the forum and get people to give you up to date views.