Insurance?

[Miesque]

Who do you use to insure your dogs? Do you find it cost effective or is a slush fund a better idea?

[James]

upto 3 dogs it might be cheaper to have insurance if they are working hard two or three times a week, I say that as the more they do greater the chance of using it. After that I find its cheaper to save each month, we have a good amount and our vets bill last year was over £3500. That was for everything from tail docking pups to minor surgery. Most of the bills were below the excess amounts and only a couple came over it, so all in all not worth it for us.

[AlandJake]

Mmmm good question.

Like James I have had several visits to the vet for relatively minor things, all falling below the policy excess, but £60 here or £90 there isn't much fun on top of the pleasure of paying the monthly premiums.

That said, my policy does include 3rd party liability cover so should Jake cause an accident (or be accused of causing it) I will have the insurer's lawyers behind me. That is certainly something I would not want to be un-insured against.

I may have to double check my household policy to see if my 3rd party cover includes pets.

I can certainly appreciate that where you have several dogs that contributing to a monthly sinking fund makes sense, building up to a level that you would feel gives you a comfoirtabke buffer against a major vet bill makes a lot of sense, when you consider the cost of insuring three, four or five dogs.

[shropshirelad]

I took out insurance for my ess. It is a no frills cover. It only includes illness and injury. Some cover I looked at were frighteningly expensive, covering all sorts of things which some people might think is good but was way out of my price range. I think I paid about £160pa for upto £2,000 an incident & £1m 3rd party liability.(Debenhams)

[James]

the last time I looked into it, the price to cover all of ours was over £2000 a year. Way to much when you think of my last years bill only around £400 was covered so adding them together makes it around the £5000 mark. Simply not worth it for us.

[Judy]

For third party insurance check out the Dog's Trust

http://www.dogstrust.org.uk/giving/memb ... aUTJ5G9KSM.

[AJS]

Just got a quote from Kennel Club.

They want over £600 a year to insure Ozka and because he had Blepharitis when I collected him it is an automatic exclusion.

I will check around for a more reasonable quote.

But I have to say Kennel Club never questioned the bills for Archie's cancer treatment which ran up to the £10K limit

[AlandJake]

Thinking after I turned the tablet off last night, one of the attractions for taking out fully comp insurance for Jake was to cover the cost of any medication he may require for long term illness later in life. He was six when we adopted him and many of the policies we looked at would not give life of illness cover for dogs over 8yo. However if the policy was taken out before 8th birthday and maintained uninterrupted then he would be covered for any medication he may require in later years. So for us that made sense, however if you are starting from a pup, you may well get away with putting a much lesser amount away per month and still end up with a couple of grand stashed away by the time they are ten. If you have a kennel full of dogs you might benefit from a 'portfolio effect' that probably not all of your digs would require the exact same (expensive) medical treatment at the same time.

So for us it made sense with Jake, but we may do things slightly differently with number two, whenever that is.

[Tungulria]

Pet wise through the countryside alliance accident and 3rd party only covering working dogs is just £5.75 a month per dog. I've claimed and never had a premium rise. £60 excess and prompt payout. Works for me even with 4 dogs.

[Malfuss]

Wow, I'm paying £70-75/month for our bullmastiff. It is the all singing and dancing cover and to be fair we have had to use it and so far have more than covered the cost.