Dog insurance

[bunn]

Next  year's Mollydog insurance is £280 - up from £247 this year.   She's now 9.  I have never had to claim on her insurance...

There probably comes a point as dogs get older, slower, more sensible and more expensive that it no longer makes sense to buy insurance, but just cross fingers and use savings if necessary.  But is that this year...?

Comments

[purplecat]

Would it be possible to get legal+long term illness insurance?

I mean it sounds to me like its not really a case of she's old enough and reliable enough not to bother with the insurance because you probably want the legal cover no matter how reliable she is, but you might be able to find someone to cover that where they take into account age and reliability and the insurance goes down.

Obviously that would seem to be outweighed by the fact that chances of needing long-term medical care must be going up....

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of long term care insurance for pets before*, but I'd be interested to hear if it was indeed available.

*This does, of course, mean very little, as I neither work in general (non-life) insurance nor have a pet myself.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Moll's policy covers up to £7000 of vet bills a year for anything that doesn't pre-date the start of the policy, so I think should cover stuff that is not quickly fixable. I know people who have claimed on similar policies for stuff like therapy as a result of hip dysplasia, for example.

I've kicked myself regularly for switching from the 6 week Petplan policy that came with Molls from the rescue, to an M&S policy, while she had a slight limp. At the time I expected the limp to clear up fairly quickly, but it slowly got worse, so x-rays, acupuncture, and pain relief all need to be paid for rather than claimed for, as they are all resulting from that one pre-existing condition.

They are quite generous in how they define 'pre-existing' actually - it has to be something previously investigated by a vet or otherwise known to the owner. Moll's arthritic leg is certainly down to a racing injury, but as at that stage she was quite young and had been on kennel rest for months, it wasn't visible when I adopted her, so I could have claimed for it.

However, I don't think there is a policy that just does legal and longterm. I could increase the policy excess though probably, I'll see what difference that would make.

Currently thinking I'll probably renew just for the peace of mind. When dealing with badly broken dog is not when I want to be worrying about costs...