Worth getting pet insurance for Shih Tzu ?????

harkin_c

yet another fan of insurance I'm afraid.

When I first got my dog I was unsure whether to get insurance or not. I got insurance through a cashback website and had only paid £13 in total when I claimed £3000 for an emergency operation.

For me it offers a great peace of mind - if William gets ill I know I can take him for treatment and the cost will never have to be a consideration only the best possible care for him. Believe me when your dog is ill the last thing you need to worry about is money.

Also you get liability insurance with most policies which is very importnat in case your dog ever accidentally causes any damage to other people. This is what convinced me - if your dog somehow ran in front of a car and caused an accident you would be liable and insurance against this kind of incident is important.

gettingready

I now have cancelled my cat insurance as they are young, indoor only and I have a good cat vets around that work on charity basis - as I have recently lost a job, cat insurance I had to let go.

But I would not be without dog insurance for Zara. I pay £32 per month for Artgos Premium or Gold or whatever it is called but Zara is a German Shepherd so insurance for them is always that little bit more

With dog going out anything can happen so better to be safe than sorry....

dizziblonde

I've never needed to claim for the cat - but I still have it because I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if anything did go wrong with her and I didn't have the cash available to get her treated. The dog is currently uninsured - waiting for a free month of pet plan to kick in via the rescue bods, after that it'll be shopping around for more permanent cover time.

hethmar

Most unusual for a vet to not promote pet insurance! Its luck isnt it. Like all insurance, its a waste of money if you dont use it, but a blessing if you do need it. One of my dogs has developed a chronic eye problem which requires £42.50 (and rising) medication every month. At the moment that outweighs my insurance premium costs by 100%.

pigeonpie

my 2 cats both ran up bills of £9000+ in the 2 years before they died and pet insurance covered a good deal of it. I'd have had to have them pts much earlier without insurance. Take it out please - vets are a hugely expensive with fees, blood tests, hospital (often necessary for a drip etc), drugs etc. Just read the small print or ask what the exclusions are and make sure the condition is adequately covered for life as many expensive illnesses are chronic and won't resolve in 1 year. I would be suspicious of any vet that didn't think pet insurance in the UK is a good idea! Some vets pts very easily, at the first sign of illness and some owners do too - that's the only instance I can think of where insurance isn't a good idea. I have a problem with that attitude by both vets and owners but it's all too common....

You need to get a good policy up front when your pet's well so there are no exclusions. Plus once you are with a company and have made a claim, the illness covered by that claim would probably be excluded if you move insurer, so choose very carefully upfront.
I was with Animal Friends and was happy with their claim settlement and CS.

There_Goes_Trouble

gettingready wrote: »

I now have cancelled my cat insurance as they are young, indoor only and I have a good cat vets around that work on charity basis - as I have recently lost a job, cat insurance I had to let go.

This is not a point aimed at you GR as I have seen your other post regarding cutting down, but felt I should just point out the obvious here - I'm sure you've already thought it through since you've had a lot to consider lately but others may not have thought it through in such detail and might think indoor cats don't need insurance, so am just ensuring all information is considered...

A young indoor cat might be less prone to being involved in an accident and may be less likely to pick up contagious infections due to less interaction with other cats, but it does not exclude them from illness - diabetes, epilepsy, pancreatitis, kidney disease, urinary tract infections, cancer etc. All of those (and many more) can be long term and very expensive so indoor cats still need insurance.

As I said GR that's not aimed at you but just to remind other people who may not have considered it in as much detail as you have. Don't cancel your policy because your cat is an indoor cat, without thinking through all possible scenarios.

pinkcandyflossprincess

Hi
my moms shih tzu has had a few unfortunate incidents (including going blind in one eye:() that im sure would have been less costly with pet insurance. although they are lovely dogs they do come with numerous predisposed conditions as do most breeds i guess, its hard to predict the future but there are bound to be vets bills along the way so it may be worth taking it out.

sarah*a

Another insurance fan here

We have More Th>n for our two and pay about £25 a month (for the two). Since Tix was diagnosed with Diabetes in May 2010 we've claimed for about £1000 of treatment - will be about the same for the next 6 months then hopefully will settle down to about £1000 a year.

Without the insurance we would have had to have rehomed him - which would have traumatised him (he's blind, practically deaf and a total mummys boy ) or had him PTS - which would have traumatised me.

We did work it out - insurance versus putting money aside - and if we had put the £25 a month in a savings account it would be all long gone by now and we would be having to make some very hard decisions

Insurance for us has literally been a lifesaver

Mrs_B

I wouldn't be without insurance for my dogs - some year's I have used it others not - but the times it has been used have been for completely unexpected things, which could happen at any time to any breed of dog. One of my dogs broke a tooth - there were complications, and the final bill was around £800. Another time there was a skin problem, the cause of which was difficult to diagnose, and took tests and an X-ray to diagnose - £250.

More than that though, I think that any dog could be in an incident that could result in a broken bone, and that will soon run into a high cost vet's bill.

The one thing I do look out for with insurance for my dogs is that the cover is for a decent amount (£1,000 cover goes nowhere if something is seriously wrong), and that it is for life - some policies will only cover care for a new medical condition for one year - so if your dog develops diabetes, epilepsy, cancer, or anything which continues for more than 12 months, they stop paying. So I just make sure that any policy I choose will pay out on the same condition for the life of the dog.

At the end of the day I know that I will never have to make a decision about the quality of my dog's life based on the cost of a vet's bill.

poppy_f1

our last 2 dogs both ended up with a serious ongoing condition (this was in the days beforre per insurace was readily available) so when we got barney i was adamant that i got pet insurance, for the first year hes was with petplan then for next 2 with the post office insurnace
on new years day i discovered a small lump under his foreleg, small pea like and seemed moveable not giving barney any pain
anyway yesterday at the vet who recommended that it be removed so barneys getting an op tomorrow worst case its gonna cos me £400
luckily the insurace will cover it less the excess