MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
A couple of weeks ago our seven year old male moggy, Button, became unwell very quickly. In the morning he was trying but failing to urinate, frequently spending upwards of ten minutes perched in his tray. By evening he was obviously in pain; yowling and struggling to get into a comfortable position. I tried to measure his heart rate but it was off the scale His resp rate was 80.
This was serious. I took him to the emergency pet hospital. Examination showed he had a blocked urethra. His bladder had ballooned and his kidneys were beginning to fail. his heart too was at risk due to deranged potassium and calcium levels. On admission, his heart rate was 240.
He came home to us after two days in the hospital. The poor bugger had been through the mill but was okay. He'd been shaved for ultrasound scanning and had been catheterised. He'd had all kind of drugs including methadone!
We got a letter from our insurer this morning to inform us that they'd settled the claim in full.
Total cost for treatment : £1508.00 😯
I'm not saying it's outlandish, I'm just saying that I'm glad we had insurance!
my dog had pneumonia when she was about 8. x-rayed twice ( so put out, and kept in until recovered ) and three loads of anti-biotics. nearly 4k.
she's 11 now.
Our little boy cat had a similar problem when he was little. Crystals in the urethra but luckily they all came out before it got too serious - big pool of blood filled urine on the floor, poor little thing. We take great care with his diet now, making sure he has plenty of wet food and doesn't get dehydrated. It's scary!
Always a relief when the insurance company pays out, I can't believe some people don't insure their pets?
If you can't afford the monthly payment can you really afford to look after an animal properly?
We are getting on to £5K of vet fees for our 2 dogs this year (amputated toe, X-rays & a titanium knee replacement) and I dread to think how much the rabbit's would have cost without it!
My neighbours are two retired vets, they had a dozen practices around the country. Their retirement is spent mostly polishing a fleet of classic Aston Martins and Ferraris.
Honesty, it's only a cat. Or dog. No shortage of them round here. In fact the rescues are overflowing. Painless injection and a replacement model is surely the sensible choice.
To counter this we have an 18 year old cat we have had insured from the day we got her from a rescue centre at 18 months old. As yet not had an occasion to use the insurance (thankfully) but have probably paid out circa £3-4K in fees in that time. Once paying out it's hard to stop even if you are not superstitious just in case sod and his laws is waiting around the corner and you end up paying a lifetime of fees and a hefty bill.
Private medical insurance is effectively just the same as pet insurance - until recently we were like many households where the only member of the family with private medical insurance was the cat!
Arguably.......If you can't afford [s]the monthly payment[/s] to be self insured and pay out as and when you need to can you really afford to look after an animal properly?
If we ever get another pet after her highness pops her clogs we'll be self insuring them.
Our ex cat (now lives with sister in law) has the crystals problem. He has just had his outy made an inny to stop the build up!
Honesty, it's only a cat. Or dog. No shortage of them round here. In fact the rescues are overflowing. Painless injection and a replacement model is surely the sensible choice.
You're either trolling or you live alone with your dick immersed in mouthwash.
Nope, we look after a number of rescue cats.
Used to be rats and mice - some people (usually in the USA) spend ludicrous amounts of money prolonging their lives by a few miserable weeks with tumour ops etc. We used to get a quick injection. Obviously the break even point is different for other animals but there's got to be a point where even the most dedicated cat keeper has to say enough. Hasn't there?
Always a relief when the insurance company pays out, I can't believe some people don't insure their pets?
If you can't afford the monthly payment can you really afford to look after an animal properly?
If you can't afford to pay the Vets' bills , can you really afford to own an animal?
I've had several dogs and cats in the last 40 years; none were insured but none lacked for love or care.
Pet insurance allows people to buy poncy pedigrees they couldn't otherwise afford to care for and allows puppy farmers to pump out 2nd rate, shonky pups. (but someone else is paying so never mind they might have a lifetime of pain or discomfort).
no criticism of the OP, his was a moggy.
(i'm with the captain , btw)
+1 for the Captain. A dog/cat is NOT one of the family. Do your children live for ten years, die and get instantly replaced?
Tens of thousand animals get killed every day so we can eat them, by all means love your pets (we adore our tom cat) but please folks, a little common sense??
McMoonter's comment hits the nail on the head for me; fools & their money etc..
I'm as pragmatic about the subject as the next person, but this statement is pish (ie; it may be true for you, but I'd wager it isn't for most pet owners) unless you are talking strict biology. I like my dog a lot more than I like some of my human (extended) family. Difference is, we are allowed to make sensible pragmatic decisions regarding the cost/benefit ratio of treatments with pets. Not so much with batty old relatives, mores the pity. 😉A dog/cat is NOT one of the family.
Insurance companies not in cahoots with the veterinary industry in the slightest.... much in the same way as car insurers and their preferred body shops.
Every time there's a car insurance thread there are comments about how insurance companies are blood sucking scum.
Every time there's a pet insurance thread it's all "so glad we had pet insurance".
The industry as a whole makes an underwriting loss on car insurance.
Pet insurance is insanely profitable for insurers.
Funny what emotion does.
Some right dicks on this thread so far. Most of us who have pets in our life will form an emotional bond with them - ergo, they become part of the family. If I didn't do everything possible to help one of my ill pets, I'd beat myself up about it - still gutted 4 years on, that I couldn't be with my hound when he passed.
In that year we also lost 2 pups - vet bills for the three dogs were around £10k. I'm rather glad we had insurance and also did everything we could for them
We have a male cat who suffers blocking, OH is a vet and we still have insurance and use it.
And for those who think vets are making a killing...the OH would probably gladly perform one of her most common surgeries on you FOC. She gets 2 sundays and 1 saturday a month off, spends 2 nights a month on call answering the phone to calls at 2am that are along the lines of "well my dog has been vomiting for 3 days now but we've been too busy to get it to the vet..." and she is not even close to my salary and I am just an engineer...
Pet insurance is insanely profitable for insurers.
actually, it's not. Up until recently for most firms it's been a loss leader while the market develops.
Now people believe they can own an expensive, but often poorly, bred pedigree animal and someone else will, for a fixed fee, take over the running costs you can expect your monthly premiums to take a serious hike.
There is now an expectation that someone else will pay. Why should pets be any different?
OH is a vet and we still have insurance and use it.
Genuine question - why?
I would have thought if your pet got ill your OH would do the work or ask one of her colleagues to do it if it was outside of her skills set. Would the surgery she works for not at least charge a heavily discounted staff discount for costs incurred? Leaving just the drugs and you must get them at least at trade if you are in the business surely. I appreciate the ratio of the total cost to the cost of the drugs varies hugely but even so free or nearly free labour must be a huge saving.
Given pet insurance is a profit making business you would have to be extraordinarily unlucky to have access to cheap(er) veterinary services and it still be cost effective to have insurance rather than self insure.
The thing about having insurance is you hope you never have to use it. I once took one of my dogs to the vets, she needed some medication, the vet brought the meds out I asked how much they were? She said 'you are insured aren't you?' I replied no, she then said 'oh I'll get the cheaper medication then' 😯
It's a racket.
Sorry, pets can be part of the family.
Derek, we had the same happen to our last cat - Douglas. He lived another very happy 15 years after having what sounds like similar surgery to Nixies cat. All the best to the wee chap.
A mate of mine has a rabbit that broke it's leg. He didn't have insurance and was quoted something like £30 to put it down, £500 to amputate the limb or £800 to have a titanium plate inserted (which they said could lead to infection and amputation anyway). He chose amputation and stumped up the cash (pun intended). I think if you have a pet then you have a duty of care to look after that pet too.
our lab had to get an acl operation done at what would have been the cost of £2400. i paid insurance at the cost of £100 p/a for 2 years prior. i think it was worth having.
Of course people can make that sort of choice if they want. I'd have made a different one. Our pets have all had good lives while they were with us (well, aside from one or two rat/mouse interactions when we were a bit swamped). But at the end of the day they are only animals and we are quite happy with the idea of killing and eating other species, so I don't really see the point is spending a fortune keeping one particular specimen alive.
Our pets have all had good lives
Quite sure about that?
[i]I can't believe some people don't insure their pets?[/i]
I can't believe some people would pay for pet insurance when they could (on a long term basis) put it into a savings account for vet fee's.
I'd shudder to think how much it would cost to insure two horses, two rabbits and two cats. (I would guess at well over £3k per year, with exclusions on the horses)
Pet insurance can result in higher vets fee's, generally gets unaffordable as the pet ages and is more likely to need treatment, and can encourage (in some cases) prolonged treatment that is more in the interests of the owner and not the animal. We've had experience of additional 'treatment' being offered for insured animals, and vets charging full rate callout fees for horses, despite being the 'area' day when they charge a reduced amount, or would normally split the callout between the number of horses being looked at. This is down to the practise owners and not the employees/vets, who I'm sure find this difficult.
We used to have a horse insured. We cancelled it after several years as the excess meant we couldn't use it to cover simple call outs and minor injuries, the maximum wouldn't cover several major operations (colic surgery etc) and it didn't cover any injury obtained whilst competing the horse.
We got a second horse, and through a series of unfortunate incidents, dug deep into the 'vets' savings account. Initially we kicked ourselves for not insuring...but on reflection;
One incident would not have been covered due to a pre-existing condition (unrelated but the same limb).
Another would have blown the insurance limit significantly, and the vet had said that if we were insured, he would have recommended additional treatment (£££) with a lower success rate, before probably going for the best treatment (££££). Instead, we went straight for the option with the best success rate. (and cut months off the treatment time)
A further incident would have blown the insurance limit, except for the fact we were still in the same year so we'd have paid every penny anyway. This one involved a big wound and we ended up buying medical supplies and dressings online for months with loads of visit fee's.
So although it was painful, hopefully it was a bad 18 months and we'd have paid the majority of it anyway...
I choose no pet insurance and had to pay out a few big bills are couple of times but they're worth it as they're part of the family not a joint I bought in the butchers.
I'm pleased my "not part of the family" elicited the response anticipated.
People in this country are mental about the animals they decide are not kosher to eat. In the time it takes to write the cheque to save that Romanian donkey from the bresaola factory, dozens of cows have been slaughtered. Sorry, I really don't understand the difference.
The idea that you can't love your pet and still be pragmatic about ending its life after an serious injury/illness is frankly moronic. Amputating a rabbits leg; you're making that up, right??
In fairness, obvious troll [i]was[/i] obvious.I'm pleased my "not part of the family" elicited the response anticipated.
Now now. There's no reason that you can't consider a pet to be part of your family and STILL be pragmatic about euthanasia. I think most people are; it's when it comes to people that pragmatism goes out of the window, unfortunately. Remember; we're all animals in the end. Humans are just a little more cunning, and a lot nastier than most others.The idea that you can't love your pet and still be pragmatic about ending its life after an serious injury/illness is frankly moronic.
But at the end of the day they are only animals and we are quite happy with the idea of killing and eating other species, so I don't really see the point is spending a fortune keeping one particular specimen alive.
How you treat a pet will depend on how you view your duty of care to it. We seem to be pretty ok with killing animals of the same species as long as they are far enough away or not in our family or have a slightly different moral code... It all down to self justification/interpretation.
I'm pleased my "not part of the family" elicited the response anticipated.
It's Ok we all knew you were a troll.