Evening all. The King household is soon to welcome a new addition to the family so would appreciate some advice on pet insurance. We shall be collecting the dog in about 3 weeks and trying to understand what the best approach is to the inevitable vet bills. I see the merits of both pet insurance and settling as you go but appreciate any advice. Is the normal route to have a ‘puppy plan’ with your chosen vet for worming, flea treatment etc and then to have a separate insurance policy to cover illness and accidents?

We have the local vets health plan that covers the yearly boosters and the worming and flea treatments. Then we pay PetPlan to cover major illness and the bills. Lifetime cover for £4k a year is costing £46 a month. (It’s big as we have a terminally ill dog with some huge bills for drugs and emergency care). So far it’s working well and he’s lasted a year on some very good treatment.

We joined our vets monthly scheme which is £10 a month but it only covers boosters and discount on treatment etc. We have petplan insurance cover. I can’t vouch for other insurers but petplan are very good – or have been for us i should say.
I think you’ll find their quotes can be higher than the average but I can’t complain about them. My vets seem to really like dealing with them. My dog has Had 2 ops totalling approx £10k and it was all dealt with through the vets. I didn’t even have to pay upfront. Sane for ongoing medication – I just sign a form and I’m off. Lifetime cover at £7k a year I have. Claimed a fair bit and still do so it gets more expensive Each year but that’s how it goes I guess.

Various options.

3 of our cats have Vac4Life – when kittens we paid £99 each to cover Vaccinations for life (annual equivalent is £50 each) – so recovers cost within 3 years (you also pay £70 for initial vacs, chipping etc).

4 of the 5 have Pet Plan. The one that can’t be insured (cat flu) has a monthly plan to cover checkups and vaccinations. As for fle treatment, I get that from VetMedic – £10 for 4 applications rather than £25 from the Vet.

All adds up when you have 5 animals. 3 have insurance and lifetime vacs, 1 has pet insurance but we pay for vacs, and one a monthly plan – mainly as his illness can cause problems – it hasn’t !

You could self insure, but run the risk of any long term issue caosting a fortune.

The old cat is £32 a month, the 3 young ones the same for all 3 on pet plan. Vaccination plan/checkups for the rescue is £15.

My dog’s insured with “animal friends”
I’d have to check with the dutchess but he also has lifetime condition cover and “free” initial consultation and vaccination and worm and flea treatment for life but I’m not sure if that’s a seperate policy as when he wasya pup he was insured through vets@home/Vets4pets.

The total bill including food (approx £20 per month as we buy on bulk) comes to about £50 per month.

He’s only a small 7kg dog though so although he has good quality food, he doesn’t eat huge amounts compared to a bigger dog.

EDIT: there’s also 3 cats which are also insured so I’d have to check with the but I’m fairly sure that attracts a multi animal discount.

Do get good quality food though, it’s more expensive but more nutritionally ‘dence’ than the crap that sainsbury’s /tesco sell

So it’s not much more expensive per ‘meal’ as the portions are smaller, especially if you plan ahead and buy in bulk when you can.

We had some issues when he was a really young pup to find a food he liked, tried James, lillies, etc.
Eventually he settled on wainwright’s, a proportionate mixture of the kibble and the wet sachets.

For treats, his favourite is dried chicken breast jerky or just plain cooked chicken meat, he loves it!

Also, you’ll need to show us a picture of the pupper, it’s the law 🙂

I see the merits of both pet insurance and settling as you go but appreciate any advice

As with all insurance, it is a risk/luck thing. If you do insure just make sure you use a company that actually pays out even it is costs a bit more a month.

Both our dogs are Petplan which started at £33 a month and after 4 years is at £40 per month.
£500 a year may seem a lot but it doesn’t take much at the vets to go over £500 in a year, again down to luck.
Both of our dogs have problems and we typically see well over £1,000 of vet bills every year and PetPlan have paid every single claim in full .

PetPlan have been great for both of ours & the old dog has cost a fortune in scans, operations and drugs over the last 8 years that were all fully covered.
2 year old Pomeranian has a vet scheme that covers initial visit, vaccinations, worm/flea treatment.
As for food good stuff doesn’t have to be expensive, we get ours in bulk from a local farmers merchant, their own stuff that’s meant for working dogs etc but they tailor the mix for the dog so each has different food with different additions (fish oil for joints etc).  Far cheaper than supermarket or vet prices.

We went down the self insured route with our cats, all been ok until the last two weeks when one got very ill. Already coughed up £4k and still more to come…

Got him home after nearly two weeks at the vets and three operations. Being tube fed for a while now until he decides to start eating again. He’s lost about 2kg over the last three weeks from not eating (intestinal intussusception).

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2iiR44g]Bertie[/url] by Ben Freeman, on Flickr

Vac for life here £99 one off payment. Both ours are with Pet Plan on the Lifetime cover. Pet plan have been great to deal with our first dog was very ill and was racking up the bills pet plan paid out every time. If it’s a affiliated Vet they will pay the vet directly which is really handy.

It’s a conundrum. I have just cancelled the insurance for my two and plan on sticking money away each month in a kitty as to date, I haven’t made a claim.

I don’t vaccinate after the initial course of puppy jabs (maybe controversial to some, but I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject, plenty info out there if interested) and I don’t use chemical flea and worm treatment. I use natural alternatives and have never had an instance of either.

Both dogs are on the BARF diet, so works out cheaper than “regular” dog food especially if friendly with the local Butcher.

Edit to add that I get an annual Titre test done on the dogs which checks their immunity levels and negates the need for boosters if the levels are good. This is accepted by all the local kennels.

For balance a self insurer here for twenty plus years at £10 per month.

It is important to note that we have had a whippet first for 16 years and now a Patterdale for 7 years and they are both largely trouble free breeds and they are not in anyway pedigree type breeding. We stopped putting money in when we got to £1500 in the account. There appears to be two price lists at vets a high one for the insured and a lets see what we can do for the uninsured.

I’ve had Tesco insurance for three dogs (not all at once). It’s RSA behind the scenes. Note, all three are/were healthy crossbreeds or mongrels, i.e. no particular hereditary conditions.

They’ve been very good at paying out without quibble for a number of conditions and, vs self insurance, it’s worked out cheaper. Cost somewhere between £15 and £30 a month depending on dog age and payout history. Still with them.

Boosters and flea treatment, PAYG.

Food, agree, the current pair of hounds are eating Wellbeloved, bought in 15kg bags, food costs are about £1/day (each).

The more expensive stuff, being more ‘nutrient dense’, requires less volume of food, which has the knock on benefit of less, shall we say, post digestion products.

My partner works at a Vets and deals with the insurance companies and she wouldn’t use anyone other than Pet Plan. Plenty of the others are always trying to wriggle out of paying.

With our first dog we had her for about 8 years so paid out about £2000 in total for insurance (was cheaper back then). We claimed over £10,000 over the same period!

get signed up with petplan

We were with John Lewis Pet Insurance for our cat. We did have to make a couple of minor claims for around £200-£300, which in fairness we easy to do. However, our premium soon shot up from around £13 p/m to around £40 p/m. We’re now with PetPlan but the only downside is that moving to a new insurer means that any pre-existing conditions are exempt.

In hindsight, I don’t think I’d bother claiming for small vet bills, as the premium increase probably worked out more than the vet bill.

Another consideration is whether you go for a policy with lifetime cover for a treatment or condition for a non-lifetime policy.

As with all insurance, it is a risk/luck thing.

Yep. So far over 6 years we’ve paid around £1400 for insurance for the hound and only claimed £80 back. I considered cancelling it this year when renewal came through at about £400 but guaranteed the following week we’d be at the vets with a £4K bill.

So changed insurer and got it a bit cheaper instead.

Awesome all, thanks very much for the advice. I think we’ll either do a puppy plan or just payasyougo in terms of general stuff then will take out a PetPlan insurance policy which is full life and not too bad. I’ll up a photo once we’ve collected her. Cheers

All, so thanks for all of the wonderful advice above. The new pooch has arrived and is settling in nicely. In the end we went we a policy from Pet Plan with lifetime cover and are paying ancillary vets things as we go.
Obligatory photo below: