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This is a question that we get asked a lot as Pet Sitters, and it is a question that is not as black and white as you might think.
Young Pets
We feel it is a fairly easy decision if you have a young puppy or a kitten as the cost of Pet Insurance for young pets is fairly cheap.
When we got our first rescue cat and puppy we went with Tesco Pet Insurance, as there was a special offer to get 50% off for the first year. We paid around £12 per month for our cat Pebbles and our dog Dillon, which was really cheap. Even now, we only pay around £30 per month for all 3 of our pets which we think is very reasonable.
Some of the more well known Pet Insurance companies such as Pet Plan, can charge around £25-40 per month for a Puppy, so it is always worth shopping around and comparing the prices and benefits of the different insurance policies.
Older Pets
Whether or not to insure younger pets is a fairly simple choice to make, but for older pets, it is a much harder one.
If you take insurance out for older pets, a 6 year old rescue dog for example, it can be much more expensive as the insurance companies don’t know the dog’s history, so they charge a premium! It can cost as much as £100 a month to insure an older dog who has not had insurance before, so it makes the decision harder.
Alternative
One alternative to paying for pet insurance is to put the money into a savings account instead. Put away that £100 a month and you will have £6000 in savings in 5 years! That is enough to cover several large vet bills if your pet needed expensive care, and if they don’t then you have £6000 to play with!
Our Personal Experience With Pet Insurance
For us, our Pet Insurance has paid for itself 10 times over!
As I’m sure most of you know, our beloved Staffy Dillon is absolutely ball mad! He loves nothing more than leaping in the air to catch his ball! He developed a serious limp one day which needed attention. He had various examinations and X-rays and we were told he couldn’t have his ball for many weeks (which he hated!) He ended up needing an arthroscopy on his elbow join which would have cost us around £3k if it wasn’t for our insurance. He made a full recovery after the operation so we were very thankful that we had insurance and that he was able to receive the very best care possible.
Our insurance also came to our aid when our rescue cat Pebbles was being violently sick every time she ate any food and even stopped eating completely. The vets gave her some anti-sickness medication and ran various tests on her to rule our serious illnesses. It would have cost us several hundred pounds for all of the different treatments if we hadn’t had insurance. As it happened all of the tests came back negative but it was better to be on the safe side and check for every possible cause which our insurance allowed us to do. We eventually managed to get her to eat some white fish by stroking her whilst she ate which seemed to do the trick. She kept the fish down and after several days of stroking her whilst she ate, she got back to normal and got back to full health in now time.
Our Advice
If you have a young puppy or kitten, then we would advise getting pet insurance as the cost is relatively cheap if you shop around and there is a good chance that it will pay for itself many times over like it has done for us.
If you have an older pet and are considering taking out pet insurance, then our advise would be to shop around, and if you find the price is extortionate, then consider putting some money away each month into a savings account instead. You may even end up being able to go on holiday with the money if you never have to use it!
In the end, whether or not you take out pet insurance all comes down to on your individual circumstance. If you have a lot of disposable income then you can probably afford to pay for unexpected vet bills but if you are a bit more hard up, then it may be best to take out Pet Insurance so that you know you are covered if the worst happens.
It is bad enough to think about your dog or cat getting run over, but imagine how you would feel if you didn’t have the money or insurance to pay for a life saving operation?
We hope this article has been of some use to you, and if you have any questions, then please ask away in the comments box below.
Many Thanks, Adam & Laura
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