Bishop Hendry & Edwards support the principle of insuring your pet against unexpected illness or accidents or third party claims.

Careful consideration must be given to the type on insurance.

Short term or Annual Insurance. It would be unwise to consider insurance that only covers claims for a period of twelve months. They are likely to be cheaper, but should your animal have a chronic condition requiring long-term treatment, you will find that the insurance company will not pay for treatment beyond the twelve-month period.

Cover for Life Policies. The best policies will give insurance cover throughout your pet's life, although you may find as your pet gets older that you are expected to pay a proportionately larger proportion of the excess.

Maximum benefit policies provide benefit upto a maximum amount per condition (e.g.£3000) but there is no time limit on how long you can claim but once the limit is reached you are unable to claim for that condition.

Pet insurance will not pay for routine vaccination nor will it pay for neutering, unless of course the neutering is being carried out because of medical reasons, e.g. if a bitch has a womb infection or a male dog has prostatic disease and needs castration as part of the treatment.

Some idea of veterinary costs is also important. A single treatment of a dog or cat at our practice could cost you more than £600.00 including VAT, if the treatment required prolonged hospitalisation, expensive drugs or extensive surgery. However if we have to refer your pet to a specialist practice then treatment could cost you between £1000.00 and £4000.00 including VAT, or more. Take time to consider carefully the costs involved either in insurance or in the treatment of your pet and try not to make hasty decisions.

There are a number of websites where you can compare different types of policy. You can try entering pet health insurance on the www.google.co.uk website, or alternatively you could look at specific websites like:-

www.pet-insurance-options.co.uk Please examine all the small print with care to ensure that the policy being offered suits your requirements.

It may also be sensible to consider other ways in which to fund the treatment of your pets for major surgery or medical illness. A number of years ago a client with five dogs asked for advice on insuring their pets. In today's terms it would have cost about £62.50 per month to insure these dogs, or £750 per annum. If this sum was invested wisely over ten years it would probably cover more than the veterinary health needs of the pets concerned.

Pet Insurance