Meliora Drents

If you’ve ever had a sick or injured pet, you know how stressful it can be – especially if you’re worried about the financial implications, too. Pet insurance, like any kind of insurance, offers an opportunity to pay a regular set amount to help offset costs of an unforeseen nature, like vet bills. And in today’s world of rising veterinary costs, pet insurance is one of the best and smartest things you can get for your dog.

There are dozens of options out there, and many insurance companies also offer customized plans – so how to you weigh your options and figure out what’s best for you? First it’s good to understand some of the basic terms you’ll find in pet insurance plans.

Definitions

Annual Deductible: This is the amount you will pay out of pocket until the co-insurance kicks in. Typically, the higher the deductible (the amount you are able to pay 100% out of pocket), the lower the monthly cost of insurance.

Co-Insurance: After the deductible is filled, this is the percentage that the insurance company will pay any additional costs. Typically, the higher the co-insurance percentage (the more the insurance company will cover), the higher the monthly cost of insurance. (NOTE: Sometimes co-insurance will be listed as the percent YOU pay rather than the percent the insurance company pays – in that case, the higher the co-insurance percentage you pay, the lower the monthly cost)

Annual Limit: This is the total amount of veterinary costs a plan will cover until costs revert to you paying out of pocket. Typically, the higher the annual limit, the higher the monthly cost of insurance.

Accident Coverage: Typically covers accidental injuries – such as broken bones or foreign body ingestion.

Illness Coverage: Typically covers acute or chronic illness, such as kennel cough or cancer.

Wellness Coverage: Typically covers “preventative” care like annual vet visits, flea/tick and heartworm medication, etc.

Waiting Periods: Typically assigned to specific injuries or illnesses (usually severe ones), waiting periods are the amount of time you need to wait after purchasing insurance before the insurance will cover those specific injuries/illnesses listed. You will usually see waiting periods for orthopedic and joint issues, like CCL tears.

Pre-Existing Conditions: These are chronic illnesses or previous injuries that your pet has had prior to insurance coverage. Usually, either the insurance company will not cover continued care for a pre-existing condition AND/OR your monthly cost will be higher than it would have been otherwise. This and waiting periods are the biggest reasons to get pet insurance BEFORE you need it – ideally, as soon as your new pet comes home!

Exclusions: These are the things NOT covered by an insurance plan. Take a close look at these – they often include things like dental disease and foreign body ingestion. That isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker – it’s up to you – but it is unbelievably frustrating to think something will be covered only for the insurance company to reject your claim later on. Best to be fully informed.

Breeding Rider: Not all pet insurance companies offer this, but some do. Typically, pet insurance will not cover accidents or illness related to breeding or whelping – it’ll be something on their Exclusions. But if you are a breeder or plan to breed your dog/pet, this will typically cover unexpected things like an emergency c-section, pyometra, or treatment for mastitis.

Customizing Your Plan

First you need to consider your financial situation. Look both at your emergency savings and the flexibility of your monthly budget, both in terms of how much you could re-assign to pay for a surprise veterinary cost and/or how much you can afford to pay for a monthly insurance cost. Also consider how many dogs (or other pets) you have – and god forbid, what happens if they all get sick/injured in the same year?

For example: if you have a large sum of money put away in emergency savings, but don’t have a lot of room in your monthly budget, a higher deductible/lower co-insurance plan might be right for you. If you have some money put away in emergency savings, but not several thousand, a higher deductible/higher co-insurance might be right for you. Finally, if you don’t have much in your emergency savings but have enough room in your monthly budget for a higher monthly insurance payment, a lower deductible/lower co-insurance plan might be right for you.

Also consider your risk tolerance and the activities you plan to participate in with your dog. What are the chances that your dog gets sick or injured? A dog that is primarily a house pet is not as likely to experience injury as a dog that is frequently out hunting or backcountry hiking or even participating in a high-impact sport like agility or disc. Are foxtails common in your area, and will you likely be running your dog in foxtail-covered fields? What about ticks which carry lyme disease? There is no such thing as no-risk, unfortunately – bad luck can still strike even the most conservative and risk-averse – but risk and risk tolerance can be relative and is something each person needs to personally reflect on.

While your deductible and co-insurance choices are driven more by personal circumstance, I highly recommend an unlimited annual limit – the worst accidents/illnesses are often the most costly, and can blow through even a $10,000 annual limit quickly. And those are the situations where your stress will already be through the roof – why add financial stress on top of it?

For us, we landed on a $500 deductible with 80% co-insurance and a unlimited annual limit for each of our two dogs.

Recommendations

We use Pets Best for our pet insurance – at the time I was looking at options, they had the best plans for what I wanted for the lowest cost. So far, their claims process has been relatively straightforward and has worked well for us. They are one of the insurance companies that reimburses rather than pays up-front, so that’s something to consider if you are concerned about being unable to pay up-front costs for whatever reason.

In general, though, I recommend getting quotes from a few different insurance companies and reviewing all of their coverage details and cost estimates closely before deciding which one is right for you. Do a Google Search for “Best Pet Insurance Companies” and go from there!

Thankfully, we haven’t had to take too much advantage of our pet insurance (yet, god forbid). Iris was a “frequent flyer” at the vets office for her first year or so with us, but nothing that was so serious as to have otherwise put us back several thousand dollars – giardia, a UTI, a broken tooth that ended up being extracted, a foxtail in her ear, and what ended up being a bee sting but I thought was a rattlesnake bite. Still, the great thing about pet insurance was that I never had to hesitate about taking her to the vet or doing whatever diagnostic tests or treatments the vet recommended to have her feeling better as soon as possible.

There are tons of other insurance companies to choose from, but no matter what you choose, we highly recommend all of our puppy owners purchase pet insurance for their new puppy immediately, if not before, their puppy comes home. We also recommend this for ANYONE bringing home a new puppy or a new dog or any new pet – not only does pet insurance provide peace of mind, but it also typically lends to better and sooner care for our animals, and keeping more pets in their homes that would otherwise be surrendered or euthanized due to financial hardship.