Your Pet Insurance Guide

Healthy Paws Comes Through With Claim Reimbursement

Here's a story about Bu's patellar luxation and how having pet insurance with Healthy Paws helped pay for the surgery. It seems that a day at the park aggrevated Bu's patellar luxation. What makes this significant is that Healthy Paws is one of several companies that now cover hereditary and/or congenital conditions. Some companies catagorize patellar (kneecap) luxation as either hereditary or congenital and don't cover it. This brings up once again the importance of getting a policy that does cover hereditary/congenital conditions and preferably from a company that offers more than token coverage. With most companies, the policy must... Read more →

A Recommendation In Favor Of Pet Insurance

I'll let this letter speak for itself. Read more →

Pet Insurance Comes In Handy

I came across a video blog that summarizes many of the points you should consider when deciding whether to get pet insurance for your pet and also how to decide on a company and and policy for your pet. I don't think the intent of this video was necessarily to recommend Trupanion because they didn't look at all the companies that offer pet insurance in the U.S. I think the main take away from this video is to show the importance of getting unrestricted coverage for hereditary conditions. Getting this coverage didn't cost any more in monthly premiums, and paid... Read more →

Top 10 Reasons Pet Owners Take Their Pet To The Veterinarian

The top 3 reasons that pets are taken to the veterinarian according to claims submitted by VPI pet insurance company are often related to the same underlying problem. They are: Ear infection Skin allergy Skin infection/hot spot "I can't imagine how my pet got an ear infection!" is a comment I hear from pet owners. An acute ear infection caused by a foreign body in the ear canal or getting too much water in the ear canal when giving a bath is actually uncommon. Most ear infections seen by veterinarians are secondary to an underlying allergy, most notably something in... Read more →

Top Ten Causes of Broken Bones In Pets

VPI recently listed the top 10 causes of broken bones in pets based on the insurance claims they receive from pet owners whose pets are insured by VPI. As suspected, and as I alluded to in my last post, many of these causes are preventable. One of VPI's veterinarians, Dr. Carol McConnell states, “Injury prevention includes careful management of a pet’s environment by removing possible threats and eliminating situations that might put a pet at risk. Broken bones are painful for pets and costly for pet owners." One of the most common predisposing factors (40%) that led to broken bones... Read more →

The Wise Pet Owner

I have been trying to find a commercial that I remembered seeing years ago to illustrate the reason that I wrote “The Wise Pet Owner.” I thoughtI remembered it being a Midas commercial, but I found an old Fram Oil Filter commercial that illustrated the point and contained the particular words I was looking for. The words I remembered were, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.” In the context of the commercial, it meant that you can pay a little for regular maintenance on your engine or you can pay a lot later to have... Read more →