Pet Insurance

I was asked recently what to look for with Pet Insurance Policies. There are a few things to consider when looking for any policy.

The two main types of insurance policy are Annual and Life Long Policies. Annual policies cover the pet for 12 months from when the condition is first diagnosed. The benefit of this type of policy is it is generally cheaper than Life Long policies. These can be quite useful if the pet has an acute injury or short term illnes such as a broken leg or an infection, or any condition that can be fully resolved within that 12 month period.

What I would recommen is a Life Long policy. This type of policy covers pet for its entire life, as long as the pet remains covered. This means if the pet develops a chronic illness such as arthritis, diabetes or even some types of cancer where treament may be spread over several years, the insurance company will continue to pay for the treatment (although you will generally be charge one excess per condition per year). The only real downside of these types of policies is they are slightly more expensive than Annual policies.

At the Bunbury Vet Clinic, we recommend Pet Plan pet insurance. The main reasons we recommend Pet Plan are:

• they cover for life - if you insure your pt before 8 years of age (5 years for certain breeds) they will continue to insure your pet. They won't refuse to renew your insurance when your pet gets old and you are more likely to need to make a clain
• if your pet is insured with Pet Plan and it ruptures a cruciate ligament, they will still cover you for the second leg if that also ruptures. It has been found that around 70% of dogs that rupture one cruciate ligament will go on to rupture the second ligament within 18  months. Some policies will not cover the second leg as they will clasify it as a pre-existing condition. this is not the case with Pet Plan. They will cover both cruciates if your policy remains valid
• they don't sell anything other than pet insurance - you won't get a pile of unwanted emails/mail about home, car, income protection insurance from them

If your cat or dog is between 8 weeks and 12 months of age we are able to offer you a free 4 week trial of Pet Plan pet insurance which will cover you for up to $3000 of vet treatment. If you sign up in the clinic the cover will start straight away for injury, with a 72 hour waiting period for illness. We can sign your pet up when it comes in for its puppy or kitten vaccinations, or you can bring your pet in and one of our staff can sign you up.

Please note we are not paid by Pet Plan to recommend their policies. We recommend them and pet insurance in general because when pets are insured, we can offer them the very best treatment available without owners needing to work out what the can and can't afford. Remember some conditions can cost $2000-$3000, so insurance can prevent a lot of stress at an already emotional time.