Insurance

I've just had a rather expensive weekend and it has got me thinking about the subject of insurance. It started on Saturday morning when the dog decided to vomit up his entire breakfast. This is not entirely unusual for dogs as they are quite adept to the casual chunder. However, what I didn't expect was what I found when I returned home, which was a miserable looking dog surrounded by several pools of sick. He clearly wasn't well and as he kept retching we phoned the local veterinary hospital for advise. This is when things start to get expensive. Just calling a vet out at the weekend costs £90 and this is before any investigations.

An X-ray of the dog showed that his stomach was massively swollen and this lead the vet to carry out an emergency operation to look for a blockage. All this soon adds up but for the dog it is lifesaving - an intestinal blockage can kill a dog within hours. As it was, the vet could not find any physical blockage but did relieve the gas build up. In all, the bill came to over £700 which is a very expensive fart. To make matters worse, the car would not start. A very nice man from the AA came along and diagnosed that my battery was Donald Ducked (or words to that effect). This lead to a quick journey down to Halfords and another wallet emptying exercise.

Both these events can be insured for. In fact, I did have an extended warrantee for the car but not for the dog. As it was, the battery isn't covered (although the AA man was) as it is regarded as a wear and tear item. As for the dog, I had looked at insurance but as soon as the word "Whippet" is typed into the breed box a bunch of exclusions and extra excesses come into the policy. Mainly, these are related to injuries as whippets are prone to breaking due to the effects of being spindly and running at 40 mph. However, in this case the insurance would have helped. At one time we had up to 3 dogs and 2 cats so it worked out cheaper to self-insure and, even for the one dog, it still works out cheaper in the long run.

Insurance is really a bet against things going wrong and, like any decent bookmaker, the insurance companies have to make sure that what they pay out in claims is less than what they receive in premiums. As such, it will always work out cheaper in the long run to self-insure (by putting money away in a savings account) rather than pay the premiums and claim when things go wrong. The two circumstances where this is not a good idea is when there is a legal obligation to insure (for example, with cars) or when the potential claim is far beyond what could be reasonably financed (for example, a house). However, I think that living things also come under this category. If my washing machine brakes down I'm not particularly bothered whether it is replaced or repaired. When it is my dog or family, I am bothered. It's tricky. For this weekends vets bill I could easily have bought a new dog but that really isn't the point. Maybe it is time to look for pet insurance but I need something that actually comprehensively covers the animal in question.