An expensive lesson learnt

Wow I haven’t blogged in ages, so thought I would make a little post about something that happened to me not so long back.

Our dog Alfie became very ill, and very quickly. He was taken into the emergency vet at midnight on a Saturday night, and they didn’t know what was wrong with him. He was being sick, had no energy, wouldn’t eat or drink anything at all.

They thought it might be a blockage, so on the Sunday they done x-rays and still couldn’t find anything wrong with him !

Monday morning his condition had deteriorated so badly, that they said they wanted to operate and do an internal investigation, and be transferred to our own vet clinic, as if they don’t do this and he has a blockage he would surely die very soon.

We agreed and were on pins for the next few hours (which felt like a year) to see what they found. They found no blockage but they found a very nasty intestinal infection. They gave him a strong course of antibiotics (different to what he was already taking) and were told to ring back i nthe morning to see if he makes it through the night as he was very very weak.

Tuesday morning came and we waited for the news….exepcting it to be bad…but it was the opposite – he was 60% better and back to his usual ways of looking for food, and being excited. At 12pm we went to pick him up and he was so pleased to see us, it didn’t seem real !

Over the course of this 3 days, various people asked us if we had pet insurance, to which I replied “no we haven’t but it doesn’t matter what it costs, as it will be fine anyway” to which I was met with a look of “hmmmm” on the face of the person telling me.

When we picked Alfie up, I asked for the bill so I could pay. The request was sent to 3 different people as no-one wanted to tell me the actual cost of the bill, as I had told them I didn’t have pet insurance.

The buck was then passed to the receptionist, who handed me the bill with a scared look on her face. I opened the envelope and the bill was £1982.34 for everything Alfie had received over the course of those 3 days. Whilst this came as a shock to them, I was more than happy to pay the bill to get our dog back to himself, and basically save his life.

The expensive lesson that we learnt that day, was we shouldn’t have put off getting pet insurance. We had talked about it 2/3 times prior to this happening and always put it off until another day.

Pet insurance isn’t expensive and after looking at the various pet insurance comparison websites, we took out a policy which worked out at £15 a month

Now if you work that out, thats £180 a year, so £1,800 over 10 years and that is STILL cheaper than this one vets bill we received.

Luckily we were able to afford his vets bills, and wouldn’t have had it any other way, but my advice to anyone with a pet is to STOP putting off getting pet insurance, and GET IT NOW !

Take it from me and my experience, it will give you great peace of mind and great cover for your well loved pet at the time it is most needed.