Vet bills

[Happydays]

I'd rather have my dog than posh shoes

[Onelife]

Call me heartless but if l was having to fork out £40 a month for medication Gipsy would by now be well and truly stuffed.. not literally of course. We did fork out £700 pounds for a 3 month course of chemo for one of our dogs but had to have her put down 2 months latter......l wouldn't do that again either.

[Stephen]

It's a catch twenty two situation with pets. Do you risk it and not take out insurance but get stung heavily should your pet need major treatment, or take out insurance, which can cost upwards of £100 a month, which you might never use.

Not sure what I'd do, take out the insurance or set up a pet account and put a certain amount into it each month.

[Onelife]

Yes Stephen it's a bit of a dilemma........We did take out pet insurance in the early days but mostly due to us participating in dog agility where injuries were common place. But it is as you say very expensive to insure pets...One of the reasons pet insurance is so expensive is that vets tend to up the price of treatment if you have insurance which of course is pasted on to customers via increased pet insurance.......as l have said before there needs to be a bloody good overhaul of veterinary practices as l think they are fast becoming a law unto themselves.

[MicheleW]

We have never insured any of the dogs we have had and Jack has been the only one that has cost us any large sums. I definitely wouldn't insure any future hounds. Dogs, cruises and shoes are all I spend my money on, so if a dog needs treatment then I'll pay for it. Though I certainly wouldn't pay a lot of money to keep a dog alive that was nearing the end of its life. A decision I had to very sadly make with our other dog a couple of years ago - the hardest decision to make even though you know it is for the best.

Michele

PS. Another massive expense regarding pets is finding them somewhere nice to stay when you go on a cruises! (I wouldn't dream of putting them in kennels.)