Got the renewal in for Bramble today. She has been insured with the same company for 6 years, never had a claim (touch wood). The first year her insurance was around £15 per month, the next couple of years it went up a bit each year. Three years ago it was raised to £33 a month, last year it doubled again to £66 a month and this years renewal they want £99 a month. So I've finally had it with them - the company is Marks and Spencer. As Bramble is now 7 and a Bernese Mountain dog the chances of me getting another company to insure her are slim to none as I had enough bother when I tried to move her when she was just 5 - hence putting up with the last two hikes in premium! So I will now have an uninsured dog for the first time in 20 years :-( , but I'd rather put £100 a month into a savings account than pay them any more.

What is actually more annoying is that I only pay £36 a month to insure a 20 year old horse ( £5000 of vet's fees cover and with a £135 excess). How can it be more expensive to treat a 40kg dog than a 500kg horse? I'm in a fairly rural area of Scotland so the vets fees are not excessive - these insurance companies are just ripping off pedigree dog owners!

rant over for now - thank you for listening :-)

( oh and any ideas for companies that will insure a 7 year old Bernese at reasonable cost will be gratefully received!)

Good grief that's ridiculous. I would give Animal friends a ring. They have insured my 7yr old Bullmastiff for £28 a month with a £69 excess and full benefits.

I am with M and S and dreading my next renewal notice. I currently pay £39 a month for a 31 kg GR who will be 6 next month and am also considering stopping the insurance altogether and putting the money by instead. When I first took it out I paid £14 a month.

Cooper now costs £15 a month but I changed his insurance last year as his trebled in price with M and S and was going to be almost £25 per month for a 7kg crossbreed aged 5.

I have given up with M&S too.  My 8 year old staff is still with them but renewal is due soon so I will be changing her too.  My rott boy is with axa and only £20 a month for lifetime cover whereas M&S were wanting £40+pcm and it was restricted to annual cover.  I think (but am not 100% sure) that dogs have to be vaccinated for axa cover and my staff isn't vaccinated anymore.

It would be worth trying axa (I ran a quote for a non IT confident friend for her bully this week and her quote for lifetime cover is £8.50pcm!) or some of the price comparison sites and then doing a bit of haggling.  At £100 a month that is taking the mick.

I know I have said this before but mine are not insured once they are over a year, the amount is always only slightly more thn the excess so they have their own building society account which I pay into.
I have 3rd party insurance through Dogs Trust.

We gave up on paying insurance after the pups reach 12 months some many years ago and put what was the fees then into an account, have since not only paid all vet bills but had a couple of holidays out of the account as well.

self insurance interesting idea but what frightens me is having spent £6000 on cancer treatment for my previous fcr I am worried that without the insurance we couldnt have given her that chance of recovery. and recover she did. Otherwise it is become very tempting
Particularly with excesses up to £100 or £70 +10% and having yesterday spent £100 on silly puppy who stole the chocolate cakes and needed treatment and that was only for making her sick and then keeping her there to watch her for a couple of hours and £44 for the cat last week (metacam) and similar the week before for two sets of eye drops. I worry I wouldnt have enough money in the pot to pay the increasing vet bills

I have no idea as the cost to insure my Bernese has gone through the roof too and he is 4!!
I looked into AF as that is where I have my Rottie and it was either soo high or they wouldn't insure him, think it was the high cost p/m that put me off. So as it stands he is not currently insured either and i'm just hoping that if anything should happen I can stick it on the credit card or the bank of Daddy will I hope and pray come into effect if its thousands. Its a breed which is deemed high risk according to the insurance companies after speaking to a number of them about their crazy prices!!

I moved my Pyrenean Mountain Dog to AXA at 9 years old, so it might be worth checking whether AXA would insure.

AXA won't insure a Bernese, they do crosses but not purebred :-(

http://www.vetsmedicover.co.uk/home/

These people are brilliant, a fixed monthly charge - £21 for most dogs and £35 for the rest. Marion you can insure Bramble with them, as long as you take out the policy before she is 8 then you can stay with them for life, Bernese are £35 a month. The cover is really good for the price - £10,000 per year vets fees etc.

To Furriefriends - It is true you have to hope your dogs are not ill until you have managed to get a reasonable amount behind you but with a few dogs that does not take very long, however if the worst comes to the worse a bank loan would not at the moment cost that much and I think you would still be on the right side after 3 or so years.

You have to do you own sums as it depends on how many dogs and what the costs are but I defiantly found I could pay for all the sundry costs as well as the unexpected and within a few years had a few thousand to spare. And then there are healthy breeds and those you can expect problems with so it is an individual choice and I would always suggest you insure for the first year.

That is ridiculous Marion ! Just wondered did you see if increasing the excess would make any difference as I have recently done that with my own private health insurance and it made a huge difference to the price.

If you go to somewhere like the KC or Petplan they start off now with puppies at around £80p/m to be insured for a Bernese, or it was a few years ago when I was checking.
This does go to question about how healthy this breed really is over all...

>AXA won't insure a Bernese, they do crosses but not purebred

Why not?  Do they have a lot of health problems?

Ali-T that is what I was going to ask !

Wow, £99 a month! You could probably insure a ferrari for cheaper :/
I looked into dog insurance years ago and figured it wasn't for me, one of the vets at the practice I use tells people that they would be better off saving a set amount each month than paying for insurancebut I think it depends on the person and their pet as to what suits best.
For me it has worked out well as other than two operations that cost around £200 and then £90 all my expenses at the vets have remained below £60, I would have spent a lot more than £290 in premiums by now for certain (I've probably put a jinx on us now and one of their heads will fall off this afternoon requiring a complicated and expensive operation to re-attach)

>Why not?  Do they have a lot of health problems?

They have a fairly high incidence of cancer, HD, OCD so I suppose there are a number of health problems but they are not a long lived breed either so I would not imagine that there would be years of ongoing cover such as you might get with a cavalier with a heart problem say.
Bramble has never had prolonged vet treatment for anything - she has had her vaccs each year, was spayed at 9 months to try to prevent some cancers and has had painkillers/anti-inflamatories once for a strained muscle. Given she is 7 I think that is pretty good but now when the time comes that I might need the insurance as she is aging it goes sky high! If I had put the money away from the time we had her then I'd have saved myself a fortune and have an account with money for her now - benefits of hindsight eh!

> These people are brilliant, a fixed monthly charge - £21 for most dogs and £35 for the rest. Marion you can insure Bramble with them, as long as you take out the policy before she is 8 then you can stay with them for life, Bernese are £35 a month. The cover is really good for the price - £10,000 per year vets fees etc.

I'll check that one out Jane - thanks!

We've just had our renewal through for our 1 yr old miniature bull terrier from Sainsburys and it has increased by 50%. We've never claimed from them and my vet bills certainly havent gone up.
So sainsburys will not be getting our renewal this year

Mine were both with sainsbury's to start with - it was less than £10 a month each but then they went up after year 1 for Bramble and I moved her. By the time Treacle's started to increase her ear problems had started so i didn't want to move her in case I couldn't claim - even then her insurance is only £27 a month despite claims for ears!

animal friends are really good,just insured my tibetan mastiff with them 14.75 per month,the covers good as well.

Big thumbs up for Vetsmedicover, put in a claim 5th July & got it settled 15th July. They can email a claim form & there's no third degree to go through unlike some other companies so so far so good.

As far as I know Sainsburys stopped insuring BMD's at least 4 years ago.

Ooh thanks WS, i'll have a look at Vetsmedicover and see what kind of quote i'll come up with.

Have you tried the Co Operative Bank Insurance?

A friend has just tragically had cause to claim on his Bernese's Vetsmedicover and they paid in full within about a week. They have slightly increased the premium but I think it is £35 for a BMD regardless of age or postcode (or gender as some companies charge more for males!) Definitely worth considering but  as someone said, needs to be before she is 8.

Thank you, i've just done an online quote and its £35p/m which is very good for a BMD.. I hope your friends BMD is ok..

I'll have a think and read up more on the policy before I commit to it.

I shop around every year as renewal premiums always go up,and new customers get better rates.This year the best  deal I have found is with Protect Your Bubble.com,and have actually just renewed with them as the premium was very little different to last year.What I find annoying is the vet asking if the dog is insured, as soon as you walk in the door,as if it makes a difference to the treatment.No wonder the premiums go up so much.

> What I find annoying is the vet asking if the dog is insured, as soon as you walk in the door,as if it makes a difference to the treatment.No wonder the premiums go up so much.

Know exactly what you mean, and my other pet hate (forgive the pun) is when the (usually baby vet) tells me why I should insure my pets!

Before we had pet insurance vets fees were very low and we could afford the fees with a bit of a struggle but now they are ridiculously high, some vets charge enough to take out a second mortgage before they even look at the pet!

>Before we had pet insurance vets fees were very low and we could afford the fees with a bit of a struggle

Before we had insurance vets fees were low because there weren't the complicated procedures available; treatment was either basic medication or pts.

I agree with Polly.  I seem to recall even the basics going up steeply around the time of pet insurance becoming mainstream.  All businesses charge what the market will withstand. 

I feel your pain, Dakkobear...Lola's (Newfie) insurance with M&S has shot up over the last few years.  She's 6 now and her premium is £80.99 per month!  I am continuing with it this year as I can still afford it (just!) and they are paying for her acupuncture and hydrotherapy which, this year, will total more than the premiums.  Plus I have claimed many thousands over the years so I am still in credit, so to speak.  But if it goes up next year...and I'm expecting it to be somewhere in the region of Bramble's quote next year as she'll be 7, then it won't be economically viable and  I'm cancelling.  I've had a look at the VetsMediCover that Jane recommended (thanks, Jane!!) and I think we'll go with that...it won't cover the pre-existing conditions but I'll put some money away each month to cover those and have the new policy to cover anything unforseen that crops up as she gets older.

What really gets me is that Shay is older (7 now), has had as many (if not more) claims as Lola and I've just had his renewal through...£35 per month!  Less than half of Lola's. Just because he's a crossbreed and not a pedigree breed?!? 

> What really gets me is that Shay is older (7 now), has had as many (if not more) claims as Lola and I've just had his renewal through...£35 per month!  Less than half of Lola's. Just because he's a crossbreed and not a pedigree breed?!?

It's not just pedigree's as such, it's the actual breeds. Winnie, a 7 1/2 year old Sussex Spaniel who has had many thousands of pounds in claims, had a minimal increase this year with AXA. Hattie, a 6 year old Dobermann, with minimal claims, more than doubled. Hattie is now with Vetsmedicover, and I've not yet had to claim, but when I took out the policy it was £18 a month, less than half the AXA premium.

I have spoken to M&S about the massive hike in price and they explained that it is partially to do with breed (Newfies being among the breeds in their 'highest risk' category) and partially attributed to increasing cost of veterinary treatment, mainly because of the wider variety of diagnostics and treatments available now.

When I asked why my xbreed was so much cheaper (given that he has the same level of veterinary care at his disposal), they said it was because he was an xbreed and therefore in a lower risk category for their purposes. 

Just insured her with Vetsmedicover - £35 per month as Jane said - (thanks jane). Hopefully we will be able to stay with them from now on - I may even move Teasel and the cats if their premiums go up too!

I've just insured my girl too More than halved my premium!!