It has been brought to my attention by a member of familythat the makers of intravet
vaccines also sell pet insurance.Now one their clauses is the owners cannot make any claim for hip problems for HD unless both sire and dam are 3 points below breed average of their hipscore cetificates.

What does everyone think about this?
Do you think other insurance companies will follow?
Do you think people wont bother to insure if this is the case?
What do breeders think?
Are these insurance companies right to set scores which they deem acceptable given the fact there are no gurantees in genetics (low scoring parents can produce high scoring pups)
Or perhaps you think it will encorage breeders to think carefully?

Please discuss :-)

Briony :-)

Interesting question.

Personally, I am struggling with the entire concept of insuring animals. For example:

5 x horses @ £400 approx each per year (vets/liability/theft): £2K
2 x Great Danes @ £220 each per year: £440
In one year I have had ONE claim @ £500.

So that put me £2K down. In one year

Every time you do claim the horse/dog gets an exclusion for the following year...and if they are starting to make exclusions from the beginning regarding hips then frankly, whats the point! I also don't think it will have any effect on dodgy breeders - they will just advise their customers to go to the big boys like PetPlan.

To me, its just another excuse to wriggle out of potential expensive and long running claims. At the end of the day a dog can still get HD even if the parents are low scoring! The insurance companies are busily trying to deter us from making small claims using big excesses, and now they are trying to wriggle out of lengthy claims using exclusions!

i agree with chloe!

Very simply Briony, crazy! Why for example would they not insure a flatcoat with a score equal to the BMS (9) and yet insure a Clumber with a score of 38!! (BMS=41) It makes no sense at all.

Regards, John

Hi,

I totally agree with you personally :-)

Where would it stop?

Elbows
heart
eyes etc

At this this rate there would be little point of insurance at all.
Personally I don't have insurance for 3 of my dogs the older still has hers running,prefering to put money aside in case of large vet bill ;-)
I just thought once one company started possibly more would follow?
Then nobody would insure the companies would lose money?

Briony:-)

It makes me wonder how many folk don't read the small print and get caught out!

I think it is a very good move which will promote responsible breeding. I would go one step further and actually decrease the premium for good scoring dogs. The more hip scoring and other screening test are advertised to the general public the less bad breeders will get off with selling untested dogs. There is also a knock on, like in car insurance companies that only sell to good drivers, your premiums are less likely to go up as there will be less claims for bad hips.

So if you were an insurance firm Newbie, would you refuse to insure a Flatcoat who's sire was a 7 but would insure a Clumber who's sire was a 38?

Regards, John

I can understand Newbies sentiments, but feel that this measure is trying to over-simplify a complex situation.

A flatcoat with a hip-score 10 points over the breed average is unlikely to trouble the vet with hip problems, whereas some breeds could face problems below their average.

In labradors there have been studs that consistently throw excellent hips whose own score is only average, and some with low scores regularly throw bad scoring progeny.

I had two BCs one had hips under the breed average & mean the other had severe HD Neither ever had any problems ! I think it is one way of an insurance company of being able to refuse "possible"treatment cases They are possible not probable

I rehome hundreds of labs every year and if insurance companys want to go down this route then its mad !!they wouldnt get insurance as we dont give papers etc
most reputable companies do not ask for hips scores etc
you can have a dog off impeccable breeding but still have bad hips its nonsense some of it can be bad keep by the puppy owner ie: allowing dogs to jump from heights whilst bones are still weak.
Go for proper companies like petplan,saga etc...

As you say Mattie, it would be crazy and I would have thought suicide for the insurance company. No cross breed could be insured because nothing other than KC registered dog can be scored. Add to that the additional complication that even if you registered the dog on the working register so you could get it scored there would be no breed therefore no BMS so no way of being 3 points below the BMS!

Regards, John

I feel that rather than promote responsible breeding it would result in dogs not being insured, owners not being able to afford the vet's fees and dogs being put to sleep or left to suffer rather than being treated.

<I think it is a very good move which will promote responsible breeding. I would go one step further and actually decrease the premium for good scoring dogs. The more hip scoring and other screening test are advertised to the general public the less bad breeders will get off with selling untested dogs.>

This is a rather simplistic proposal.

We bred a litter from as sire with a 6 (3+3) hipscore to a 13 (6+7) dam. The BMS for their breed is currently 18. The three puppies from this litter that were scored were all in the mid-sixties!

The same bitch has just had the puppies from another litter scored  (different sire, 6+5 =11) and the puppies scores are 8, 9 & 13!

Based on your proposal, are we 'good' or 'bad' breeders?

What would your suggestion be for the insurance company when insuring these as puppies before their hips had been scored?

Hip dysplasia is NOT just a genetically influenced problem. No one is sure exactly what causes bad hips, so the other factors that can lead to bad hips should also be excluded, ie inappropriate diet, exercise and life-style! How would you define these on an insurance policy?

These dogs were all exercised sensibly, fed different but similar diets and are good specimens of their breed.

None of them has ever exhibited any symptoms of 'bad' hips and have been 100% healthy in the 3.5 years since their birth.
None of them will necessarily suffer from their high hip scores (we had a bitch with a high hip score many years ago and she never had a days lameness).

Insurance of animals should be the same as for other insurances, ie the risk analysis is made and a premium set based on the probablity of the risk manifesting itself.
If new exclusions for other genetic defects within a breed are introduced, it will be worthless having insurance.

Personally, we realised what a waste of money insurance was many years ago and now do our own 'risk anlysis' based on the good health of our dogs.

The money saved on the insurance premiums would have paid for a top of the range premium car by now if we had set the equivalent value to the insurance premiums aside!

Snomaes

But its nothing to do with encouraging good breeding - its just a clause by the insurance company to wriggle out of long, expensive and ongoing hip claims IMO!

Yes but the answer is easy dont use this insurance company ;) which by the way is Pinnacle as everyone has said before we have to shop around for the best deal. JMHO Gillian

What's the big deal? Insurance companies 'risk assess' like any other business. I recently had a life insurance policy for which I had to take a blood test for HIV and a mouth swab to prove I was not a smoker. Would you buy a lab puppy from a dodgy breeder who either bred from high scoring parents or more likely somebody who either didn't score because they were too tight to pay the vet's fees or already knew they had bad scores and didn't want to advertise it. I imagine you wouldn't so how can you expect the insurance company to cover the same puppy.
     Also I would be pissed of if my low scoring puppy's premiums went up because of all the others claiming for hd problems. This would not have arisen if the hip scheme was obligatory and bad breeders deregistered. So we've only got ourselves to blame in the end.
PS -John
            The cross-breed question is simple- either excude all unscored/high scored dogs from hip cover (still be insured for everything else) or only apply the rule to the susceptible pedigree breeds.

But I still have to ask you the question Newbie. In the illustration I posed. Do you consider that it is right to exclude the Flatcoat from insurance because it was bred from parents who were a mark above their BMS but ok to insure the Clumber who was bred from sire and dam who were a couple of marks better than the BMS? Even though the Clumber's parents hips were 3 times worse than the Flatcoat?

One thing we know for certain about hips is that it is impossible to be certain, or even reasonably certain what the hips of our puppies are going to turn out like. We do the best we can but there is no exact science we can bring to bare as yet.

Regards, John

Hip dysplaysia is a difficult disease to breed out. Firstly it is considered to be 35 to 45 % inherited the rest is how you rear the pup. It is polygenic in nature and this means that the dog has to have a predisposition to the disease and then has to meet a "trigger factor" such as ill health, over or under feeding, over or under excercising. It also means that the inheritance pattern is unknown as there are too many contributing factors.
I, for example, had a bitch which had a hip score of 0-0=0, no dog or bitch in her pedigree scored higher than 2-3=5. I mated this bitch to a stud dog whose pedigree I thoroughly investigated, he scored 2-2=4 nothing in his pedigree scored higher than 3-3=6, so how come one of the resulting pups scored a surprising 18-11=29? Breeding from hip scored parents, who do not have a high score and do not have a high score in their pedigree is not a guarantee that "mother nature" won't still have the last word! Hip scores cannot be garanteed, but hip scoring is important if we are ever to get more knowledge and hopefully better scores. 
It seems to me that this insurance company is trying to make money with no risk to them involved.

"Also I would be pissed of if my low scoring puppy's premiums went up because of all the others claiming for hd problems"
You'd be even more peed off if your low scoring puppy developed into a high scoring adult and your insurance company wouldn't pay up!!
You do not have to be a bad breeder to produce bad hips so you are oversimplifying matters - bad breeders can also produce good hips (however unintentionally) and good breeders can produce truly awful hips. John's example perfectly illustrates the irrational thinking behind this idea.
This seems like just another get-out clause dreamed up by a company to avoid paying out.

Just caught up with this, madness is what it is madness!!!!!!!!

By the way can someone explain to me exactly what are *enviromental* factors & who determines them????
Christine, Spain.

Polly- the point is that the only quantifiable way we have of predicting the likely outcome of my puppy having hd is to score the parents(nature). It is by no means ideal but we cannot measure the outside inlfuences of (nurture). If my puppy grows up to have a score of 100 it is irrelevant because the parents had low scores and therefore was accepted by the insurance company and they will then have to honour the cover. My own dog Jake has had hd all his life and been on metacam for 10 years so I am coming from a personal angle also not just being devil's advocate here.

I guessed you were not playing "Devils advocate" Newbie, I was just wondering from my own experience as a breeder who supports all the health schemes appropriate to my breed, does an insurance company work out if I am a "good breeder" or a "bad Breeder", as I would be worried such a company might say "Well the last puppy from this breeder we insured, was bad news for us, so therefore lets not insure any more of the puppies she has produced". After all that is the next logical step.
Christine - I can't see where anyone has written enviromental factors. I have re read the thread carefully and wondered to what you are referring?
Thanks

So we can insure our bitch with both parents extreamly good hips way below the breed average when our bitch has a hipscore of...wait for it....75....and at the age of two already showing signs of artheitus (expected) so they will help us?

Not now Rox but basically they would have accepted her when she was a puppy because she fits the criteria of low scoring parents.Gillian