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Considering Pet Insurance: Turning in Our First Claim

By: Author Paris Permenter

As our readers know, last week our Tiki was sick with a still-undiagnosed fever. She was at the vet’s office for three days, coming home at night with an IV catheter in her arm (and a cone to keep her from removing the catheter!) She had urine tests, X-rays, tick titers, and more.

I’m really, really happy to say that Tiki is now doing great. Except for the shaved portion of her arm where the IV was, you’d never know that she was sick a week ago. She took antibiotics for a week and just finished those yesterday.

I’m also really happy to say that we have pet health insurance. This is the first time we’ve ever filed a claim, thankfully, but we’re so glad that we had invested in the insurance.

In all, Tiki’s bill was nearly $1,400. When the vet talked about doing additional tests, including ultrasound, if her fever didn’t come down, I am very glad that I was able to say that she should proceed and do whatever she needed to do because we have pet insurance.

The insurance we have is Trupanion. We are not affiliates or spokespeople or anything related to the company; they don’t even know that we have their insurance. I selected it after a lot of research and chose it because they don’t have any annual limits or per incident limits, they don’t increase your costs as your pet ages, and they have a deductible that you can set depending on your budget.

We selected the $500 deductible. Our monthly premium for both Irie and Tiki is just over $50 (total for both dogs); that amount varies by where you live, the age of your dogs when you enroll in the program, etc.

So I’ll let you know how the claims process goes; I hope I’ll be able to report soon that I received our insurance money. (They pay 90% after the exam fee and your deductible.) I’ll keep everyone posted on our claims process.

If you don’t have pet insurance, please take a moment to start a special savings account just for veterinary expenses. If you think you might want pet insurance, start researching now; the younger your pets are when you enroll them, the less expensive your insurance premiums will be.

Paris Permenter
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This post originally appeared on DogTipper.com and is the sole property of DogTipper.com.