In 2022, our pet insurance through Embrace Pet Insurance was going to go up a lot. I don’t remember the exact percentage, but it was enough to shock me after several years of steady increases in monthly premiums. Our 3 pet insurance policies through them for Clover, Tori, and Mr. Stix renew again in September 2023. No surprise, I suppose. The cost is going up another 24%. To cut back last year, I doubled our annual deductible from $500 to $1,000, and I lowered our reimbursement rate from 80% to 70%. And, a year later, we’re kind of back where we were. I always ask myself if it’s worth the cost. Let’s look at the numbers, including how much the pet insurance market grew in the last year. Funny (not funny) how the % of industry growth nearly matched the % of increase in our premium costs.
Those who follow us on social media and subscribe to our site via email already know that our long-term foster dog Forest got adopted, returned a month later, and required immediate behavioral euthanasia on July 7, 2023. As a dog attack survivor in late 2021 and a lifelong dog lover, you can imagine the avalanche of emotions about his death. Let’s look at such decisions because they’re more common than you might imagine.
It turns out that sometimes the pet ownership benefits either aren’t as strong as we often believe or the drawbacks can be worse for some people. A recent (and small cohort) study in the UK looked at the “influence of animal ownership on mental health for people with severe mental illness.” The results, along with mentions of prior studies showing drawbacks, are interesting. Let’s take a look. Warning: It might challenge long-held assumptions.
I subscribe to a few veterinary news things that give me inside intel on various things. One article called “Top 5 Signs of Patient Stress & Excitement on Clinical Pathology” caught my eye. That’s fancy veterinary speak for how stressed dogs look in routine veterinary bloodwork. Note of course that excitement can cause these things too, but the idea that “chronic stress” can affect liver values means that NOT all of these end up being super-temporary changes in a stressed dog’s bloodwork.
So far, it’s a chilly and rainy summer here in Colorado, which is quite rare. Weeks and weeks of almost-daily rain mean that scads of wild mushrooms keep popping up in our yard and pastures. To keep things simple when talking about mushrooms toxic to dogs, veterinarians often use the abbreviation LBM, meaning “little brown mushrooms.” Not that other types of mushrooms toxic to dogs don’t exist, but at least here … little brown ones tend to be most common. I take ZERO chances, and I pull and dispose of everything I find.
In early May 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved a conditional license to Elanco Animal Health Inc for a new parvo treatment that uses antibodies. Until now, veterinarians only could provide so-called “supportive care” rather than an actual canine parvovirus treatment. In other words, this is pretty big news. Unfortunately, it’ll be a while before it’s available. Here’s why.
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