Absolutely, it was stressful enough, so I’m glad the financial worries weren’t too overwhelming. Now I’m doing my best to keep cancer from coming back.

Yep, you’ve definitely hit on the best strength of pet health insurance. It goes a long way toward taking money out of the decision-making.

Yep, I think a person’s specific financial disciplines are a big factor on whether pet insurance is a good fit or not. And it’s great that you had so few worries about money when Missy was treated for her cancer.

Insurance companies use fancy algorithms to figure out their policies so they don’t pay out more than they can afford to. And it’s still not a sure thing.

We’d have to invest lots of money into computer modeling to get more certainty about our choice to get a policy or not.

In the end, it’s one more time we can’t be sure what the right decision is. We just have to do our best.

And thanks for your kind words about Honey. Pinned down in the boat, I’m getting worried and my imagination is running away with me. Sometimes not knowing is just as bad as knowing.

But I’m encouraged by how well Sheba is doing. And I was glad to see your book recommendation on your site. I’ll be ordering an online copy today.

I remember doing that calculation when I adopted my last dog, Shadow. She was healthy and fit and eight years old. I did the math and figured out that we’d be better off self-insuring. Then she was diagnosed with bone cancer in her jaw at her next dental appointment. ;(

In truth, my calculations turned out exactly right. The prognosis was so bad even with surgery and radiation that we opted against aggressive treatment. And luckily she lived happily for two more years without the stress of all those vet visits, which she would have hated.

But there was a moment, when she was first diagnosed, that I could have kicked myself for not getting the insurance.

In the end, we do what we think is right and live with the results. Personally, I think that investing in lots of healthy fun with Dante and Ziva will result in long and happy lives for them.

We’ve had Pets Best for a long time. Our vet suggests enrolling on the very first day that you meet your pup so there are no pre-existing conditions. Pets Best came through in a HUGE way for my now Angel K who had more than her share of health problems. When she got bone cancer at age 8, we didn’t even ask about the costs of the options – we just did what we thought was the best for her. Pets Best paid for the vast majority of her treatment. I had only one peeve – when they declared that her euthanasia was not part of the whole “bone cancer event” so it didn’t meet the deductible. That was kind of like a gut punch at the time but, in retrospect, they handled her whole lifetime of illnesses very fairly.

The reason we have insurance is so that we don’t focus on the $ when faced with a veterinary decision for our dogs. I like it for that reason, even though we could afford to self-insure.

We’ll be thinking of Honey and hoping this lump turns out to be nothing. We’ve certainly seen plenty that have been nothing, but of course, we wouldn’t have wanted to miss the one that wasn’t on Sheba.