Shameless Pet Plan Insurance Plug

OOPS I meant the last entry to segway into the fact that we received the result of our insurance claim for Maki's mushroom toxicity this week but forgot to write this up.

Here's the details on the insurance we had from Pet Plan.  Our per incident deductible was $200, with 0% coinsurance for regular vet and 30% coinsurance for specialist, emergency and referrals.  We paid $183 for one year with a maximum coverage of $8,000.

.....the bill was just under $4000 for Maki.  We received a check for $3800 which is the total amount minus our $200 deductible :)  In addition they sent us a condolence card, cancelled his policy and refunded $80 without me even remembering to cancel it.  All in all we've been incredibly impressed by Pet Plan's insurance.  I honestly didn't think they would actually pay us and if they did I totally didn't expect it to be that much.  We also submitted a claim for his stomach illness from September and they reimbursed us $150 for a $350 bill.  We submitted that claim in January just before the 3-month claim cut off.  So we've been testing them and they've been passing!

Needless to say Helix was enrolled and completed his 2-week waiting period on January 8th.  We stepped up his coverage to have just a $100 incident deductible and paid $279 for 1-year.  His latest incident racked up just over $600 so if all goes well again we will be very thankful to have purchased with Pet Plan.

I did a bunch of research prior to initially going with Pet Plan and there were some other good insurance companies but Pet Plan had the best personal reviews of actual claims.  But like all of the policies it has exceptions and fine print but in the end it is definitely one of the top choices in my opinion.

Doggy Insurance

WARNING : CONTAINS GRAPHIC PICTURE AT END!

Last night Helix decided it was a good day to test how well his Pet Plan insurance will work :(  He was on leash running in the yard with Daniel when the story gets fuzzy.  There definitely was a yelp and perhaps some tension on the leash but Helix resumed normal play.  However later when Dan was petting him he realized that his hand was picking up blood.  Upon inspection he found a long and very deep gash on the back of Helix's head.  Some panic ensued as he tried to assess the situation and calm a now disturbed and fearful Helix.  Luckily, I returned home from work at this point.  Actually it's not that lucky because I'm completely useless when it comes to wounds.  I immediately told Dan not to show me the wound in fear that I would pass out.  But in trying to assertain if the emergency vet was necessary the wound was revealed and my head feels light just thinking of it now.  We whisked him off to the emergency vet which unfortunately we know all too well.  We were immediately recognized by the staff and luckily it was not terribly busy.

Dan explained and showed the vet Helix's predicament as I held my head between my legs.  The vet decided that due to his energy and excitability he would need to be fully sedated in order to close the wound.  This meant leaving him there for a few hours.  The vet called to say that she had to do skull x-rays because she found an abnormality on his skull and needed to rule out that he hadn't smacked his head and fractured his skull.  Thankfully she found nothing and Helix must just have a weird skull.  Around 10:30p we picked up our little boy wearing a cone and with the back of his head from his ears to his neck shaved and sutured.  It was a surprising sight to see and a couple of the other patient parents snickered!

Helix is now on an antibiotic, pain meds, and restricted activity.  This is difficult with an energetic pup but so far he's doing fairly well.  He hasn't quite figured out that his head has essentially doubled by wearing a cone and he is ramming into everything, poor little guy.  He has had a very positive attitude about the whole experience and that is good.  He's a great pill taker and he has been very cooperative for his 10-min wound icing sessions which I thought he would hate :)

The Following Picture is Graphic!

Third Worst!

We enrolled Helix in Basic Obedience at the Berkeley Humane Society on Sunday afternoons.  Daniel was out of town for the first class so it was just Helix and I.  We arrived first and chose our "area" which consists of two folding chairs with a door mat in front and a water bowl behind.  There are short (6ft long) pieces of crisscrossed pvc used as make shift barriers between stations.  All in all you have about a ten by ten area. The first rule of this obedience class is that dogs are not allowed to meet and greet each other. Obeying this rule is very difficult when you have a bunch of pulling, barking, untrained dogs and owners. Helix is very interested in meeting everything and everyone which results in him jumping, pulling and looking like a caught fish at the end of a fishing line. His attention span is equivalent to a fly's and if anyone barks then it's fair game for him to reply.

The first class was very stressful and felt as though it lasted for 3 hrs instead of just one.  Helix was quickly pegged as one of the least obedient dogs in the room.  The class had 8 dogs in total.  I decided that the dog which had to be behind a bunch of sheets because he is so reactive to other dogs won the title of worst.  He periodically would start barking, inspiring the other barkers to chime in.  In all fairness he may be more obedient than the rest but we just can't see because he's behind all the sheets like a ghost dog, weird.  Second worst was a boxer, ridgeback mix being handled by one completely frazzled man, another semi-composed man and a teenager who more than once allowed the dog to escape.  Then there's Helix with his low attention span and lunging.  After that a dog named Ben, a yellow lab mix, barks a bit and in general doesn't pay much attention to his owner or her daughter.  Then Espirit?? handled by an asian lady and her teenage daughter neither of which are very good at listening to the teacher and they ask stupid questions that don't make sense.  Espirit is a small black lab mix who has the occaisional drift in attention and often decides to venture in to her neighboring zone.  A tan, medium, pitbull mix named Olive is pretty well behaved and hardly ever lunges she wins third place. Then there's a large, grey, pitbull mix who is usually wearing a sweater and is missing a back leg.  He whines a lot but is generally very obedient as long as the lady is holding chicken.  Most obedient goes to Teddy? not sure if that's his name but he's a short, corgi, spaniel, collie mix that is fairly shy and very attached to his owner.

Helix's worst trait is his lack of attention in the face of any small distraction.  It's very trying on our patience to work with him but he does know what he is supposed to be doing because he'll do it all at home just not in class, annoying.  He's really awful at walking next to you on the leash and "staying" which was today's lesson and I thought I might just walk out of the class because he was doing so bad and I was fed up.  The teacher had to come over and alter the task for us because Helix just couldn't keep any sort of attention.

Last week Helix grabbed everyone's attention by popping a squat and taking a big dump in the middle of the teacher explaining the next task.  Yup, our dog pooped in obedience class, awesome!  The teacher actually stopped in the middle of her explanation and said "oh, well, when you've got to go, you've got to go!" I tried to take it in stride but it was embarrasing to have our dog pooping in class.

That's all for now but hopefully Helix will start to gain some attention span and show some improvement by the end of the 6 weeks.

Fixin' up Helix

As with most rescue pooches Helix came to us with less than perfect health.  We quickly enrolled him in doggy health insurance for accidents and illnesses and hopefully we won't need to use it. When Helix first arrived he was having a bit of a digestion issue but we chalked it up to "new environment". He seemed fine to us but our dog walker reported he was having loose stools on his walks so we put him on a chicken, rice and pumpkin diet. This went well aside from cooking more for our dog than ourselves!  When we eased him back to regular food he started to have issues again and I noticed to my disgust that he had tapeworms! Yuck! Witnessing tapeworms crawling around in your dogs poop is revolting.  Off to the vet he went with his tapeworm infested "sample".  As it turned out, Helix not only had tapeworms but also Giardia, :(  He's now on a couple of meds for the next few weeks.  We think he's doing better and he's been very cooperative in the pill, and syringe department :)  Unfortunately, due to the fact that giardia can be transmitted from dog to dog, he's current banned from his usual Wednesday and Friday pack walks.