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| Tajji |
When we adopted Tajji, she was just under 10 years old. The life
expectancy for her breed, German Shepherd Dog, is 9 to 12 years, although we’ve
known dogs that made it to 13 or 14. Fifteen would be a far outlier. Our last
GSD, Oka, made it to 12 ½, the last half year under treatment for lymphoma. We
agonized over that treatment, since he was otherwise healthy and there was a
good chance it would buy him another year of life. He tolerated the chemo well,
as dogs often do, and until about 48 hours before he died (from leukemia, which
lymphoma sometimes turns into), he was romping with his favorite blue horse
ball. The thing is, we didn’t have pet insurance for him, and of course once he’d
been diagnosed with lymphoma, that made it a pre-existing condition, which made
it impossible. Our budget, already shaky, took a major hit.
Fast forward now to Tajji. Healthy, strongly built…but
geriatric. Could we even get insurance for her and if we could, would it break
the bank? After some looking we found a company* that allowed us to choose the
deductible and percentage covered. I think there was an extra package that
covered maintenance care, vaccinations, and the like, but what we wanted was catastrophic coverage. We’d gone the
route of hoping for the best and then having to deal with a financial as well
as a medical emergency. Now we made the assumption that in the few years we’d
have Tajji something would go wrong.
This happened sooner than we imagined.
