{17aug2010: cough cough}

Thanks for all your concerns regarding Darwin's latest ailment!  All her issues made me think of a research speech/paper I had to do in college about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy a condition where a parent (usually a mom) makes their child ill or injured to get attention from others.  The movie The Sixth Sense showed a case of that.
Anyway, we had a little getaway this weekend (more on that in another post) and her cough/hacking was a little better, but still there and her appetite still wasn't what it usually is.  By Sunday night she was still hacking so I called our vet yesterday to get her in to get checked out.  Her appointment was scheduled for 930 this morning.  Before her regular vet appointment she had a 730 (omg so early!) appointment at her holistic vet for her accupunture treatment.  While we were there we were talking about Darwin's hacking and she immediately said it's kennel cough.  I told her how we went to the emergency vet last week (she doesn't think the one we went to is very good and recommended others) and told them I thought it could be kennel cough but the on-call vet was quick to say it was not kennel cough but an irritation in her throat.  She said the Prednisone Darwin was on for her back problems left her with a weaker immune system than normal so she had a higher chance of getting any kind of cold or infection.  She even laughed at the Bordetella vaccine saying that she thought it was a waste as Bordetella is only one type of kennel cough and the vaccine only lasts for a couple months.  We got sent home with some Chinese herbs and Astralagus root to boost her immune system.  I canceled our regular vet appointment and we'll see how Darwin does on just these Chinese herbs.
As I've said before, thank goodness for pet insurance.  After last weeks emergency visit we racked up a thousand dollar plus bill and when we picked up Dar, we left them with a claim form to fill out and fax in.  By Sunday we got an email from Trupanion saying they received our claim and last night got a follow up email notifying us that our claim was processed and we'll be getting back our 90% (minus exam fees).  Woo hoo!  Even though Trupanion doesn't cover holistic treatments I'm still very happy with them and it's even better now that they've done away with their cap/limit on payouts.  It used to be about $20,000 cap, and at the rate we've been going with Darwin we would've reached that in couple years.  Now with no cap we can breathe easy!  
And because I don't like pictureless posts, here's a peek for an upcoming post!

{25mar2010: insurance}

There have been quite a few questions about insurance and if our insurance will cover these expenses we're looking at facing with an MRI and possible Wobbler's.
When Darwin was around 6 - 7 months old it seemed like we were constantly calling up the vet for scrapes from the dog park, many cases of diarrhea , or some ailment or another.  At that time we decided we needed to look into pet insurance and I did some heavy duty pet insurance research.  I asked around to the Marymoor Dane group, Googled, asked our vet for their recommendations, and found this site specifically reviewing pet insurance.  I filled out free quote forms and spent a good amount of time weighing the options.  Many of the Marymoor Dane owners seemed to be with VPI and had decent things to say about them.  At that time, Darwin had already been spayed so it seemed silly to me to get an insurance plan that would be covering something she already had done.  I also didn't want to pay for a plan that covered costs we were already willing (and prepared) to pay for like vaccinations, it was the scrapes and diarrhea episodes and unexpected things we wanted to be covered for. 
One of the Marymoor Dane owner's recommended Trupanion and after comparing various plans we settled on them.  I liked that we could choose how much we wanted our deductible to be and that we could get additional coverage for hip dysplasia since we were enrolling before her 1st birthday.  I also liked that they paid back 90% of the vet bill (minus exam fees) and premiums wouldn't go up due to her age (man I sound like a commercial).  
Of course after we got Darwin insurance her diarrhea stopped, she didn't get as many scrapes and we hadn't had to use it till this all came up.  After our initial vet visit I got the claim form filled out and faxed it in Monday morning and by that afternoon I had got an email saying it was processed.  Wednesday when we got home from work there was a check from them waiting in the mail for us.  I called to confirm that they will cover the MRI and surgery if it comes to that.  The things they don't cover though is holistic medicine such as acupuncture and chiropractic treatments.
We've only made a couple claims with Trupanion, but so far I'm pleased with them and I'm so happy that we decided to get insurance for Darwin.  It makes saying 'yes' to any procedures that need to be done to find out (and fix) what's wrong so much easier knowing we don't have to worry about if we can afford it.