Pet Aid And Insurance

Pet Aid

If you are on a low income and in receipt of housing benefit or council tax benefit, then you may be able to register with the charitable PDSA pet-aid scheme. Thrums Vet Group offers this scheme in Kirriemuir, Forfar and Blairgowrie, and when registered, you can have free basic veterinary care for your pet.

There are guidelines for registering and some of these are set out below. We thoroughly recommend that you register for this scheme if you are eligible, or if you know someone who may be eligible, please ask him or her to get in touch with us. You must pre-register to be eligible for the free treatment so if you are receive either Housing Benefit or Council Tax Benefit benefits, you should register your pet as soon as you can. You must also be resident in postcodes: PH8, PH9, PH10, PH11, PH15, PH16, PH17, PH18 and DD8 and the PDSA will only help one pet per household. Remember you should register your pet when he/she is healthy – to register please come into one of our surgeries and complete a form, bringing with you proof of benefit and a postal order for £7.50 made out to the PDSA. You can contact the PDSA directly on 0800 7312502 or please feel free to call us for further information.

Remember the PDSA only covers basic veterinary care and it doesn’t cover worming or vaccinations, out-of-hours appointments, home visits, pet food, neutering, dental care, cremation, chemotherapy, specialist referral or any control of a bitch’s season. If you want more comprehensive cover you should consider pet insurance. The PDSA charitable scheme covers some operations and some medicines; it doesn’t cover all operations and all medicines.

Insurance

Unfortunately there is no national health service for animals and therefore we think that insurance is a very important thing to have. We do not recommend any company in particular but we do recommend that all pets are insured. This avoids the heart breaking scenario where owners are unable to afford the best possible treatments for their animal.

There are two main types of insurance. The first one is where an animal's problem is covered for a year. This is a bit cheaper but is not good for long term problems such as arthritis, skin allergies or heart disease.

The second type covers an animals condition for a lifetime. This costs a little more per month but is definitely a good idea. If you are in two minds about which type to get then we would recommend getting the better insurance for the first 2-3 years until you know that long term problems are less likely to appear.

If you are unsure about which type of policy you want then please phone the surgery for some general help.

If you need to make a claim via your pets insurance we have a dedicated member of staff who can process the claim forms once you have simply filled in and signed your part of the form. In essence it is very simple and straight forward to make a claim.

As with all insurance please read the small print and make sure you are properly covered.