My yorkie mix, Bandit, is 5 1/2 years old, and has been relatively healthy his whole life. About 18 months ago, we decided to get pet insurance after he had to have a small lump removed, and that was that.
A week ago, he threw up, and was acting a bit sick. We figured it would go away quickly, but got him into the vet for his checkup. They found elevated liver levels, but we decided to monitor it for a couple of days and booked another appointment to check in afterwards
The next day, Bandit was super lethargic. He started requiring us to carry him down the hallway when we took him out, and hardly moved during the day. Naturally, we moved up his check in appointment to the next day.
So now it’s Friday, and we get him into our regular vet. This time, the liver enzyme levels are so high that we are immediately referred to a veterinary hospital. He had to stay overnight, and they gave him a bunch of medicine.
As it turns out, yorkies are particularly prone to a couple issues involving blood vessels around the liver redirecting the blood flow away, leading to a buildup of toxins. It’s congenital, and often appears young, but dogs can sometimes suddenly show symptoms later in life. Our little guy never even had any abnormal blood work until a week ago.
We just looked at the cost breakdown during the surgery scheduling appointment this morning. Without our pet insurance, we would have to somehow find a minimum of $14k to take care of him for both the initial hospital stay and the surgery. Instead, it’s only a couple thousand and insurance takes care of the rest. This is well worth the $1.8k we’ve paid to have the insurance so far.
Hold your babies tight. You never know how suddenly they can get sick.
Also, massive shout out to BluePearl. They’ve been absolutely incredible in taking care of him.