How very true. 'The answer is NO - now what was the question again?'

Thats not how I interpreted it to be honest....



The above suggests the dog jumped "over" the wall knocking it down in the process...

And I guess if the insurance company has been given this information its grounds (for them) to reject the claim.

The poster may also find the landlord may make a claim against her for demolishing the wall, so I would be a little weary of putting the blame to the landlord, what if he claims the wall was fine,and it only gave way due to you allowing your 8/9 st dog rush at it,, then the poster will have to prove the wall was faulty, another expense if she loses .

Even better then. Assuming you had no idea that the wall was dodgy - which it must have been for your girl to knock it down whilst jumping it, then absolutely definitely you should be covered if you can prove to the insurance company this fact, and also that you had no idea she was less than secure and that in your honest opinion she could not do what she did. Hindsight is a wonderful thing - with our Ben we now have a fence a good 6' high, with extremely prickly roses, hawthorn and macrocarpa preventing him from even trying to get a grip on it and haul himself over. All gates are now bolted and are 6' high with no chance of his being able to get a purchase on the wood and haul himself over. But before, all we had was the same gates plus a 4' fence - still covered in the prickly stuff, and still with a steep drop the other side like a ha-ha, which had kept in for 15 years Ben's father Hal who was a supreme athlete and could jump over, through or under most obstacles, plus Ben's half brother Woody who could leap like a gazelle from a standstill over a 5' fence without touching the top. We assumed that the steep drop down into the field of about 8' put them all off, and we had no reason to believe that it would not put Ben off. The insurance company accepted this without a murmur because it is of course reasonable.

You must take this up with your insurance company as clearly they are being very unreasonable - unless there is something in the policy that would preclude what I have already said.

Absolutely - in my case, if the same thing happened with my Ben, then clearly we would not have a leg to stand on. But even he, the git, cannot scale Fort Knox Fence as our perimeter boundary is now known as!

I feel so sorry for the OP - sounds like they are more than capable of taking it up with the insurance though

This is exactly what we do now Danielle.

Will be doing it in future myself,makes more sense to me

Personally I think the pivotal point is whether or not Danielle was aware of the fact that the wall was dodgy - as it would have to be for a dog to jump on it and it then fell down - and whether or not Danielle could have reasonably known and expected either from experience and knowledge of the dog itself, or previous experience and knowledge of previously owned dogs of a similar type, build and breed. Clearly in both cases the answer is "no". She had no idea that the wall was less than solid, and she presumably has never had any issues with the bitch in question in similar circumstances, or her predecessors.

The critical word is "reasonable" - the Insured - the owner of the dog - is not required to be an expert in walls, or even an expert in dog behaviour. She would just be expected in her "reasonable" opinion to make a judgement on whether or not that wall was suitable to contain her bitch - we know, with hindsight, that clearly it wasn't, and we also know with hindsight that clearly the bitch in question is capable of jumping a wall of that height, so Danielle, being sensible, will take reasonable steps to ensure that such an accident cannot happen again.

I'm a little confused as to how your vet would know the content of your policy

In my experience , they ask if you are insured, you say yes. You get your claim form fill your part in, and the vet fills in their and sends it off... They have no reason to read the finer details of your policy, so why would he tell you that you are covered

Well I'm just a bit confused - if the dog could 'jump it' and jumped over it clear it wouldn't have got knocked down.

Can't fathom whether the dog jumped over it and just its feet touching it knocked it down or whether the dog was 'jumping at it' and only got 'over and out' when it fell down?

I realise that involving the landlord will bring its own problems too.

Regarding putting money 'aside' to cover vet bills instead of insurance. The sum of 30 a month mentioned would only amount to 360 a year (no use at all for an expensive op like the one OP's dog needed).

I don't insure but don't 'set aside' anything either. If I had to save it separately so that it was available and I couldn't spend it - I'd probably insure.

I only don't insure because I know whatever it cost at a vet I could cover it from money in the bank and/or savings - I'd die if I lost my dog for want of the cost of treatment. I think it's a bit risky to hope that you never need more than 300 odd a year.

Better than nothing I know but I've read about operation costs on here that come to ten times that sort of amount. But then my boarding and travel costs for my dog come to a lot more than that anyway - and I knew they would. Feeding the shrimp costs peanuts!

I really feel for the OP because they haven't just not made plans to cover costs or not thought about it. They thought they had it covered. And in my opinion this is a bit of a 'freak accident' it usually takes a car or similar to knock a wall down if it was built properly in the first place.

I wonder if the the insurance company only see that the dog got out , and are not interested in the whys and whatnots of how it happened

In black and white, they see a dog that jumped a wall and had an accident, the fact the wall fell down as it jumped it does not mean, the dog would not have jumped an intact wall.....they may see it as they dog would have gotten out whether or not it took the wall down doing so ??