A recent survey by M&S insurance found that half of vets questioned claimed in the last five years to have had to put pets to sleep due to the owner being unable to afford treatment.

Balancing the household budget can be tough at any time but the current economic climate has forced more and more people to scrutinise their outgoings with a magnifying glass in an attempt to find reductions.

For some people, dog insurance could be viewed as a luxury item that can no longer (more…)

A couple are facing massive vet’s fees in order to save their dog, which had plunged over a cliff. Roxanne Peggie, 23, and Barry Blyther, 43, had taken their German pointer Rover to Northern Ireland. On parking their car at Limavady, a cliff whose name means ‘dog’s leap’ in Gaelic, Rover broke free and jumped over a wall at the cliff’s edge.

Ms Peggie found Rover clinging precariously to a ledge but, before she could rescue him, the unfortunate pooch plunged 400ft. She said:

“We thought that the dog was a goner. I will never forget the sight of him falling. I would never have thought he would have survived such a fall.”

The couple spotted that Rover was still moving, and wen (more…)

It seemed almost humorous at the time – when I’m A Celebrity… host Ant McPartlin bent to greet a four-legged act that had appeared on Britain’s Got Talent, the mutt reacted like a rabid Gillian McKeith and sunk its teeth into him.

Fortunately the animal was presumably less talented at biting than McKeith, and McPartlin needed no treatment, but the same cannot be said for many other people in the UK who are bitten by a dog.

Website Patient UK reports 200,000 bites per year, with approximately 28,000 suffering bites to the face and 19,000 of those requiring plastic surgery. In fact, according to the site 100 dog bite victims are admitted to hospital weekly in the UK.

This is a 66 per cent rise from a mere decade ago and, in 2009, savage dog attacks on small children escalated an alarming (more…)