What was your biggest vet bill....

Chestnuttymare

Chestnuttymare

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....and were you insured.

After all the talk about vets lately, I just wondered who has had the biggest bill.

Brooke went down a ditch not long after I got her 7 years ago. She ripped her back leg open, just missing tendons thankfully. it resulted in a 10 day stay in the dick vet in edionburgh and the final bill was £2,700. They waited til Scottish Equestrian paid out.

Cara my Dobermann, ruptured both cruciate ligaments and had surgery on them at an orthopedic specialist a week apart. It was a horrendous time but she is now the bionic dog and perfect again.:D
the bill for that was £4,600
I had to pay the bill for each surgery both times when I picked her up. so £2,300 twice.
Pet Plan paid out reasonably quickly.

Thank god for insurance!
 
Thankfully (touching lot of wood!!!) my biggest so far was Monty, he had lots of nosebleeds and it turned out he had leukaemia. In two visits including scoping and lots of blood tests the bill was £1100......nothing covered by insurance due to his age :(

The only insurance claim I have had was for £1.5k. It wasn't a vet bill though....Monty boy kicked a parked car and caused lots of damage, little monkey :D Petplan paid up straight away though.
 
One broken hock, that was an expensive one! Pony got kicked in the field and the op to put her back together again was around 3.5k if I remember correctly. We walked away with a pony who came sound again and is better than ever! You would never know the difference! We weren't insured though, and on the same day had bought a new horse so it was an expensive weekend.

We were lucky though, my aunt's horse needed colic surgery and sadly didn't make it. Their bill was around 7k and they came away without their family pet. he was insured however.
 
Not sure if i broke them all down as had 4 different claims and issues going on at the same time but last year it was 10k this year 2k so far. However now not sure if insurance will pay new lameness issues wait and see if not will find the money.
 
Insured
£4K for mostly investigative work, small amount of treatment and poor horse ended up being PTS (not covered by insurance).
 
One of our four year olds got a tiny cut high up inside her hind leg and it got infected after she crossed the local river (we later discovered the sewage works discharged near there), she had two ops and came home only to be euthanised after a £6300 bill.
Our own vets' part was very reasonable, it was the clinic's that was high.
To make it worse we had refused an offer of £9000 for her two weeks previously, and she wasn't insured.
Total loss £15,300...
Next time we won't send one away to the clinic but just try at home..
 
approx £3.5k for tendonitis - was an unusual presentation and we ended up with loads of x rays,scans etc only to be told that really box rest was the best cure. Took about 5 months altogether to try and solve. Thankfully was insured and they paid directly to the vets. Biggest one I have outside of insurance ws approx £1k for a resp infection - my horse has had a tie back so isn' covered and he needed quite a few scopes and weeks of anti-b's to cure it.
 
Not me, but I know a pony whose vet's bill is approaching £20K and it's for trying to diagnose a mystery bi lateral lameness. Crazy thing is the pony is not too bad - intermittently goes up to about 4 tenths lame, and every single test, using every piece of technology available has been done. There's lots of theories, but still nothing to suggest why or even where the pain is coming from. The insurance has been exhausted, and at the end of this year the pony will be uninsurable for any type of lameness in its future apparantly.
 
My boy cracked his splint bone in the autum and then while on box rest he decided he would jump out of his stable. The total for vet fees and physio was about £4000 but thankfully i was insured
 
A girl at the field has spent £17k and counting on her horse :eek: She has remortgaged her house to pay since he was covered only to £5k.

He has had 2 sinus cysts ops and also has ringbone. He then tore his ddft!
 
About 10k I think. It was a long time ago now. I had an old mare who had a hair line fracture in her foot. Took ages to get better and she never was ridden again which was a shame. Still she had a very happy retirement and could go out if she was lead and we didn't go too fast.
 
My 13hh gelding started with laminitis at the end of December 05, he finally came back to work in Sept 07. He wasn't insured, I don't know the exact amount I spent on vets bills trying to get him right (I lost track!) but I would guess maybe £3-3.5k. Plus farrier bill went right up as well because of various remedial shoeing, imprints etc.

We very nearly had pts and disposal costs too, at one point he got so bad the vet saw him on a Mon and said he would come again on the Fri and if there was no change it would be game over. On the Thu there was a very slight improvement so he got a reprieve when the vet came the next day and from that day he started to make a very slow but successful recovery.

We never did get to the bottom of what caused it and why he got so bad and took so long to come right, I had every test the vet could think of, he got a 2nd/3rd opinion too and it baffled the farrier as well.

Touch wood since then it has never happenend again and he has been 100% sound, I know there are people who probably would have had him pts, there were times when I thought about it but he isn't ancient (he's 14 now) and I wanted to make sure I had tried every last possible thing before we quit. I have had him longer than any of my other ponies and spending that much on him was definitely worth it!
 
It is quite strange how some horses get the "this is it, end of story" and then start to make a recovery. It seems to happen quite often.

Some awful big bills there, no wonder the premiums are going up...................

Re the pony that is slightly lame. I knew a similar story with an endurance horse. After 12 months investigations - vet,hospital, injections, remedial farriery - was still not right, so owner sent it to Rockley Farm (barefoot remedial) and a few weeks later it was back in work, sound and has been competing regularly for past 2 years. Has shoes for endurance season, and none when resting. But they knew it was a foot problem, but didn't know what.
 
£5500 for a broken 2nd pastern joint.

That was the cost spread over about 18 months including an operation at Newmarket with a weeks' stay there.... and then a General Anaesthetic at my practice for the plaster cast to be changed.... and hospital stay.

Then all the associated check ups, drugs, sorting out of complications etc.

This was about 12yrs ago. My insurance cover was £3.5k max... so I borrowed a grand off my parents, and paid the other £1k in instalments to my vet over a course of 10 months.

It was a horrible time... bad enough with the money worries.... but then having to make the decision to put my beloved girl down who had gone through so much.
 
around £12,000.

He had severe kidney stones and had to have his right kidney removed. In order to get the kidney, they had to saw out his last rib. He was on BR for about 3 months if I recall correctly. And then not brought back into work for another 6 months after that because obviously they had cut through loads of muscle.

He's of those where everyone said that I should have just put him down but that was 7 years ago and he's fine now, you'd hardly be able to tell. Possibly it was selfish putting him through the stress and the pain but I'd only had him 6 months and he was only 9.

We had to get solicitors involved to get the money off the insurers - he had previously had something wrong with his bladder so they tried to claim that bladder caused kidney but of COURSE if related at all, it would be the other way round!
 
In the last three months I have spent approaching £6k on a colic surgery (not insured).
Mind you, I always think you owe the horse a reasonable chance (all those noble posts about people 'not putting horses through the stress' of box rest don't fool me - the truth is often that the owners cba despite the prognosis being good. :p)
S :D
 
Around £7k so far this year on my mare - annular ligament desmotomy plus cortisone injections, etc.

This is a follow up to a kick about 8 years ago which damaged the ligaments, tendon, tendon sheath etc which cost over £6k.

She is insured - but not on that leg......
 
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