Rescue Journal

I am so very angry at SAINTS insurence providers.

Alison  ·  Oct. 24, 2006

They made me pay almost $1500 last year for house insurence because of the animals...they covered us as a hobby farm and were fully aware that this was an animal sanctuary for senior and sick animals. A month ago they sent up a fellow to get pictures of the out buildings to update our file. i took time out of a busy day to show him around and make sure none of the animals were in his way to get his job done.

Apparently he was in fact a prevent-a-claim officer whose job is to ensure that the company doesn't take any unforseen risks. While they knew this was an animal shelter when they took my money last year, apparently now insurence companies are running scared because of possible insurence claims due to biting dogs. They are refusing to cover us next year, siting 20 cats and 21 dogs as the reason (they could at least have tried to get the numbers right) I am not sure what they thought an animal shelter would shelter if not cats and dogs and quite a few of them at that.

Bottom line to this folks, is, this is a direct result of BSL legislation where law makers using their usual lack of insight are now legislating which breeds of dogs we allowed to have as members of our families instead of legislating the expectations of the type of care and responsibility the owners are legally bound to provide for ANY dog so they are well cared for and not a risk to society. Each decade it is a new breed, in the sixties it was St Bernards that were the evil dogs, in the 70's it was the german shepherd, the 80's was the dobie's, the nineties were the rotti's and in the 2000's it is any dog who in any way resembles a pitbull. When will we learn, it is not the dogs, it is the people who breed them and sell them to loser owners that are the issue. And insurence companies jump on the bandwagon to save themselves some farfetched lost bucks.

My feeling is we supposedly live in a free society where we can share our lives with animals if we would like, and we can even rescue them and give them a nice place to finish their lives too if we want. i expect our government to have a brain and do the research and fix whatever problems there are with a solution that actually works. Like if the problem of vicious dogs is really the fault of irresponsible and stupid humans then curtail the ability of stupid and irresponsible humans to breed, sell or own a dog. And I expect as a paying consumer, that insurencce companies do not penalize an innocent animal shelter with a bunch of really nice and safe and old animals that their other paying clients tossed away and cover us in case of a fire or theft or vandalism or whatever. I am so sick and tired of the good guy getting the shaft. Maybe we should all be as uncaring and unbending and as heartless as the insurence companies, gee wouldn't that be a nice world to live in.

Comments

Carol

lol...just finished it...hot, deep and long and i didn't let a single animal in there to bug me either. it felt so good to quietly soak away the aches.

i almost let freddy in (the little neuro cat i am babysitting) what a sweetie pie, i may not want to give him back!...but then i said, nope, mine!

Chris

I have an email in to someone up this way who is a volunteer at a private shelter to see if she can find out who insures them. Will let you know what I hear.

Chris Thomas

Can they not separate out the liability part if that is what they are concerned about?

Carol

please call her jean and thx...the bank won't carry my mortgage without insurence. it is part of the mortgage agreement, i have to have fire insurence on the buildings at least.

Jean

Well, this sucks! So you are supposed to go without insurance if you have certain breeds of dogs or certain numbers of dogs?

I have an awesome insurance provider (and I know my rep is an animal lover as she has tons of pictures of her animals all over her desk!) - I could see what she can come up with. She was recommended to me when I had problems finding affordable insurance for my rec property because it didn't fit into any of the categories the insurance people provide.

Carol

the broker is looking for another company...he said maybe a commercial policy with a "tenent package" for my personal belongings.

Rae

Have you tried other providers Carol. I know a few years ago the daycare I work for went through the same thing because of all of the abuse cases in the news(not at our Centre we have never had a case!!!) they refuse to insure Daycares now. We had to shop around and could only find one provider that would cover us but our yearly rate went from a few hundred to $3500 per year and continues to grow each year. There wasn't much we could do as we had to have the insurance. Luckily we are run by a non-profit Board of directors and they took the time to work out a really good package for us but it was alot of work. Just what you wanted Carol more work!!!!!! It really sucks.