My $10,000 Dog

Sometimes unusual pet mishaps are more than a dog getting attacked by a stingray or eating a beehive. VPI’s Christine Gowen found this out first hand when her dog Shelby suffered a tear in her lung. Also – you may recognize Shelby from our pet cancer survivor series. She truly is a survivor!

In January 2010, my Labrador retriever, Shelby, started coughing occasionally. It was a slight hack that occurred every few days or so. I thought fibers from her new Christmas toy may be aggravating her, so I put the toy out of reach. A few days later, I took her for an examination when the cough persisted. Ten days after being misdiagnosed and treated for kennel cough, Shelby ended up in an oxygen box for three days in what was to become a long journey for our family. We discovered that Shelby had a tear in her lung — a very serious and life-threatening condition.

Spontaneous pneumothorax is caused by a small rupture on the surface of the lung and can randomly occur in large breed dogs with barrel chests. Shelby, while only 53 pounds (small for a Lab), does have a deep chest and is highly active. Why this happened to her remains a mystery. We didn’t know that her left lung had collapsed and she was relying on one lung to breathe, but we attribute her excellent health and athletic condition to her survival during those first two weeks.

The hope was that a brief stay in an oxygen box would naturally heal Shelby’s torn lung. This turned out to be a temporary solution; each time she was removed from the oxygen box, her lung would collapse within hours.

The news was devastating. We knew what it meant: open-chest surgery to remove the portion of damaged lung.

The thought of your beloved pet undergoing open-chest surgery is alarming. To top it off, the veterinarian looked me and my husband squarely in the eyes and told us that it would likely cost $10,000 to save Shelby’s life. Should they proceed?

I didn’t have to think twice about that. Not because I had banked a spare $10K, but because Shelby’s had a VPI Pet Insurance policy since she was 3 months old. I knew we’d be reimbursed for a portion of the surgery, and I knew my healthy and active 7-year-old dog had the quality of life to justify saving her.

I write about pet healthcare for a living. Not only have I been a VPI policyholder for 8 years, I’ve been employed by VPI as their Web managing editor for the past four. Yet despite my direct connection to colleagues with veterinary backgrounds who readily educated me on pneumothorax, I knew the risks and was worried about whether or not my fur child would pull through.

Shelby was in excellent hands at Tustin’s Advanced Critical Care & Internal Medicine facility. The around-the-clock care was worth every shiny penny. After checking her in, they immediately rushed Shelby back to insert a chest tube which would help her breathe until her open-chest surgery the following morning.

The two-hour surgery took place at the neighboring Veterinary Surgical Specialists unit during which one of Shelby’s left lobes was successfully removed and her lung once again was able to inflate on its own to full capacity. Shelby spent five days at ACCIM. We visited her twice a day, bringing her favorite teddy bear as a comfort and giving her an abundance of TLC. It was heartbreaking to go home without Shelby each day, but we knew she was recovering very well.

What we weren’t aware of in the midst of Shelby’s crisis was that Shelby’s VPI policy was entering a new term. In fact, Shelby’s policy renewed at midnight prior to her surgery. That meant all of the benefits used in the initial round of Shelby’s pneumothorax treatment were also renewed and available for her surgical treatment. Luckily for VPI policyholders, when our policies renew, our pets’ medical conditions are not considered pre-existing. When the new policy term rolls around, so do the benefits for previously treated conditions.

What my family discovered after reviewing Shelby’s medical bill is that a long-term stay at a veterinary hospital increases the possibility that policy benefits may be stretched to the max. This varies based on the condition being treated, but in Shelby’s case, the daily cost to care for her (including boarding, staff hours and medications) was very expensive, especially in Southern California.

Ultimately, Shelby was a $10,000 dog; however, after her VPI reimbursements, we ended up spending approximately $3,000 out of pocket. To my family, she’s priceless.