Considering dog health insurance? Many pet owners are facing that tough decision too. Just as health care costs are skyrocketing for you and your family, the veterinarian industry is also feeling the crunch. Medical equipment and insurance are becoming extremely costly. Procedures for pets easily run into the thousands now, and medications are outrageously priced.

I recently read this great marketing angle on a dog health insurance website: Dog health insurance offers pet owners a way to budgeting for the unexpected through a series of affordable monthly payments. Sounds convincing doesn’t it? Just like making monthly payments on your car. The only problem with that logic is that you actually get to drive the car, you aren’t paying for something that you will probably never use.

When helping consumers with health insurance quotes for their families, I always recommend making a spreadsheet to allow them to compare different scenarios and costs apples to apples. For dog health insurance, I would recommend making a similar scenario, then deciding which procedures you would actually choose to undertake for your pet.

For example, I would probably have my dog treated for a bladder infection or ingestion of a foreign object. But if he was diagnosed with cancer, I’d probably have him put down rather than undergo painful and costly treatment. See the difference? I do love my dog, but he’s not my wife. It would be a heartbreaking decision to have to make, but it would be selfish of me to require him to undergo painful surgeries and treatments that may not save his life anyway.

So sit down and have a real heart-to-heart with yourself and your spouse on your family’s plan of action on certain medical conditions before plugging those into your spreadsheet. Then plug in the number to see if dog health insurance is for you.