Pet Insurance Data Shows Mutts ARE Healthier!

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When it comes to warranties and insurance, predictive values are important, and fortunes are made by determining the correct digits to place to the right of a point mark.

What does this have to do with dogs?

Quite a lot.

You see, pet insurance companies are in a competitive business to get your dollar. If they get the numbers wrong, and price a premium too high, potential customers may forgo pet insurance altogether or else sign up with a competitor's plan. On the other hand, if the company routinely prices insurance premiums too low, they may push themselves into bankruptcy.

And so, pet insurance companies have collected data on hundreds of thousands of dogs and analyzed that data, in order to assign correct premiums to predictive risks.

What do pet insurance companies tell us? Basically, three things:

1. The size of the dog matters.
   As a general rule, larger dogs do not live as long as smaller dogs. This is not closely held information. As a major British pet insurance company notes: "Typically, larger pets are more expensive, so ... a terrier will be cheaper then a Labrador."
   
   
2. The breed matters.
   Not all breeds of dogs are equally healthy. This is not closely held information, as any review of Kennel Club breed health surveys makes clear. If you are looking to get complete health care coverage (as opposed to a catastrophic plan to cover vehicle impacts), your premium will rise or fall depending on the breed.
   
   
3. Mongrels are healthier than pedigree dogs.
   Again, this is not closely held information. As a major British pet insurance company reports: "A survey by the [insurance company] found almost 40 per cent of pedigree pet policy holders will make a claim on their insurance compared to just over 20 per cent of cross-breed owners." David Pickett, pet insurance manager at Sainsbury's Bank notes that "While it is imperative all cats and dogs are adequately insured, our experience is that pedigree owners are more likely to call on their pet insurance for illness and disease than owners of crossbreeds because their animals are more likely to suffer certain hereditary illnesses."

What else do we find by looking at the fencing-in of risk by insurance companies?

Well, for one thing, we find that some pet insurance companies are willing to extend insurance to older cross-bred dogs, but not to older pedigree dogs.

Embrace Pet Insurance, for example, will insure a mixed breed dog up to 8 years of age, but the cut-off for purebred dogs is 6 years.

What's that about?

Simple: Taken as a whole, there is a "health gap" between cross-bred and pedigree dogs, and that gap is about two years. The insurance industry is simply mirroring in policy, what has been proven true on the ground.

Why are pedigree dogs less healthy than their mongrel cousins?

One factor is that many breeds are positively selected for exaggeration.

Flat-faced breeds which have been selected for brachycephalism, for example, are far more likely to suffer from cleft palettes, breathing problems, and eye injuries than cross-bred dogs which have better snouts.

Dogs that have been selected for the benched legs associated with achondroplasia (a kind of dwarfism) are more likely to have heart problems and joint problems.

Giant breeds are more likely to die of gastric torsion, heart problems and cancer, while teacup breeds are more likely to suffer from neurological and dental issues.

Dogs bred for wrinkles are much more likely to have skin problems, while dogs bred for screw tails or very long backs, are more likely to have vertebrate problems.

Another problem with purebred dogs, of course, is inbreeding. Here the issues are best observed not by looking at dogs through the lens of purebred vs. mongrel, but by looking at dogs, within breeds, that have higher or lower coefficients of inbreeding (COI).

Here too the data is rather unambiguous: Dogs with higher coefficients of inbreeding tend to get sick sooner, and die sooner, than their less inbred counterparts, a fact that holds true for breeds as varied as the Rhodesian Ridgeback, the Dachshund, and the Standard Poodle.

How does this translate down to the realities of pedigree dog ownership?

Simple: Purebred dogs are, on the whole, sicker more often that their cross-bred brethren, and as a consequence the vet bills of purebed dog owners can be expected to be 15% higher says Saga Pet Insurance.

Pet insurance premiums, of course, reflect this reality. As the PetGuard Insurance company notes on its home page:

If you own a pedigree dog or cat, you are more likely to incur greater veterinary expnse (sorry!) due to the degree of inbreeding that has to occur ... pedigree cats and dogs are more likely to suffer from respiratory or hereditary conditions.

Bottom line: If you are looking for the healthiest dog possible, stay away from Kennel Club dogs and look for a mongrel that weighs between 10 and 40 pounds and which has a real snout.

Is that dog guaranteed to be healthy? Nope.

But, as the pet insurance industry will tell you, the odds are certainly tipped quite a lot in your favor.
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