Dog Liability Insurance

Third party liability cover is included in most insurance policies these days, but what you might be surprised to know is that it’s covered in dog insurance policies too. There’s extremely good reasoning behind that fact, and dog liability insurance can actually be incredibly advantageous.

As a dog owner, you’re personally responsible for the actions and behaviours of your pet. If they were to do anything that damaged or injured someone else or their property in any way then, either through charges or compensation claims, you’d be required to pay any costs or damages incurred. That’s where dog liability insurance comes in.

This type of cover protects your financial interests in the event that your dog damages someone or something else, perhaps through personal injury to the individual themselves or even if your dog ran across the road and caused an accident. In some cases the level of cover even extends to the event that your dog caused the death of someone else – in such circumstances the compensation claim made would be extremely substantial, and without adequate insurance you’d have to pay that out of your own pocket.

There are a couple of pieces of legislation that tie in to this type of insurance, the main one being the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act. This states that an owner of a dog who injures someone else would be liable to fines, a criminal record and even a prison sentence, and of course compensation claims. The dog would also have to be put down, and if you don’t want to suffer the financial upheaval as well as the emotional one it makes sense to be fully insured.

However, it’s worth noting that dog liability insurance tends to be offered in conjunction with a broader pet insurance policy and isn’t usually offered in its own right. This means that you need to check the small print to make sure that adequate liability cover is in place, as you don’t want to have a nasty shock if any claims were to be made against you and your pet.

Owning a dog comes with a host of responsibilities, and that includes keeping your dog under control. The financial (and even criminal) consequences of failing to do so can be severe, so it pays to have adequate dog liability insurance in place to cover your expenses should the worst happen. So, make sure you take the time to find the right insurance policy with enough liability cover so you can own your pet with confidence.

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