This time around, we’ve caught up with our customer Catherine, to hear more about her horse, Crispen, and what led to her having to make a claim.
Background
My horse is called Crispen and he’s a 15-year-old Dutch Warmblood Cross. We’ve had him for just over two years now.
I don’t ride anymore, I used to when I was younger, but I’m 71 now and I don’t want to break a hip or anything like that. But my granddaughter, Katie, rides him, and she likes to do a bit of everything, from dressage, to jumping.
Owning a horse isn’t a hobby, it’s a lifestyle choice and for Katie, it’s an amazing lifestyle choice because it’s taught her so many things; responsibility, resilience and perseverance. It’s also taught her what hard work is because physically, they’re hard work. She’s such a strong, resilient individual and that’s because she’s been around horses.
She’s also learned that looking after a horse always comes before the riding. You do the jobs, and you look after the horse and do the mucking out and the feeding and then you can ride them and reap the benefits.
What’s your horse’s personality like and what are his favourite things to do?
We’re very lucky because he’s got such a fabulous temperament and he’s very sweet, he’s not got a malicious bone in his body.
Although he’s 15 now, if you saw him, you wouldn’t think he was that old. He looks like a youngster. He behaves like a seven-year-old.
He goes into the field in the morning; the summer field is massive, and he does about three laps of the field because he’s so happy to be out. Then puts his head down and eats for the day, and that’s that.
Everybody loves him as much as we do, he’s the yard favourite, because he’s such a good-natured horse.
When you have a special connection with a horse people call them their heart horse and Crispen is our heart horse. He’s just amazing.
Choosing horse insurance:
I choose to have horse insurance with vet’s fees cover because if a horse becomes sick or injured, it’s very expensive.
How did you come to choose The Insurance Emporium?
I did compare costs of several insurance companies but something that stuck with me when we sold our last pony, the vet said The Insurance Emporium, in terms of the speed at which they pay out to vets, they are one of the quickest.
After the sale of the pony, my Granddaughter was moving from ponies onto horses, we found a horse, although I got several quotes, because of what the vet said, I decided to go with The Insurance Emporium.
Catherine’s experience with The Insurance Emporium:
Just prior to Christmas, last year, I noticed that he’d started to head shake, which is a condition, but it’s quite common in horses. When I rang the vet and said, I think he’s headshaking a bit, she said, could it be dental? Is he due for the dentist?
He was due his dentist appointment in January, so we decided to let the dentist have a look at him first. After seeing the dentist in the New Year, we hoped that that would be that, but in fact, it wasn’t.
After the dentist had a look at him and did what he needed to do, I arranged for him to go into the vet for the day to have his nasal passages looked up to make sure there was nothing up there that shouldn’t be.
She was just going to do some initial investigations to see whether she could identify a physiological cause for this headshaking. When she got him into the clinic, she investigated his nasal passages, and there was nothing untoward there.
But while she had the scope, she said she might as well scope the stomach because you never know. He hadn’t shown any symptoms of any pain or anything like that, so I didn’t expect anything to come of it as he’s just lovely and normally, if the horse is in pain, they’ll let you know.
But, when she scoped his stomach, he had a lot of gastric ulcers, which we didn’t know anything about because he’d not shown us at all that he was in any pain. He also had a very small patch of kissing spine on his back, which we’re not that worried about, because that seems to have been there for a long time.
Then because of my vets’ investigations, he was then referred to the University of Liverpool Equine Hospital for some further, more in-depth investigations. They did all the tests that they could have done and concluded that there was no physiological cause for the head shaking.
The conclusion was that it was trigeminal-mediated headshaking, which means that the trigeminal nerve at either side of the horse’s head has, for whatever reason, it could be anything, become very sensitive and the head flicking is a symptom of them being in pain.
The vet explained it to me as, when you see him flick his head, that’s a result of him feeling something similar to an electric shock going straight through his temple.
Currently, we’re still treating the ulcers and thankfully, we’ve discovered that there is treatment for this condition. It’s a high frequency electrotherapy treatment.
This treatment is also used on humans. In fact, it’s been used on humans for some considerable time. It’s an electrotherapy treatment, and they use to treat trigeminal neuralgia, which is a similar condition, but in humans and they’ve had lots of success from it.
If the treatment can help him, it will be taken very slowly. For us, the gold standard would be that he could be ridden again. Because at the moment, he can’t be. But worst case, if it can give him enough respite from this condition that he can just be a horse and live out his life in a nice green pasture, then that’ll do for us.
How did you find the claims process?
The claim was very straightforward. If we send a claim in within a few days of a claim going in, we’ve got an email to say we’ve seen it and we’ve dealt with your claim, and it’s been agreed within three to five business days it’ll be in your account.
A quote on why you’d recommend The Insurance Emporium:
I’ve got nothing but praise for The Insurance Emporium, they have always been very caring. To me, they’re not your typical insurance company. They are very understanding of how upsetting it is for an owner when your horse isn’t well and how you just want to put things right and do the best for your horse.
And when you’ve got a horse and there’s something wrong with them, the one thing you don’t want is to be worrying about whether your insurance is going to pay out. For me, I’ve never had a problem.
With our previous horse that had a back issue, which he probably had when we bought him, but we didn’t know that. Again, The Insurance Emporium were very good with him too. We had lots of investigations done and tried the treatment that was available. Sadly, it didn’t make a lot of difference, and we retired him. But in terms of how The Insurance Emporium dealt with him and me, I was very happy with my experience.
For me, it’s a lifestyle choice. You give up a lot of time and a lot of money to keep them healthy and happy and The Insurance Emporium are helping me to do just that.
No one wants to have to think about their pets getting poorly, however, accidents and illnesses aren’t always preventable and the cost to treat animals, especially ones as big as horses, quickly adds up.
Horse owners might want to consider horse insurance should the worst happen. Our horse insurance policies come with Death, Theft or Straying as a standard benefit, you can then tailor your policy with several additional optional benefits, including Vet’s Fees, Loss of Use to match your horse’s needs, and Personal Accident for your peace of mind. Take a look and get a free, no-strings quote today!
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