Cyndi's Two Cents

Pet insurance

Commentary.

The Human Resources division at the company for which I work recently sent a survey to all employees to glean a better understanding of our wants and needs for insurance and company benefits.  I appreciate being asked.  When I first started working for Learfield Communications twenty years ago it consisted of Brownfield Radio Network, 3 state news networks and a handful of college sports properties.  It has grown many times over in 2 decades and there are a lot of different people in a lot of different states with a lot of different needs.

I get all that.  But I was taken aback when one of the questions on the survey asked me to rank the importance of different insurance coverage, one of which is pet insurance.

Pet insurance?  I didn’t realize that it is such a big thing.  When I reached out to the head of benefits for our company to ask about it, she told me that I would be surprised by the number of companies that offer it as an option for employees.

I asked her if they might consider offering livestock insurance. We both got a chuckle out of that, as she is a farm girl too.

I love my cat as a pet owner loves a pet.  Not as a mother loves a child.

Animals have been granted the legal right to file lawsuits.  Seriously – it has happened with elephants. I’m afraid we collectively are teetering on the edge of giving animals the same value as human beings.  The next logical step is to give animals the same rights as human beings.

I have a friend who didn’t want to pay to put her dog in a kennel while she traveled via airplane to visit her daughter several states away for a week and a half.  She told me getting the pup registered as an emotional support animal was a “piece of cake.”  The dog sat in her lap for the entire 3-hour plane ride.  Is that fair to the man in the seat in front of her who is allergic to pet dander?  I know when I flew from Atlanta to Kansas City last week, the flight attendant announced that one of our fellow travelers suffered from a peanut allergy and they asked that any of us with snacks containing peanuts please keep them in the package during the flight.

People are encouraged to bring their pets with them into some of the big box stores now.  If you are at the grocery store on a hot day and you see a dog in a car, in many cities and states now, you are encouraged to break the glass to let the animal free.  We are told to bring our pets indoors when the temperatures get below freezing.  There are many dogs that thrive in a cooler climate.

I am not anti-pet.  However, I am pro-common sense.