Petsecure Pet Health Insurance

Celebrating Take Your Dog To Work Day

Post by: Mika Sanson, Manager, Marketing & Communications 

Today we have a few extra four-legged visitors in the office. For the second year in a row, we are taking part in Pet Sitter's International Take Your Dog To Work Day (TYDTWD)!

TYDTWD is about enjoying the company of your pet at work while raising awareness about pet adoptions - a cause that is close to our heart at Petsecure. We donate to Shelters and Humane Societies across the country through our Adoptsecure and In Memoriam donation programs as part of our commitment to giving back to the pet community.

Meet Trigger, Capone, Martini, Cooper and Baileigh - our visitors for the day!

 

 

Did your office take part in TYDTWD? We'd love to hear all about it - post a comment and share your story.

Tails from the Road

Post by:  Romy Shapiro, Territory Manager

Petsecure is all across Canada, and we have many stories to share.

My job as a TM (Territory Manager) involves many daily visits into all the veterinary practices and shelters across my territory. One item I am not short on, nor do I ever get tired of, is the hundreds of stories I hear each year. Now, I do hear stories of all kinds, but my favorite are the stories of how Petsecure has made a difference in the life of a pet.  I'd like to share a few of these with you today. 

My dog ate the pantyhose - A Kuvasz had admiration for his mom's pantyhose. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that they are to be worn on the outside, and not consumed and worn on the inside of his stomach. Not knowing what the foreign body was, the owner became extremely embarrassed to hear of the item that was eventually removed from the dog’s belly. Luckily Petsecure covered the $1,500 surgery!

Itchy Itchy Itchy - When a golden retriever could not stop scratching, his owners embarked on the long road of allergy testing. Thousands of dollars and about a year later - after having every test and treatment done in the book - it was concluded that the dog had a severe allergy to oak. The owners' entire house- you guessed it, oak flooring.

History unknown - A pair of adult cats was adopted from the local shelter. One of them starts to strain and urinate outside of the litter box, about 3 weeks after he is adopted. It turns out that he has FLUTD ( feline lower urinary tract disease) and has a blockage. A surgery, and several days hospital stay later, and a claims reimbursement for nearly $800.00, the owner was incredibly happy to have had the foresight to insure this cat. She had no definitive prior history on his medical conditions as he was deemed healthy by the veterinarian at the shelter. FLUTD cannot be detected by a simple exam, unless the cat had symptoms.

I have pet insurance? -This is possibly my favorite story in recent memory. A frantic owner calls her vet's office because her beloved cat was just hit by a car. She knows it will be far too costly to repair the damage and makes an appointment to have him euthanized. The vet practice notices that they have Petsecure insurance, but the owners thought that she canceled it, about a year ago. The vet practice decides to call our company to double check and it turns out that she does still have coverage and the cat is saved. She was embarrassed to admit that she did not realize that the premiums were still being processed each month. She was obviously very happy she had not canceled after receiving a claims cheque for nearly $1,400.

I can just keep going and going and going, but I would love to hear about your stories as well.

I look forward to sharing more tails from the road, as well as other great finds in the coming weeks and months.

Your Member Advocate

 Post by: Randy Valpy, President & Chief Operating Officer

While we're all here to serve our members and prospective members, we've recently created a special position at Petsecure called Member Advocate. Her name is Kristin Mueller and she's worked on many special projects and initiatives across our organization: from product development, training, staff events, interviewing prospective staff, and supervising our Customer Care Centre.

Why do you need an advocate at Petsecure? Well, even though it’s our common goal here to insure that your needs and the needs of your pet are...All Taken Care Of, we are still human. Sometimes unique situations arise that require someone who is objective, who is empathetic to the needs of our members, and who understands all the inner workings of our organization. Kristin is just that 'go-to' person. She's also a passionate pet parent to 2 lovable and high energy young beagles - Koda and Cali. So now you also see and understand that she has that rare kind of patience that makes her the perfect person for this new role!

Kristin first heard about Petsecure while waiting in great angst in the lobby at her vet's office, as her beloved dog Bailey was being operated on for cancer. After losing Bailey to the terrible disease, and then paying out her emergency veterinary fees, she vowed she'd tell everyone about our pet insurance, and that she'd have it for her next pet(s). Shortly after this, she applied to our Customer Care Centre and was brought in as our supervisor. But she claims that even if she didn't work here she'd still be giving advice to everyone she meets at the dog park about Petsecure (among other things).
I personally hope you never need to have her advocate for you, but if you do, I'm sure you'll agree that she definitely shares and lives out our goals and values. You can reach her anytime at advocate@petsecure.com.

Not a Typical Pet Insurance Company

 Post by: Randy Valpy, President & Chief Operating Officer

Now, you may well be wondering - what could I have to blog about, and how boring and corporate could this blog get? 

Believe it or not, my position isn't like that of a typical insurance company executive. I travel all over Canada, regularly to the USA and once a year to Europe to meet with innovative organizations and people at the very forefront of the animal health movement. I’ve even been to Australia to visit another pet insurance company. And, luckily for you, I've lined up some of these special people as guest bloggers, along with some of our diverse and unique team of Petsecure staff - most of whom are also passionate pet parents as well as members of our Veterinary Advisory Board.

In the coming days, weeks and months these friends of Petsecure will be contributing blog postings on many different topics including the following:

• Stories about some of the amazing people that work here at Petsecure.  Did you know that we employ over 100 animal lovers?
• Responsible pet parenting – what it means in this day and age and how this has changed over the years
• Why our President (me) manages a pet insurance company and doesn’t presently have a pet (that’s Sasha with me in the picture in the first post - her pet parent is Cody who works in Petsecure’s Training and Development department)
• RDOG Day – why we sponsor it and why its a great idea (RDOG stand for Responsible Dog Ownership Group and this Canadian Kennel Club initiative will be celebrated nationally on September 26th, 2009)
• Neat products for pets – stuff we've seen and how to get it
• Vet stories – we constantly come across some heart warming and funny stories from the over 3,000 veterinary practices that support Petsecure and pet health insurance across Canada
• Cool pet tricks – stories about what some pets can do
• Our Annual Corporate Giving update - what we give back each year to Canada's pet health community. Who's benefiting in your neighborhood!
• Negative advertising and why we won't do it
• Fun (and sometime a bit weird) features on celebrity pets
• Animal causes and issues of importance. We support over a hundred different shelters and rescue organizations across Canada and we would like to share with you some of the great work that these organizations do
• Working Pets – stories and features on the Police dogs, seeing eye dogs, organizations who train them, people who have them, etc. (you probably didn’t know that Petsecure pet health insurance is used by some of Canada’s largest police forces and their canine units)
• Our vet advisory board – why we have them, who are they and what do they do for us and our members
• Stories and experiences from Veterinary Conferences and regional pet related events we are attending

Last but not least, we really hope to hear from you: great stories, letters, comments and even issues raised by our valued members and readers. So we encourage you to bookmark this blog, e-mail our postings to a friend, or add our RSS feed (or do all three, no one will know).

If you rather not comment publicly you can also e-mail us directly at info@petsecure.com or you can actually e-mail me or any of our management team directly. You can find all of our e-mail addresses and phone numbers on the Petsecure website at: http://www.petsecure.com/about_petsecure/petsecure_management_team.aspx.

As I stated above, I am not a typical insurance company executive, and Petsecure is not a typical insurance company, or for that matter a typical company, we actually make it easy for you to find all of our manager’s contact information and welcome your feedback, good or bad. Just try and find an e-mail address or phone number for the President of Air Canada - you can’t - as a frequent user of Air Canada I have tried several times!

Welcome to Petsecure's Blog

I'm Randy Valpy, President of Petsecure and welcome to our very first posting of the Petsecure blog. As the oldest (celebrating our 20th anniversary this year) and largest pet health insurance company in Canada it was only natural that we would also be the first to launch a blog. I know, I know, I'm supposed to be blogging, not bragging. But I am really proud of what we do and what we've accomplished together at Petsecure. 

For those of you who are on top of the latest developments in the social media, the introduction of our blog is the first of many initiatives in the coming months to improve, grow and evolve the overall experience that our members and other Canadian pet parents have with the team here at Petsecure (You'll find out why we call our customers members in one of our upcoming blog postings).

A couple months back we launched our Pet Healthipedia database which contains some informative and helpful articles on dogs, cats, caring for your pet, plus other rich content like videos and breed information. Petsecure’s Pet Healthipedia is available to all just by visiting www.petsecure.com and then clicking on the Pet Healthipedia tab - or by going directly to www.pethealthipedia.com.

We’ve also recently launched a corporate Facebook page – you can become a fan by clicking here or going to www.facebook.com and searching for Petsecure. We’ve got a lot more plans for the coming weeks and months - within the next few days, we'll launch our Twitter site; @petsecure. Early in 2010, we’ll be launching a portal on Petsecure.com where Petsecure members will be able to track the status of their claim, update their address and payment information, upload pictures of their pet, share their stories, and participate in polls and surveys. And that's just the start.

That’s all for now, but please check back soon (or subscribe by RSS feed or email) as my second posting will be up in the next couple of days.