The five least expensive dog breeds to insure

Insuring your dog, regardless of whether they are a pedigree or mixed breed, is strongly recommended by dog care experts and vets alike, as insurance can help you to ensure that you can get your dog the veterinary treatment that they need, when they need it, as well as covering you for things like property damage and third party liability too.

The cost of paying for an accident or ongoing health condition for your dog can be very expensive, and obviously, not everyone has several thousand pounds sitting in the bank to fall back on if something bad should happen. However, the cost of insuring any given dog can vary considerably from breed to breed, and while the size of the dog makes up part of the equation, this is by no means the full story.

Insurance companies have to weigh up the risks and potential chances of a future claim when calculating the premium for your dog, which means considering a whole range of factors, including the size and age of your dog, what you do with your dog, where you live, and your dog’s prior health and projected longevity.

The breed of dog that you own accounts for a large proportion of the premium calculation, and it is a simple fact that some breeds of dog are more expensive to insure than others, due to their potential risk factors. This is something that you should look into when deciding what breed or type of dog you wish to own, in order to ensure that you can afford it!

In this article, we will look at five dog breeds that reliably fall at the least expensive end of the insurance spectrum, when the breed is taken as the main or only factor involved when calculating their premium. Read on to learn about the five least expensive dog breeds to insure.

1. Jack Russell

Topping off our list of the most economical dog breeds to insure is the Jack Russell terrier, which tends to be an economical dog to keep in virtually every way! The little Jack Russell falls at the bottom end of the insurance spectrum for a wide variety of reasons: They are small, very common and so tend to have a large and diverse gene pool, and are a hardy, working terrier breed that is not prone to any particular hereditary health issues, making the chances of a claim on their policy lower than most.

2. Border terrier

A close second is another working terrier breed, the Border terrier. The Border terrier is another common and widely owned small breed with a diverse gene pool and tendency to robust health, again leading to a fairly low purchase price, and lower chances of making a claim against their policy for ill health.

3. Yorkshire terrier

The small Yorkshire terrier’s third place position means that terriers take all of the top three places in the value insurance rankings, which says a lot about the general hardiness and overall health of terriers as a whole.

While the Yorkshire terrier is most widely kept as a pet today rather than in any working roles, they retain the robust and hardy health traits of their working ancestry, come from a wide and diverse gene pool, and are small enough to mean that their veterinary treatments tend to cost a lot less than that of larger dogs.

4. Shih Tzu

The Shih Tzu is an ancient breed with a known ancestry going back for millennia, and the breed itself has been formative in the establishment of several other modern breeds as well. These pampered lap dogs not only make for excellent pets, but their long history provides them with a wide gene pool and good hereditary health, meaning that despite their cute appearance and reputation as toy dogs, the Shih Tzu is actually tougher than it looks, as well as of course benefitting from lower cost veterinary treatments when compared to larger breeds.

5. Whippet

The Whippet is the Greyhound’s smaller cousin, but is still the tallest dog to make our list of cheap breeds to insure. While their fine, long legs can make them vulnerable to injuries when running around, they are otherwise low maintenance, not prone to poor health, and among the cheapest of breeds to insure.

Honourable mention: The mutt

As a general rule, mixed breed dogs or mutts tend to be less costly to insure like for like than pedigree breeds of a similar size and build. While a large mutt may cost more to insure than a small pedigree dog, the mixed heritage of the mutt tends to strengthen their immune systems and general health thanks to the benefits of hybrid vigour, producing a hardy, robust dog that is exponentially less likely to suffer from health problems than a pedigree dog of the same size.