In 2001, my husband Paul and I lost our beloved dog Barney to multiple myeloma (a type of blood cancer). In our battle to regain length and quality of life for Barney, we racked up vet bills over $10,000.

And we didn't regret a dime, even though it only bought us a few more months.

I'd like to say that we learned our lesson and made sure our pets were insured after that. And for a while that was true. But for a variety of reasons (including healthy animals!) I let our insurance policy lapse. That seemed okay for a few years, but then Nico got very sick (you can read a bit about it my the "Good Behavior for Vets Makes All the Difference!" blog entry).While the veterinary bills didn't mount as high as they had with Barney, they got pretty close.

So now both dogs and our three cats are insured through the QuickCare Pet Insurance Programs offered by 24PetWatch Pet Insurance. A variety of policies are available, for residents of the United States and Canada.

Our cats are covered by "QickCare Plus for Cats" for accidents or illnesses.

Nico is covered by the QuickCare Senior program (which covers 3 categories of illness, including cancer, as well as several categories of accidents), while Brandy still qualifies for the QuickCare Preferred program (12 categories of illnesses).

The newly available QuickCare Optimum and QuickCare Complete programs also provide assistance with regular veterinary care such as annual physical examinations, spaying or neutering, heartworm testing and prevention, and teeth cleaning.

Since insuring our pets with QuickCare, I've submitted claims and received payments from this insurance company. Submitting claims was easy (once I got the paperwork signed by the various veterinarians involved) and customer service has been helpful and friendly. In fact my biggest problem with our QuickCare insurance coverage is that I forget to submit claims sometimes! But when I do remember that we have insurance (and insured expenses to claim), the response from the company is excellent.