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Yippee! Today I paid £555.83 into the bank - not a lottery win but the result of one of the best financial decisions we ever made, and it came from very special friends of our boxers.

When we rescued Chester eleven years ago, aged 5 months, we little imagined how important the decision to insure him would be. We didn't know that he would lose his bearings in a wood and be struck by a car only five months later. He arrived at the vet's in a terrible state, fighting for his life. As a result of that first accident, when he was 3 years old he developed arthritis, which plagued him for life. But the dear boy was frightfully accident-prone. Not many dogs get to survive a gastric torsion and the removal of the spleen only to fall off a bed within days and break the most arthritic joint, an elbow. Even the vet couldn't believe it. Chester's escapades were rather well known in the area of London where we lived, as we all spent so much time at the vet's. Complete strangers would come and ask if this was Chester, as they had met him there in his capacity as the vet's personal assistant.

Can you imagine how expensive that all was? At the time, I wrote to the insurers to thank them for being such wonderful friends to Chester - second only to his vet. I didn't know that he had more tricks up his sleeves. Not many dogs, even boxers, would run full pelt into a rose bush when wearing a buster collar (recovering from treatment to an eye ulcer) and tear part of their ear off. Honestly, these are just a few highlights of Chester's veterinary career. I imagine that during his life time, he cost the insurers way over - gulp - £8,000.

So when Garbo came, we had no hesitation in getting her insured. I hoped that she would be one of the dogs who needed minimal veterinary treatment and would make some money for our dear friends, the insurance company. She is 6 years old now and doing very well at costing the insurance company more each year than the cost of our premiums. Lumps and bumps and bladder problems prove quite costly enough, thank you.

Now to Tilly - and here is the salutary tale and the reason for this article. Tilly came to us in February 2001, aged 10 months, to be "fostered". Needless to say, as Sue anticipated, she stayed. I must have been mad because I actually considered trusting to luck and not insuring her, but reason prevailed. We booked her in to be spayed after her season and as we didn't know anything about her veterinary background, we were happy to pay for full pre-anaesthesia blood tests. (None of this was covered by insurance as spaying, castration, inoculation, worming etc. is exempt.) It was an awful shock when the vet rang to say that he was unable to spay Tilly. Her blood tests had revealed major kidney failure. Had she been operated on, she would have died. This was now Tilly's first insurance claim.

Exhaustive, extensive - and expensive - tests followed to determine the cause. No need to go into gory details -you may well see Tilly at one of our events. She is a tiny, dark brindle and white boxer who looks as fit as a flea and as strong as an ox. You won't have seen her in the agility demonstration she was preparing for last summer, as she tore her shoulder joint climbing a 5 ft gate to peer over the top, hanging from her knees, when a skip was delivered. However, looks are very deceptive. She has to have regular laboratory tests to monitor her condition and lives on a special diet, only obtainable from the vet. In the first year of her insurance, she has cost the company £1,806.10 as they even pay for half the cost of her special diet - the difference between normal dog food and the veterinary version. And they will continue to insure her for the rest of her life for both this and any future medical problems.

Please don't go away with the idea that boxers are more costly than other dogs - we have friends who have had similar experiences with both other breeds and mongrels. Neither should you think that rescue boxers are any more likely to have extraordinary veterinary bills, nor that we are hypochondriacs or particularly useless owners. Most people trot along to their vets for annual inoculations and worming, rarely going at other times. But you don't know; do you, if you are going to be quite as unlucky as we would have been, had we not insured all these precious boxers? And if your boxer has been rescued, it is most unlikely that you have a complete veterinary history. Tilly's insurers required background information from her previous vet, plus more information from our own vet, before they were prepared to accept liability and I think it was entirely reasonable that they did.

If you haven't insured a dog before and think it might be a good idea, collect details of all the insurers from veterinary surgeries, supermarkets and advertisements, then carefully compare the benefits and the premiums. Talk to your vet and to other owners who have insurance. Remember that no insurance company will insure you for what they call "pre-existing conditions" so you will be too late if you wait until your dog develops a problem. You may well be able to obtain insurance against future unconnected problems but the one you have just had will not be covered. I don't think we have actually been black-listed by the pet insurance market - yet! In fact, we must be a wonderful, if extreme, advertisement for their services. Every single penny of our claims has been paid promptly and in full, apart from the deduction of our agreed excess of £35 per condition per year. For once, our financial judgement was sound.

P.S. I have just found Tilly climbing up one of our wooden compost bins. Do you think I should warn my insurers?