How Your Dog Influences Your HomeOwner's Insurance Premium

How Your Dog Influences Your Homeowner’s Insurance Premium

If you’ve ever shopped for a homeowner’s policy, you probably had to disclose whether you owned a Rottweiler, Pit Bull, Doberman, Chow, or German Shepard. (Sometimes even Dalmatians make the list.)

If you do own one of the above breeds, you are probably paying a higher premium than your Chihuahua-owning neighbor.

You’re not the only one who thinks this practice is unfair. Dog advocates label this “breed discrimination” and they’re lobbying every state legislature in the union in hopes of stopping it. Deeds not breeds, they say, should determine rates.

But insurers have good reason to be skittish about dogs. According to the Insurance Information Institute, they paid over $317 million in dog bite-related claims in 2005. The III says dog bites totaled about 10 percent of all homeowner liability claims that year.

While advocacy groups can sympathize with insurers, organizations like the Humane Society and the American Kennel Club believe breed-specific rate setting is a misguided and ineffective attempt to remedy the costs of dog aggression. All breeds bite, they say. The best way to reduce dog-bite liability claims is to encourage and reward responsible dog ownership.

And they have persuaded a few state legislatures with their arguments. Some states have already banned breed-specific rate setting, and others are crafting bans as we speak. Legislatures are putting more emphasis, in the form of both carrots and sticks, on dog owner responsibility.

The American Kennel Club thinks dogs can be an asset to insurers, not just a liability. The group says a dog may serve as “a natural alarm system whose bark may deter intruders and prevent potential theft.”

And the good news is that if your pooch takes a bite out of a burglar, you’re not liable for any injury. All you need to do is make sure Fluffy can distinguish between the bad guys and the good guys.

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