Home Owners Insurance Woes

I just bought a house. For reals, first time home buyer here! I'm both giddy and overwhelmed by the entire process. It's taken less than a month to find the home and, today, sign all the escrow documents to close.

Before the loan could be approved, I needed a quote from a homeowner's insurance agency.

I first called State Farm. I use them for my rental insurance, and they do not discriminate based on the type of dog you own. The quote seemed expensive. The loan agent suggest I call AAA. I use them for my car insurance and you can generally get a good discount for having multiple policies with the same company.

When I asked about their dog policy, the agent (a really nice person, by the way) said: "No Pit Bulls, Dobermans, Rottweilers, German Shepherds or Chow Chows".

Oh, I said. Well, I have a Pit Bull.

Is she purebred, he asked?

Well, I don't know. She's from a shelter. I have no clue who her parents were or what is in her lineage. But, I don't think I could get away with calling her anything else.

He paused and then proceeded to try and find a way for me to get this insurance. By fudging the truth and saying Mina's a mixed breed. And if she was on site when the inspector came - hide her. He's made this suggestion many times to people as a way to bypass what many agents feel is an unfair and discriminatory law.

The kicker was that the insurance was nearly $400 cheaper a year than State Farm. It was tempting.

But the reality is that I'll always have Pit Bulls in my life. I will never willingly bring into my home a dog who goes about eating people. Perhaps the only accident I could see happening is a dog-dog encounter on the front lawn or, perhaps, a dog-cat encounter in my backyard. Accidents happen, of course, but like I have managed Mina's leash reactivity, I would go about managing any aggressive dog's behavior (assuming I'm not on the receiving end of repeated attacks, of course).

I might want a Doberman in my life. Or maybe a Rottie mix. Or a German Shepherd (Celeste is my German Monkey, but her lineage remains a mystery). And it might be that the dog is not a *want* but a *need* - that is, a dog who has nowhere else to go or who bonds with me and I with them. I don't want to be concerned that, should the unthinkable happen and my dog does harm someone or another animal, my insurance agency is going to drop me and deny a claim because of my dog's breed.

So, I decided to pick up State Farm's car insurance and homeowner's insurance. I get a multi-policy discount and, yeah, still pay more than $200 a year than AAA.

But I'm okay with that.

I like that the only questions State Farm asks is: Have your dogs bitten anyone? and Are you dogs trained to attack? I told them Mina is trained to snuggle. This is perfectly insurable behavior.

While I appreciate AAA attempting to bypass the internal regulation, I could not bring myself to do it. I wouldn't besmirch anyone who chose differently - for some, $200 a year means much, much, much more than to me (it means something, but not as much as it might if I had, say, two kids and was a single mom). It is just sad anyone would have to be put in that position over dogs who have done nothing to earn such an unfair label of "not insurable."