My dogs have never been to a groomer, and every spring I spend time researching deals for flea preventative options. As a behavior consultant, I’m constantly urging my clients to get urinalysis, fecal tests, and blood tests done to rule out medical underpinnings for their behavior issues.
Why is all of this so difficult?
Because wellness is expensive, and it’s usually not covered by pet insurance plans. Everything from grooming to fecal tests costs money, making even the best pet owners hesitant to utilize it as much as we should.
That’s why I was so excited to partner with Wagmo to test out one of their Wellness Plans. Full disclosure: they’re giving me free access to a wellness plan so I can test out the service.
What Wagmo Offers
Preventative care and baseline data gathering both help keep your best friend healthy. For example, my puppy Niffler has naturally low value for a given liver enzyme – which means that knowing his baseline is important because a “normal” test result could actually be elevated for him. I LOVE that Wagmo incentivizes you to gather this baseline health data.
Many dogs don’t really show symptoms of an illness until it’s quite bad. This means that all of this preventative care can help you catch a problem in your dog’s health before it gets worse.
Wagmo’s wellness plans cover things like:
- Routine vaccinations
- Bloodwork
- Fecal tests
- Office visits
- Urine tests (Classic and Deluxe plans only)
- Flea/tick/heartworm (Classic and Deluxe plans only)
- Grooming (Classic and Deluxe plans only)
- Dental care (Deluxe plan only)
All of these are features not covered in most health insurance plans. I have very good health insurance for Barley and Niffler, but it still doesn’t cover routine or preventative care in the vast majority of cases.
How Does Wagmo Work?
Basically, Wagmo lets you pay down a small amount of money each month to cover those wellness costs. Then when you go to pay for a service, you simply upload a photo of your receipt. I was able to get my reimbursement via Venmo in minutes! You can also get reimbursed through PayPal or a bank account.
Signup was incredibly easy. I told them a bit about my life and dog, they suggested a plan, and I paid. A few days later, I took Niffler to our local vet for his last round of vaccinations.
I handed him off to the masked vet tech, he went back to enjoy peanut butter and loving from the staff while they vaccinated him, and he was returned to my car.
I snapped a photo of my receipt and uploaded it in my Wagmo portal. I thought this might be a pain because I hadn’t yet logged into Wagmo on my phone – but it was pretty fast.
I got my refund via Venmo within about 20 minutes.
What Wellness Plans Does Wagmo Offer?
The cheapest plan is $20/month ($240/year) but covers up to $350/year – a pretty good deal! I’m sure your benefit varies based on local prices: if your vaccines and office visits are really cheap locally, this might not make as much sense.
Wagmo’s Deluxe plan is pretty expensive at $59/month, but it covers roughly $400 more per year than you pay into it – if you use all of the services. So if you routinely spend money on grooming and other preventative care, it really seems worth it. For my puppy, I’m not sure if I’ll ever take him to the groomer and I don’t expect him to need dental care – but it’s really nice to know that’s covered!
The grooming would be AMAZING if I had a doodle puppy, or even if Niffler was long-haired. I think the dental care coverage would be really nice for Barley – who’s 7 years old and has already needed a few minor dental cleanings.