Insurance company targets family friend

Meka didn’t have to die. At least, not yet. Granted, she was old – a dog of nearly 15 years. Not bad for a chow. Yes, her health was beginning to fail. She was nearly deaf, and had a problem with cataracts. Still, she was a good old dog, and my grandchildren loved her. She had been a part of the family for as long as they’d been a family, and you can’t help but count on the family dog when you’re eight years old, like Alex, and five years old, like Jacob.

With all her infirmities, Meka still did her job as best she could. She would bark when her failing ears heard a car approach, or any suspicious nighttime noise. In exchange, she loved having her thick orange coat rubbed, and her deaf ears scratched.. During her life she had moved with the family many times. Now she was the guardian of six acres surrounded by woods, and she loved roaming the grounds of this, her final home.

There was no need for Meka to die, but die she did – put down to satisfy the insurance company that carries the policy on the family’s new home. No, Vermont Mutual didn’t send a letter saying, “You have to kill your dog.” But by threatening to cancel the policy required by the bank that holds the mortgage, they did just that. Without the insurance, the mortgage would be called, and that would mean losing the property. So in a way, Meka died defending the home she loved for the family she loved. She died doing her job.

But there was no need of it, no need but for the foolishness of an insurance industry fallen on hard times – and that by their own hand. Time was when the insurance business was a matter of balancing premiums (income) against losses (expense); it was a good mechanism for sharing risk, and the companies that succeeded best were the ones that balanced cost control against doing the best job possible for their customers. In good years, profits were invested conservatively, very conservatively, and company executives, even CEOs, settled for relatively modest salaries – like everyone else who worked in the business. But then came the gamble for big bucks, when insurance and reinsurance companies funneled their cash into the go-go market of the 1990’s. Today we point to Enron and WorldCom as examples of managements so driven by greed that it led to corporate corruption. The truth is that many companies – whole industries, in fact – went down that quick-buck road, as well. So now the years of waste and bad investment have hit home: the dollars that Meka’s family and others had paid into the insurance pool were lost – and now it was time to “tighten the underwriting standards.” Now Meka had to die.

Meka was a dog that never bit anyone, nor did damage in any way. In fact, like many family dogs, she had served the insurance company’s interests day and night. There is no measuring the number of times family dogs have scared off burglars and vandals. And who hasn’t read stories of dogs who roused a family asleep in a burning building, or alerted neighbors when someone was dying from a gas leak or a heart attack. She was old and tired now, but Meka was doing everything she could to help a family who now faced the cruelest ultimatum: lose your dog or lose your home. The local agent appealed to the company underwriters, but to no avail. Other companies said the same. The family couldn’t even give their old friend away, because anyone who took her would be facing the same threat – get rid of the dog, or lose your insurance.

I wish I could say this story was a unique case, but that’s not so. There are lists of forbidden breeds now circulating through the insurance industry, and companies will continue to add breeds to this hit list as long as the threat of any dog biting any person exists. And no, it’s not just the obvious breeds, like rottweilers and pit bulls. It includes German shepherds, akitas, huskies, any “guard dogs” (what dog is not a guard dog?), and chows like Meka. And this death sentence is not reserved for dogs who have attacked or bitten someone: it targets any and all dogs of a condemned breed, dogs of mixed breed with some shepherd or chow in their ancestry, and “others.” All good dogs go to heaven, they say, but many will go ahead of their time if the underwriters have their way.

But innocent pets should not have to pay for the sins of the insurance industry. Meka had nothing to do with the investment portfolio of Vermont Mutual, a company that was perfectly willing to cover Meka when the stock market was good, and the gambling winnings were rolling in. And this loss of reasonable coverage is not limited to dogs. Today, make a small claim and you may very well find your insurance policy canceled when it comes up for renewal. Families have lost their insurance for merely inquiring about making a claim – even though the claim was never submitted. Many companies, deep in the hole because of their own bad financial decisions, are denying legitimate claims if they think they can bully the insured with threats of increased premiums, or threats of cancellation. So much for the philosophy of sharing reasonable risk, of pooling our resources to protect one another. So much for state regulation of insurance industry abuses.

But none of this matters now to Meka, who was put to sleep on Memorial Day weekend. They dug a hole at a spot near the big tree, and put flowers and some family photos in the ground with her. Then they held a brief service, placed stones to mark the grave, and little Jacob cried.

As should we all.

Leland Witting is pastor of the Union Street Brick Church in Bangor. He is a former editor of The Spectator, a national insurance industry magazine, and former publisher and editor of the Castine Patriot.