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Allergies sit at the hard end of pet insurance. They rarely resolve, they flare seasonally, they drive repeat visits for skin and ear flare-ups, and the management, prescription diets, long-term medication, immunotherapy, runs for the rest of the dog's life. Insurers know this, and allergy cover is where policy wording does the most quiet work. A policy that looks generous on accidents can be thin exactly here, through per-condition limits, through exclusions for related skin and ear claims, or through the pre-existing rules described next.
Most insurers split pre-existing conditions into curable and incurable. Curable ones, an ear infection that fully resolves, can return to cover after a symptom-free period; Fetch publishes that window as 12 months symptom-free in Canada. Incurable ones never return. Embrace's published incurable list names allergies among the conditions it treats as never fully curable, which means an allergy diagnosis recorded before a policy starts stays excluded for the life of that policy, however mild the first flare looked. The practical consequence is blunt: allergy cover is decided before the first diagnosis. Enroll while the dog is young and undocumented, or expect to self-insure the condition. Our pre-existing conditions guide sets out the curable/incurable split in full.
First, whether allergies, and the skin and ear conditions that travel with them, are covered as one condition or argued as several; the answer decides how many deductibles and limits apply. Second, any per-condition or annual cap that a lifelong medication bill would exhaust. Third, whether allergy testing and immunotherapy are eligible costs or only the consultations around them. Fourth, the bilateral and related-condition clauses: an insurer that treats both ears as one condition halves the value of cover for the most common allergy claim there is. Fifth, if the dog has already had a flare, whether the insurer classifies it as curable, and what symptom-free period restores cover, in writing.
Breed matters here as much as wording. Breeds with documented skin and allergy predispositions carry their own condition lists on their by-breed insurance pages, and owners of those breeds should read the allergy clauses before the price. A cheap policy that excludes the claim your breed is most likely to make is not cheap.
Yes, on accident-and-illness policies, provided the allergy was not pre-existing when the policy started. Cover typically includes consultations, testing and medication, subject to the policy's limits. The critical condition is timing: a diagnosis recorded before enrollment is treated as pre-existing.
At some insurers, explicitly yes. Embrace's published incurable list names allergies among conditions treated as never fully curable, so a pre-policy diagnosis stays excluded for the life of the policy. Other insurers publish their own lists; the list in your policy is the one that binds you.
Curable conditions can return to cover after a symptom-free period. Fetch publishes 12 months symptom-free for curable pre-existing conditions in Canada. Allergies themselves are usually classed incurable rather than curable, so do not count on an allergy exclusion expiring.
It depends on the policy. Testing and long-term immunotherapy are exactly the costs that add up in allergy management, and some policies limit or exclude them while covering consultations. Check that both are eligible costs, not just the vet visits around them.
Yes. For breeds with documented allergy predispositions, enrolling before any skin or ear symptom is recorded is what keeps the condition insurable at all. Once symptoms are in the vet record, most insurers will treat the condition as pre-existing from day one.
Insurers differ, and the difference costs money. Some treat recurring ear infections in an allergic dog as part of the allergy condition, others as separate claims, and bilateral clauses can treat both ears as a single condition. The related-condition wording in the policy decides; ask before you buy.
Last updated: November 2026. Researched from the insurers' own published policy pages and documents, read in November 2026; where a figure is given it is the insurer's published figure, not our estimate. How we work: our methodology.