Pacifiers are what made Lulu, Jennifer Zwart’s English bulldog, the winner of VIP’s most unusual December claim award.
Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI) based in Brea, California, selected Lulu among the 75,000 claims received that month. It was reported by the dog owner that her baby’s pacifiers were gone missing for six months. She didn’t expect Lulu to be eating the missing pacifiers not until she saw Lulu licking a dropped pacifier then it was gone the next minute. Zwart then took Lulu to a veterinarian for an x-ray. The X-ray was unclear, however, thus made veterinarians decide to perform surgery. During the surgery, the doctors made a “binky count” as they pulled out one pacifier after another. At the need of the surgery, Lulu had swallowed 15 pacifiers, a bottle cap and a piece of basketball.
The surgery of Lulu was a huge success. Zwart now makes sure no pacifiers are left lying around their house.
As the most unusual claim submitted in December, Zwart’s claim will be placed in the running for VPI’s first Hambone Award. VIP employees will nominate the most interesting claim by July 2009 and ask the public to vote for the most unusual claim of the year.
The Hambone Award is named in honor of a VPI-insured dog that was trapped in a refrigerator and ate a whole Thanksgiving ham while waiting for somebody to find him. The dog was eventually found with a licked-clean ham bone and a slight case of hypothermia.
All pets are nominated for the award that made full recoveries and granted insurance reimbursements for eligible expenses.
Leave a reply