Nationwide, the insurance firm known for insuring everything from your car to your pet’s life, recently announced the finalists for its 2023 Hambone Award. The prestigious award is given to the most outlandish pet insurance claims, because nothing says “we care about your pets” like making their medical trauma into a competition.
With categories like “Most Unusual Eating Incident” and “Most Unusual Foreign Object Ingested,” the stakes are high for these pets and their owners. It’s almost as if Nationwide is encouraging reckless pet behavior just so they can have more “unique” claims to boast about.
The finalists this year include a cat who swallowed an entire string of Christmas lights and a dog who managed to get a five-pound bag of flour stuck in his digestive system. Now, don’t get us wrong, we’re all for celebrating the resiliency of our furry friends, but it seems a little shameful to assign awards to questionable pet behavior.
But Nationwide is taking this competition seriously. After all, what better way to advertise their pet insurance coverage than by highlighting all the potentially expensive havoc our pets can wreak? Who cares about responsible pet ownership when you can profit off the occasional bizarre and completely preventable accident?
While we understand that accidents do happen, we can’t help but question the motives behind celebrating them. Why not highlight the responsible owners who never have to make an insurance claim because they keep their pets from eating potentially hazardous objects or leaving them unsupervised around holiday decorations? Maybe they could start a completely opposite award called “Most Responsible Pet Owner,” or “Most Boringly Safe Pet.”
Don’t get us wrong, we love our pets as much as the next person, but rewarding their bad habits seems just a little too strange. Plus, we can’t imagine how the pets must feel about having their medical mishaps broadcasted for the pleasure of others. They’re probably just happy to be alive and back to their normal routine. We’re sure they could do without the additional stress of being pitted against other pets in a ridiculous competition.
So congratulations to all the Hambone Award finalists. Your owners may have insurance coverage for your ridiculous mishaps, but we hope they learned a valuable lesson in pet responsibility. After all, there’s nothing more important than keeping our furry friends safe and healthy.
