Dogs, Pools, and Trampolines: The Three Things Every Application Asks About

By The NMH Agency Team, Licensed Agent

Read any homeowners insurance application and you’ll find the same
trio of questions, right after the roof: Do you have a dog (and what
kind)? Is there a pool? Is there a trampoline? Homeowners tend to
experience these as nosy. They’re actually a window into decades of
liability claims data, and understanding why carriers ask, and what they
do with the answers, is how you keep the backyard fun without quietly
voiding the coverage that protects it.

Why these three

Liability claims, the ones where someone else is hurt on your
property and you’re responsible, cluster hard around a few features, and
this trio leads the league.

Dog bites account for roughly a third of all homeowners liability
claim dollars in a typical year, with average claim costs running well
into five figures and rising, driven by medical and legal costs. Pools
are involved in a tragic and steady stream of drownings and injuries,
disproportionately children, and the law treats pool owners sternly.
Trampolines produce a reliable harvest of broken arms, and occasionally
far worse, frequently involving visiting children, which is exactly the
scenario liability coverage exists for and exactly the scenario carriers
price around.

None of this means you can’t have them. It means the insurer wants to
price accurately, wants specific precautions, and, on rare occasions,
wants no part of the risk. Your job is knowing which response you’re
getting.

Dogs: the
breed question and the history question

Carrier approaches to dogs vary more than almost any underwriting
topic. Some charge nothing and ask little. Many maintain breed lists
(commonly including pit bull types, Rottweilers, Dobermans, wolf
hybrids, and a rotating cast) and will exclude dog liability, surcharge,
or decline based on them. Others have dropped breed lists entirely in
favor of the individual dog’s bite history, an approach several states
have pushed by restricting breed-based underwriting. A dog with a prior
bite is a bigger underwriting event than any breed.

Two practical points. First, disclose the dog. An excluded-breed dog
you never mentioned means a bite claim you cover alone, and bite claims
average expensive. Second, if your dog’s breed is drawing exclusions or
surcharges from your current carrier, this is a shopping problem with a
shopping solution: as an independent agency we know which of our
carriers judge the dog rather than the breed, and moving a policy for
this reason is common and legitimate. Meanwhile, the boring stuff that
actually prevents claims: socialization, fencing, leashes, and honesty
with yourself about your dog around strangers and kids.

Pools: fences
first, then the liability limit

Carriers will cover pools, generally with expectations: fencing
(often required by local code anyway, commonly four-sided isolation
fencing with self-latching gates), possibly a locked ladder for
above-ground pools, and sometimes rules about diving boards and slides,
which some carriers surcharge or decline. The legal backdrop is the
attractive-nuisance doctrine: because pools attract children, courts
hold owners responsible for securing them even against uninvited kids.
That’s why the fence question isn’t bureaucratic; it’s the whole
ballgame legally and morally.

The insurance moves: confirm your pool is disclosed, meet every
fencing and safety requirement your carrier and municipality set, and,
most importantly, raise your liability limits. A pool household carrying
$100,000 of liability is underdressed for the risk; this is the classic
case for $300,000-plus limits with an umbrella policy on top, which
we’ve written about separately and which costs less than people assume.
Alarms, covers, and cameras help both safety and, with some carriers,
pricing.

Trampolines:
the coverage that quietly isn’t there

Trampolines get the harshest treatment of the trio. Carrier responses
range from “fine, with netting” to surcharges to full exclusion of
trampoline-related liability to declining the home outright. The
exclusion flavor deserves emphasis: some policies cover everything about
your home except trampoline injuries, meaning the neighbor
kid’s broken wrist lands entirely on you. Homeowners routinely have no
idea which category their policy falls in, because the trampoline
arrived years after the policy did and nobody made the call.

If there’s a trampoline in your yard, or one incoming this birthday
season: call and ask what your policy actually says; if it’s excluded,
decide with open eyes whether to keep it, replace the policy with a
carrier that covers it (they exist; netting and placement rules usually
apply), or accept the exposure knowingly, ideally with nobody’s kids on
it but your own, which limits but does not eliminate the risk.

The honest summary

Dogs, pools, and trampolines aren’t insurance problems; undisclosed
dogs, unfenced pools, and excluded trampolines are. The pattern across
all three: disclose, meet the safety expectations (which overlap almost
perfectly with actually keeping kids safe), carry liability limits sized
for the real risk, and shop for a carrier whose rules fit your household
rather than fighting your current carrier’s rules. That last one is our
whole job. Have the backyard you want; just have it on purpose.

Got one of the big three and not sure where your policy stands?
Call 800.388.6780 or request a homeowners
quote and ask us to check the fine print before summer
does.