Your neighbour's dog bit you. Do you have to sue your neighbour?

Standard homeowners and renters policies include personal liability coverage, typically between $100,000 and $500,000, plus a smaller medical payments coverage usually between $1,000 and $5,000. When a dog injures someone, that is the coverage that responds. Your neighbour reports it, an adjuster handles it, and the insurer pays. Your neighbour is not writing you a cheque out of their savings.

Dog-related injuries account for a large share of all homeowners liability claims paid in the United States — insurers paid $1.86 billion across 28,450 claims in 2025. This is not an exotic use of the policy. It is one of the main things it is for.

It is fair to be straight about this. A claim can raise their premium, and some insurers will exclude the dog going forward or decline to renew. That is a real cost and it is not nothing. It is a different order of magnitude from paying your medical bills personally, which is what most people quietly assume they are asking.

Renters without renters insurance, and owners whose policy excludes the breed or excludes a dog with a prior bite, are the hard cases. Coverage is also commonly voided where the dog had a documented bite history the owner did not disclose. Confirming coverage exists is worth doing before you invest time in a claim.

Reporting a bite to an insurer is not an allegation of cruelty or bad character. Dogs bite. The insurance system treats it as an ordinary covered loss, and framing it that way to your neighbour is usually accurate and usually helps.