Separate from pet health insurance, several German Bundesländer legally require liability insurance (Hundehaftpflichtversicherung) for every dog, not only dogs on a Listenhunde list. Industry reporting on state-by-state dog-insurance rules names Berlin, Hamburg, Niedersachsen, Schleswig-Holstein, Thüringen and Sachsen-Anhalt as states with a general liability-insurance requirement covering all dogs, with Bremen adding the same requirement from 10 July 2025.

In the remaining states, the requirement is narrower, typically limited to dogs classed as dangerous or Listenhunde under that state's own law, covered in the Documents section — a dog without any listed-breed status may face no state-level insurance mandate at all there, though an individual municipality can still set its own stricter local rule.

For a visiting owner, the practical point is that a liability policy from home doesn't automatically satisfy a German state's requirement, and the relevant threshold (minimum coverage amounts, whether it must be a German-recognised policy) varies by state the same way the Listenhunde rules do — it's worth checking the specific requirement for wherever the trip is headed rather than assuming one Bundesland's rule applies everywhere in Germany.