Today is National Animal Disaster Preparedness Day. The pictures and stories of lost pets during Katrina broke my heart. Currently we are seeing the effects of the flooding in Nashville and some people have, tragically, lost their pets. If you were faced with an unexpected disaster, would you be ready to care for your pets? I thought I was ready until I read some information that revealed a huge gap in my pet prep. More Information below the fold.
Last week the area I live in, just north of Nashville Tn, was hit by severe flooding. Fortunately, the Hill Household sailed through it just swimmingly. But we were very lucky. So today, still drying out the basement, I was walking around thinking how could I be better prepared? (The wind is very windy today, and there's a chance of, oh my, rain. I have just a wee bit of anxiety.)
I wrote a dairy about this yesterday. CuriousBoston had an excellent comment:
Can you find your pets carrier in two minutes? With a bottle of water, waterproof food, and a blankie to stuff in? Have you practiced doing this?
So I decided to practice this. Got the pootie stuff together no problem- but Oh, snap! I also have two dogs! and no dog carriers! What else was I forgetting? I went on-line and found a couple of great articles.
The FEMA website has some good information about preparing to take care of your pets during a disaster.( http://www.ready.gov/... I admit my fondness for FEMA took a huge hit during Katrina, and I'm not quite a fan again, yet. But their Web-page does have some good information. To recap, briefly:
Make sure you have enough food/water for you pet for three days
Make sure you have what ever medications your pet needs
Make sure you have a travel ready pet carriers for traveling
Make sure you have a favorite pet toy or blanket to comfort your pet.
Make sure your have a leash, an extra one would be a good idea
Make sure your pets shots are up to date and you have that information
available.
Make sure you have kitty litter and a box available if you have cats.
I've never used a carrier or crate for our dogs. Our dogs are spoiled rotten and don't sleep in crates like some dogs. No, one has an arm chair down in the basement, next to the heater thats all hers. (She's a solitary dogs and likes her space.) The other sleeps on a doggie cushion in our room. When we go to the vet, the dogs just go on a leash. We don't travel with our pets, except one pootie that gets lonely, because the other three are lousy travelers. They complain loudly and worse yet, tend to throw up or poo in their distress. My FIL, right next door, looks after them if we're gone, or we have friends who will come by. If we had to evacuate, for some reason, we'd take Grandpa with us. We're not going to leave him behind,(tempted though I might be sometimes.) The neighbors would leave, and we would certainly not want to leave our pets behind to deal with some awful disaster. So I really need a dog carrier/crate for each dog-especially for the dog who hates cars and tends to throw up. Add some newspapers/paper towels/plastic bag/handi-wipes. Added to my to-do list- buy dog carriers.
While reading about NADP day, I came across this great article: http://ww.examiner.com/... This article made me think of something else that had not occurred to me- that many evacuation shelters and hotels don't allow pets! Their suggestion was to plan an evacuation route ahead of time-excellent advice especially for people in hurricane zones. Then call ahead and see what hotels along your route allow pets. It's better to do this now, when its calm, than than when it's raining and the wind is up and 1000 other people are trying to get through.
Another excellent suggestion was to have current snap-shots of your pets in case you get separated during the disaster.
If we have some sort of disaster where we stay home, we are pet ready. And we are ready to travel with the pooties. By next weekend we will be ready to all travel together. My hope, as always, is that we won't need to use these preps. But I'm glad to have them in place in case we do.