How to get prepared: Emergency preparedness for pet owners
By Carmen Guerra, Tricia’s Pet Care
Imagine the ground begins to shake.
Your first instinct may be to get to a safe place, but almost immediately another thought follows: Where are the animals?
Your dog may run toward you—or away from the noise. Your cat may disappear under a bed or into a hiding place you didn’t know existed. A frightened animal may bolt through an open door, resist a carrier, slip out of a collar, or react in a way you have never seen before.
And what if the earthquake happens when you are not home?
Emergencies rarely unfold the way we expect. An earthquake, power outage, wildfire smoke event, ferry disruption, or sudden medical emergency can turn an ordinary day into a scramble.
Checklists are useful, but real preparedness is bigger than a list. It is the ability to stay calm, think clearly, and adapt when things do not go according to plan.
South Whidbey Prepares and Tricia’s Pet Care encourage pet owners to think through those possibilities now—before an emergency makes the decisions for you.
1. Build a grab-and-go pet emergency kit
Imagine being told that you need to leave your home quickly. Could you gather what your pets need without searching through cupboards, closets, and old paperwork?
A prepared kit reduces the number of decisions you have to make when you are already under stress. Consider keeping supplies together in an easy-to-access location.
Your kit might include:
At least 7 days of food
At least 7 days of water, or a safe way to purify water
A manual can opener, if needed
Food and water bowls
Leashes, harnesses, and a backup collar with identification
Waste bags, litter, a litter pan, and cleaning supplies
At least one to two weeks of medications and a written dosing schedule
Basic first-aid supplies
A familiar blanket or toy
A recent photo of you with your pet to help establish ownership if you become separated
Think about where you keep the kit, too. If an earthquake blocks access to part of your home, would you still be able to reach it?
2. Keep critical information in one place
If your pet is injured or someone else suddenly needs to care for them, you do not want to search through emails, paperwork, and old text messages trying to find important information.
Ask yourself:
If I had to hand my pet to someone else for care right now, could that person make safe decisions without me?
Keep important information together, including:
Your veterinarian’s name, phone number, and address
Emergency veterinarian or after-hours clinic information
Microchip number and registration information
Medications and dosing instructions
Allergies and chronic medical conditions
Feeding instructions
Behavioral information, including reactivity or escape risks
Your preferred emergency contact
A person who can make decisions if you cannot be reached
Keep a printed copy with your emergency supplies and a digital copy somewhere you can access from your phone.
3. Plan for both evacuation and sheltering at home
Different emergencies call for different responses. Sometimes the safest choice is to leave. At other times, you may be safer remaining at home. Think through both possibilities.
For evacuation:
Identify places you could go with your animals.
Ask friends or family ahead of time whether pets could come with you.
Identify pet-friendly lodging options.
Know your primary route and at least one alternative.
Keep carriers somewhere accessible.
Make sure harnesses and collars fit securely.
Practice getting animals into carriers and vehicles.
If you need to shelter at home, identify the safest area of your house and think about what you would need if electricity, water, phone service, or transportation were temporarily disrupted.
Know where important household systems are located, including utility shutoffs, and learn ahead of time how they should be handled safely.
4. Think about your pet’s response—not just your own
Animals experience emergencies differently than we do.
An earthquake brings noise, movement, falling objects, alarms, frightened people, strange smells, and disruption to familiar routines. Even a normally calm animal may hide, bolt, freeze, vocalize, refuse food, or resist being handled.
Your pets will also notice your own fear and adrenaline.
Preparation cannot remove every frightening part of an emergency, but familiarity can reduce some of the uncertainty.
Ask yourself: What is most likely to frighten my pet, and what can I make familiar now?
5. Keep identification up-to-date
If you and your pet become separated, accurate identification can make an enormous difference.
Check:
Collar tags
Current phone numbers
Microchip registration
Emergency contact information
Consider listing a secondary contact as well.
South Whidbey residents may also want to identify a trusted contact outside the immediate area. A major emergency could disrupt local phone service, roads, ferries, or transportation at the same time that many people are trying to reach family members.
6. Practice before you need the plan
Practice is not about creating a perfect emergency drill. It is about making unfamiliar actions more familiar.
Try:
Short carrier practice sessions with treats
Putting the leash or harness on quickly
Moving your emergency kit to the car
Practicing medication routines when everyone is calm
Seeing how long it actually takes to gather all of your animals
You may discover that something you assumed would be easy is surprisingly difficult. That is exactly why practicing now matters.
7. Prepare for the emergency that happens while you are away
This is one of the easiest parts of emergency planning to overlook. If an earthquake or other emergency happens while you are at work, across the island, off-island, or otherwise unable to return home, your pets may need someone else to help them.
Ask yourself:
Who can legally and practically enter my home?
Who has a key, code, or other access information?
Who knows my pets well enough to handle them safely?
Who knows where carriers, medications, food, and emergency supplies are located?
Who could transport them if necessary?
Where would we reunite if I could not immediately return home?
Consider giving a trusted person access instructions and keeping written pet-care information in a consistent location. An emergency information card on your refrigerator can also help someone quickly locate pet information and contact numbers. A window decal indicating that animals are inside may provide additional information to emergency responders.
8. Build a backup network
Preparedness works better when it involves people, not just supplies. Think about who could help if your first plan fails.
You might identify:
A nearby neighbor
A friend or family member elsewhere on Whidbey Island
An off-island contact
Your veterinarian
Your pet-care provider
Someone who could temporarily shelter your animals
Make sure those people know that they are part of your plan.
A name written on an emergency list is not much help if that person does not know what you expect them to do.
9. Talk with your pet-care provider
Having a plan for your pets when you are home is important. It is just as important to understand what will happen when someone else is caring for them.
Consider asking any dog walker, pet sitter, daycare, or boarding facility you use:
What is your emergency management plan?
What would happen if an evacuation were ordered during a visit?
How would you communicate with me if cell service were limited?
What happens if my usual caregiver cannot reach my home?
What is the reunification plan if I cannot return right away?
At Tricia’s Pet Care, emergency preparedness is part of the way care is organized:
Backup care: At least two trained professionals know each pet’s routine, providing another option if the usual caregiver is unavailable.
Pet first aid and CPR training: Sitters maintain Pet CPR certification, and emergency preparedness is reinforced through ongoing training.
Emergency response: Sitters are trained to recognize when something is wrong, follow established care information, and determine when veterinary or emergency care may be needed.
Communication: Clients receive updates and visit information so they know what is happening with their pets.
Continuity of care: More than 25 years of pet-care experience has helped shape procedures for maintaining care when unexpected circumstances arise.
Preparedness starts with one question
You do not need to solve every possible emergency today. Start by asking: If something unexpected happened right now, what would be the hardest part of keeping my animals safe?
Maybe it is finding the cat. Maybe it is transporting an elderly dog. Maybe it is medication. Maybe no one else has a key to your house. Maybe you have never decided where you and your animals would go if you had to leave South Whidbey. Find that weak point first. Then work on the next one.
South Whidbey Prepares and Tricia’s Pet Care are working together to encourage our community to think through these questions before an emergency occurs. Because preparedness is not about predicting exactly what will happen. It is about giving yourself—and the animals who depend on you—more options when it does.
Learn more
|
|
|
Let’s talk
Do you have helpful information to add? Or perhaps a question you’d like to pose to this community? Use the comment box below.