Disaster Preparedness for Your Dog
How can you take care of your dog in an emergency?
Jolanta Benal, CPDT-KA, CBCC-KA
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Disaster Preparedness for Your Dog
Fire, flood, tornado, earthquake. Disaster is hard even to think about, maybe especially if you live in a place prone to any kind of natural catastrophe. But your odds of survival go up if you have an emergency plan. And so do the odds for your dog. So let’s grit our teeth and deal.
Disaster Preparedness for Your Dog
Since this is The Dog Trainer’s Quick and Dirty Tips, I’ve focused this article on, yes, dogs. But the links at the bottom of the page will take you to info about how to take care of your other companion animals as well.
Make Sure Your Dog Has Up-to-Date ID
Disaster or no disaster, Dogalini should have ID: not only a collar and tags, but a microchip and maybe a tattoo as well. A microchip more than doubles the odds that you’ll be reunited with your dog if she winds up in a shelter after getting lost. Plus, you may need to prove ownership, so keep the chip’s registration up to date.
Emergency Shelters Usually Don’t Allow Animals
Now to the nitty-gritty of keeping safe. Since Hurricane Katrina, there has been some movement to establish pet-friendly evacuation shelters. Check your local emergency services and animal control agencies to see if one is available in your area. But evacuation shelters usually don’t admit pets, owing to the perceived health risks. (Incidentally, shelters do have to admit service dogs.) Even shelters that admit pets are likely to house them separately from their guardians—a pretty big stressor for both animal and human.
Try to Find a Pet-Friendly Motel
If you’re evacuating with your dog and no pet-friendly shelter is available, head for a boarding kennel or a pet-friendly motel outside the evacuation zone. I’d opt for the motel if at all possible—kennels aren’t my first choice for boarding a dog even in the best of times. Do a Web search on “pet friendly lodgings” or see the Resources section below. Identify several possibilities in advance in case your first choice fills up. Or go for the budget option, Spare Bedroom of Pet-Loving Friend or Family Member with Whom You’ve Made Arrangements in Advance.
Also make reciprocal arrangements with a trusted neighbor or nearby friend, so you can rescue each other’s animals if one of you can’t get home when an emergency strikes. Plan for how to contact each other and where to meet.
What Should Your Dog’s Emergency Kit Include?
Set up an emergency pack, with several days’ worth of food and water, Dogalini’s medical records, contact info for your vet and Animal Poison Control, and a first-aid kit. Pack a muzzle, because even the nicest dog may bite if injured and in pain. The first-aid kit should include the following (and this is only a partial list!):
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veterinary bandages,
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a big eye dropper for medicine or flushing wounds,
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exam gloves,
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antiseptic,
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milk of magnesia,
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activated charcoal, and
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hydrogen peroxide.
These last three items are in case of certain kinds of poisoning; talk to your vet about using them. Add a pet first-aid guide to your kit, or download one to your smartphone or e-reader.
Your emergency pack should also include at least a few days’ worth of any medications your dog takes. Keep the supply current so you don’t wind up evacuating with an arthritic dog and five expired tabs of Rimadyl.
Whether you’re evacuating to a shelter, a motel, or a friend’s home, Dogalini may need to be confined. So bring an extra leash or two and a travel crate. And she will for sure be experiencing a lot of stress, so try to bring her bed and a couple of favorite toys. These familiar items may help alleviate her stress and they sure can’t hurt.
What Should You Do with Your Dog If You’re Not Evacuating?
If you’re seeing out the emergency at home, bring all your pets indoors as soon as you get official warning, and keep them there. Leash your dog and crate your cats—they are safer confined rather than running and hiding in a panic. When I researched my article on safe car travel for dogs, I found no independent tests of how crashworthy crates are. I did find video of crates falling apart in medium-speed crashes, so I wouldn’t count on a cat’s or dog’s crate to protect her from heavy debris.
If you have a safe room, your pets should be in it with you, along with everybody’s emergency supplies. It’s suggested that you cover an area of the floor with newspapers to give your dog a place to eliminate. That should work if your Dogalini is paper-trained, but many housetrained dogs will hang on to their bladder and bowels for 24 hours or more rather than eliminate indoors.
What Should You Do If You Have to Evacuate and Can’t Take Your Dog?
Do everything you can to avoid leaving your animal companions behind. Their chances of survival drop hard, especially if you can’t get back for a while. If you have no choice, your dog should at least be inside and wearing ID. Add info about your evacuation site to the ID if you know it. Take the toilet lid off completely, and prop open the bathroom door. Fill the bathtub with cool water. Post signs to tell rescuers that animals are in the house. Put your contact information on the sign. And notify whatever agency will be conducting animal rescue operations in the evacuation zone. Your local animal control office should be able to tell you this.
How Can You Help Your Dog Get Back to Normal?
And now for the moment when the actual disaster event is over and you leave your safe room, or take your dog for a walk, or come back home. Keep Dogalini on leash until life has settled back to normal, or you’re well into whatever the new normal turns out to be. (And keep Kittylini indoors.) Stress, maybe coupled with the disappearance of familiar landmarks, can add up to a lost pet.
During and immediately after the emergency, you may not be able to provide a familiar, comforting routine for your dog. Also, your pets will be sensitive to your distress. The physiological and behavioral effects of anxiety and uncertainty can linger for dogs just as they can for us. So put Dogalini’s life back on an even keel as soon as you can manage it. You might even want to start a “Say Please” or so-called “Nothing in Life Is Free” program. This predictable reward-based structure helps provide a sense of safety. If your dog doesn’t seem to be recovering, a qualified behavior specialist can help.
So—we’ve gritted our teeth, we’ve got an emergency plan in place, and now let’s hope we never need it. Think about zombie apocalypse instead. Or go walk your dog. Thanks for reading!
Resources
American Veterinary Medical Association links to disaster preparedness for veterinarians and info page on what to include in a first-aid kit.
ASPCA Animal Poison Control website. The phone number is 888-426-4435. Put it on your refrigerator and in your cell phone’s speed dial right now. Oh, just go ahead and tattoo it on your hand. The ASPCA also offers thorough disaster prep info, here.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture disaster preparedness page gives info not only for cats and dogs but also for birds, reptiles, and horses and other large animals.
The Centers for Disease Control explains how to prepare for zombie apocalypse (and other disasters), here.
Downloadable pet first-aid guides are all over the web; I haven’t looked at most of them and wouldn’t be qualified to evaluate them anyway. As a rough screen, choose one by a vet, and/or ask your own vet for a recommendation. The Red Cross offers classes in dog first aid.
Federal Emergency Management Agency info on animals in disasters. See the top right of the page for links to training on “Awareness and Preparedness” and “Community Planning.”
The Humane Society of the United States’ guide to disaster preparedness includes links to websites that list pet-friendly lodging. Scroll down to “Find a safe place ahead of time.”
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Best Practice. Shelter Operations: Pet-Friendly Shelters.” A guide to establishing pet-friendly shelters for large-scale evacuations; includes many links to local animal emergency response teams and other valuable resources.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
About the Author
Jolanta holds professional certifications in both training and behavior counseling and belongs to the Association of Professional Dog Trainers and the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. She also volunteered with Pet Help Partners, a program of the Humane Society of the United States that works to prevent pet relinquishment. Her approach is generally behaviorist (Pavlovian, Skinnerian and post-Skinnerian learning theory) with a big helping of ethology (animal behavior as observed in non-experimental settings).