Are your dogs ready for an emergency?
If you have been spending any time on social media or paying attention to world news you would’ve seen the recent natural disasters around the world.
Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes just to name a few. We are no safer here in Australia. As summer approaches, we have risks of high intensity storms and bushfires.
How many of us are truly prepared for these events? I saw some very distressing images of pets being left to fend for themselves, sometimes even tied up and left to die. Most of us wouldn’t do that, but what are our options? If you are not prepared you might have to make the decision to stay in harm’s way for your animals or leave them behind.
I hope that governments, local and federal, plus emergency organisations start to address that there is a big part of the population that has pets, these animals are not just dogs and cats, they are family. People are not willing to just leave them. To ensure everyone can evacuate, pets need to be welcome into evacuation centres.
As a trainer, I know that this could be mayhem if not handled well. To begin with the animals would need to be crated to ensure there is no risk to people, other animals and themselves. This is where you need to think ahead….. Can your dog be happily crated?
Crate Training is a must for our dogs, not just for emergencies we are discussing here, but medical reasons might require your dog to be crated for a few weeks. Having your dog happily enter and stay in a crate for a long duration will ensure that, should the need arise, your dog will be more relaxed when emergency crating is required.
If you would like to receive my free Crate Training Handout crate training
On top of crate training your dogs, have an emergency evacuation plan and even an emergency staying plan. Here are some of my suggestion
- Have crates easily accessible and animals crate trained
- A list of places you can stay with your pets – family/friends and public places
- Emergency kit – bowls, water, food, leads, regular medications etc
- Ensure you keep your microchip information up to date
- Have ID tag with your mobile number (home number is useless if you’re not home)
Here is a great article by the ABC to help prepare your emergency plan: ABC Article
We are all responsible for ensuring our pets safety. Prepare now to keep everything controllable in the future.