Yes, April is pet first aid awareness month! Preparedness is the key! What I thought I would do is throughout the month of April is give you some tips and tricks you can easily do.
Here’s today’s tip:
Do you know where your nearest after-hours emergency vet hospital is?
If you answer is a vague “yeah, it’s somewhere in the East part of town”, now is the time to do the following:
- Put all the after-hours vet clinics and vet hospitals in your area into your address book. There might be more than one emergency hospital in your area, so be sure to check! Make sure you include the name, address and phone number of all the after-hours vet hospitals.
- Drive from your home to the clinic both during the day time AND at night time. Hopefully, you will never need to visit an after-hour vet hospital, but it is best to make sure you know the quickest route before it is too late. And, things look totally different at night (and isn’t that when so many emergencies happen?), so drive over there at night as well!
- Remember, I told you to put the addresses and phone numbers in your address book? If you should find yourself in the unfortunate situation of taking your fur kid in due to an emergency, call the hospital and tell them you are on your way! This helps them be prepared for you when you walk through their doors. They often can give you some short-term suggestions of what to do prior to arriving at their doors.
May you never find yourself in an emergency situation with your pet, but if you do, you will be ever so happy you did a bit of preparation beforehand!
First thing I did when we moved to San Mateo! But what I have been wondering is to find a pet friendly shelter when something happens. If we ever have to evacuate from our house, which shelter do we go to where we can take our dog?
That, Hiromi is the $20,000 dollar question! Ideally the shelters set up for animals will be near the Red Cross shelters for us 4-legged people. “Ideally”, being the operative word. No one knows where those shelters will be as factors will depend on what areas are hardest hit, etc. I’ve taught classes in disaster preparedness for animals and one thing I recommend is you have a list of pet-friendly hotels both in your area and outside of your area should you need to evacuate. A trusted friend who lives outside of the area is another possibility, but not all of your friends will be so inclined to take in your 4-legged pets, so think about this carefully before picking a friend!