18 Things You Need In Your Pet Emergency Survival Kit

When we’re making plans for worst case scenarios, we plan for ourselves and our human family members to ensure our safety. But what about our pets? If you’re like millions of Americans, you probably have a pet dog or cat (or several pets if you’re lucky). The bond you have with your pet is special and unique. No two pet/owner relationships are the same, just like no two human friendships are the same. Our pets are important members of our families. We may not be able to communicate in the same language, but they want to feel safe and secure too.

Fortunately, preparing your pet for an emergency is very similar to what you prepare for yourself, with a few modifications.

We’ve put together this guide to help you and your pet stay safe, and stay together, in an emergency.

Prepare a kit with these emergency supplies:

1. Food supply for 72 hours: Pets don't eat the same food as us. Human food can be poisonous to pets, and it doesn't give them the nutrients they need. It is important to have a kit where your pet can have food to keep it healthy.
2. Water supply for 72 hours: You won't always have access to clean water, so having water set aside in any kit is vital, and the same goes for your pet.
3. Food and water dishes: Sure, a pet can eat food off the floor, but what about water? It is important to have something that your pet can drink out of so they can stay hydrated.
4. First aid kit: Accidents happen. Your pet deserves to be taken care of, and this includes making sure that its injuries can be treated. Specific things in the kit?
5. Pet emergency guidebook: a guidebook specifically geared towards helping you know how to care and plan for your pets in the event of an emergency.
6. Medications: If your pet is on any medication, they will still need it when an emergency arises. Make sure that your pet emergency kit has all the medications they will need.
7. Collar and leash: Your pet is going to need to move around. If you don't have a leash, then when frightened, your pet may run away. Pet-friendly shelters will almost always require your pet to be on a leash.
8. Pet waste bags and/or litter box: Preventing the spread of bacteria and disease is one of the most important considerations during a disaster. All animals create waste, and it is important to clean up after your pet. Having a way to do that will help you maintain a clean shelter.
9. Emergency reflective blanket
10. A picture of your pet and you: Your pet might get lost or run away during the frightening emergency situation. Having a picture of your pet is a great idea, but it is even better if you are in the picture as well. This can be further proof to others that your pet belongs to you.
11. Records: Having documentation is important. Shelters may need a vaccination record and documentation that your pet does indeed belong to you. You may also consider having your pets chipped by your veterinarian. Having information on your pet can also help if you are sheltering your pet at a pet motel or with a friend.
12. Carrying case: When a pet gets frightened, it might be difficult to get them to safety. They might not walk on their own, and if you simply pick them up they might jump out of your arms. By having a carrier, you can eliminate these problems. In addition to this, the CDC advises that you get your pet familiar with the carrier ahead of time. This will help them understand that it is safe for them to be in.
13. Rope and stake: By having a rope and stake, your dog will be able to move around freely in a restricted area. This can help keep them at your camp, or wherever you may be, and still have a bit of freedom. This will also take the worry off your mind of keeping an eye on them, or always holding a leash.
14. Blanket: Having some comfort for your pet can make a huge difference when their world collapses. If you have to evacuate, this can hold a lot of security for them.
15. Treats: Helping your pet be at ease can make a huge difference for them. Adding treats to your emergency kit can help give your pet comfort and a reward for being good.
16. Toys: Giving your pet a little security can go a long way. By having toys it can help calm your pet when they are in a stressful environment. If you have small children, it can also help distract them as they play with their pet.
17. Whistle: There is a possibility that you will get lost, or your dog will. Dogs tend to react to whistles, and it can help them find you. If you and your dog are lost, it can help rescuers find both of you. Take some time to train your dog to come to the sound of the whistle
18. Bag to store and carry all items easily

You can use this list to build a pet emergency kit on your own, or use it as a guide to purchase a pre-built kit. Purchasing a pre-built kit will allow you to have more time to focus on other aspects of your emergency preparedness plan. You can see our line of pet emergency kits HERE.

For a FREE Pet Emergency Guide, follow the link below. In it you will have access to the information that was discussed here, as well as more in depth information on first aid, sheltering, and other ways to keep your pet safe. It also has places to write down documentation you may need, and a place for that picture of your pet and you.

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What I Learned About The In-Between Things

Are there disaster situations where you would want to save non-essential material possessions? Probably so.

Working for Emergency Zone, I spend plenty of my waking hours thinking about how to prepare for emergencies and what to do if one strikes. When a natural disaster came to my own doorstep, I found out that no amount of preparation and studying the subject could simulate the sense of reality sinking in when you see it with your own eyes from your own house. Last year, during another dry summer out west, a series of large fires broke out around my community and the surrounding towns and cities. A number of communities were evacuated; and the nearby hills, walking distance away, were illuminated by a mountain of brown smoke. I carefully kept updated on the status of the situation, until word came in that my neighborhood was given the pre-evacuation designation. People opened their homes to the evacuees and prayers rose up from all the chapels.

In spite of how near the fire was, the wind was blowing it towards an already evacuated town, meaning I had several days to assess the situation. But the wind only had to change direction and my home would be in danger. We filled buckets and pots full of water and put them around the house, in the hopes of reducing the damage if the fire made it that far. We reviewed our pre-evacuation checklist. The flames were cresting the hill into view when I made the decision to evacuate and stay with relatives.

When your life isn't at risk, but your possessions are.

In spite of all the situations I have considered, this was one I overlooked. I had days to decide what I would leave behind and what I would bring. If I really wanted to, I could have packed the whole house into trucks and trailers and made multiple trips in that amount of time.

Make no mistake. Family is what's important in life and the value of material things cannot come close in comparison. As long as you have each other, you are truly rich. In an immediate emergency, trying to save your possessions could get you killed. But this situation was different.

Thanks to the valiant efforts of the firefighters, my neighborhood was spared. But say the wind changed. Say that 2% chance of my house burning down came true (When it's your house, that number feels a lot bigger). I would be sitting there thinking how I could have saved more of my possessions at no risk to my life or my family. Sure, you can get your house insured and you can buy several replacement things, but there are things of yours that are sentimental and could never be replaced. Precious family heirlooms, memorabilia, things with a deep, personal history that you look forward to passing on to the next generation. These are the in-between things, floating in the grey area between the important and the unimportant. They especially become a concern with the more frequent, slow-moving disasters where your odds are good, but the danger is much higher than normal. How do you decide what is worth putting in the effort to save, and how do you weigh that against the risk of it being lost?

Losing your house is a tragedy, and there's no way to make it not a tragedy. That's not what I'm trying to do here. This is about easy, simple things you can do to reduce the impact of such an event. It's not worrying and obsessing. It's preparing.

Three categories

All you need to do is divide the things in your life into three categories:

• Necessities
• Non-Necessities
• Sentimental (In-Between Things)

You may have the first two already separated out, especially if you are a prepper, but I will go over these, too, to show where they fall in relation to the in-between things.


Necessities.

This is what preppers live for. Collecting the supplies you need to survive for when all hell breaks loose. Shelter. Water. Medical supplies. When you are sheltering in place, these supplies can be extensive; but, since this article is focusing on evacuation, these are the things that will go in your "bug out bag." Here is an Ultimate Guide to 72 Hour Kits and bug out bags. Bug out bags can also carry a few of the smaller sentimentals, like a picture of your family.

Non-Necessities.

To minimize the impact of losing your possessions (including some of the sentimental ones), do three things:

• Get it insured. Homeowner's insurance if you own, renters insurance if you rent. Your landlord's policy most likely doesn't cover your personal possessions.
• Get it digitized. Take well-lit photos of your belongings in every room of the house, especially the valuable things. This is for the insurance company, but it may also allow the memory of things to live on. Scan and digitize photo albums, documents, journals and letters. In many cases, the digitized will not be the same as holding the original, but it's better than nothing.
• Back it up. If your files were not already valuable to you before, they are now that they contain all of your pictures and precious documents for future generations. There are many options for data backup, and they all have their pros and cons. Cloud storage means your files will always be miles away from any local disaster, while external storage is the most difficult for hackers to access and could make a great addition for your bug out bag.

The In-Between Things.

After doing everything above, the remaining part is simple. Make a list of those irreplaceable things in your house. This is much easier to do now than when you are frantically putting things in order with the approach of a disaster.

Not everything on the list has to have some kind of deep meaning. Simply stated, an in-between thing is something an insurance payout cannot replace. You keep that autographed poster of your favorite band because you would rather have it than the money it's worth, right? Might as well put it on the list. Still, the list should be short. If it's not, that either means you curate a personal museum of artifacts, or that you should re-prioritize where material things belong in your life.

The hardest thing, by far, is assessing an incoming disaster and deciding when the risk is significant enough to go to the trouble of moving the belongings on the list out. If you have your list stored alongside your emergency supplies, however, you will be better prepared and equipped to make these decisions in the moment.

Make note of what things you will need help with transporting, like an antique piano. These belong in a subcategory, and you decide beforehand how high the risk has to be before you enlist support in moving them out of the area. You should make friends with your neighbors, so you can help each other during a crisis and so you know who to trust. A stereotypical prepper thinks his neighbors would murder his family for a bottle of ketchup as soon as things go south, but the truth is disasters bring out the best in people more often than they bring out the worst.

When talking about survival and emergency preparedness, discussing nonessential material belongings can seem counterintuitive. Could a fondness for material things bog down our chances for survival? My thoughts go to my grandmother, who passed a few months prior to the fires at the age of 101. She was a serious prepper ready for the end times and very familiar with poverty and survival from her early life. In spite of this, she was very sentimental about her possessions, and her house was filled with all kinds of art and antiques. If she could find that balance, maybe we can, too.

3 Tools for Surviving After a Hurricane Has Hit

Do you know how to survive a hurricane? The bigger question is: do you know how to survive after the hurricane has destroyed your home? You will find great websites about how to prepare for hurricanes, but the following 4 items don't make it on most people's lists. They are tools that help with surviving after a hurricane has hit. When the hurricane passes and has left you without a working home like you had before, you'll want these items. Enjoy!

N95 mask

You've survived a hurricane and now you are left with flooding and having to clean up your house. Flooding following a hurricane can take weeks and mold and dangerous bacteria can develop. You don't want to be caught breathing that. I pulled this from www.mold-help.org about the effects that breathing mold has on your health: "Molds that produce airborne toxins . . . can cause serious symptoms, such as breathing difficulties, memory and hearing loss, dizziness, flu-like symptoms, and acid reflux." When you are cleaning heavily molded items, wearing an N95 mask for protection will greatly increase your chance of staying healthy. The 95 means it blocks 95% of harmful particles. You can clean up the mess and stay healthy at the same time.

4 in 1 tool

Designed and tested by professional fire fighters, this is handy for shutting off your gas and water valves before a hurricane, and then it also doubles as a cleaning tool after a hurricane. You can dig through debris and you can also pry open doors. This tool is manufactured using heat treated metal compounds that are used by the aerospace industry, which is why it's so tough yet so lightweight. Using heat treated metal means the tool won't make a spark, which is useful if you're digging through debris and there's a gas leak. Nobody want's to cause an explosion. It won't rust, either, which is nice to have after a hurricane for obvious reasons.

Portable Toilet

This one is so obvious it sneaks up on most people.  If your house is severely damaged after a hurricane, using the restroom can get real messy really quick. The above toilet set is an inexpensive solution because it takes a regular 5 gallon bucket and transforms it into a toilet! Use the Blue Gel to keep the smell and mess from getting out of hand. You can get just the toilet seat here, or you can check out the complete toilet set as shown above by clicking here.

Another alternative is the potty box. It folds down so you can store it easier, then it unfolds when you need it. Despite being cardboard it has a durable construction and can hold up to 250lbs. Click here for more on a complete potty box set as shown above.

What do you think?

This isn't a complete list (for example, I didn't include food storage or water filtration methods) but these are a few things that shouldn't be overlooked. I bet there are lots of other great hacks for post-hurricane survival.  Comment below on what you think are important hurricane survival tools! We can all help each other to be a little more ready in case a disaster does occur.

How to Build your Survival Kit for Beginners- 8 Commonly Overlooked Items

Emergencies are often survival situations- you get lost in the woods, you have to bug out to the forest, etc. Small survival kits are valuable for these scenarios, especially since you can take them anywhere. There are tons of survival websites that teach you what to put in a survival kit- a knife, rope, water purification, matches, lighters, flashlights, etc. However, a lot of them only cover these few things. I came up with a list of some small yet overlooked things that you should put in your kit. The cost-return is big on these, because they hardly take any space but they can save your life.

Why I Love Survival

Growing up I went on Boy Scout campouts every month. It was always the normal camping trip with a tent, fire, lots of candy, etc. It was nothing close to “surviving.” However, what was unique was that my scoutmaster, a professional at primitive survival techniques, taught us some of what he knew, like how to start a fire with a bow drill, how to use rope and wood to make a 20 foot tower, and how to throw an atlatl. Luckily I’ve never had to use any of this knowledge, but it keeps me at peace knowing I could if I had to. Okay, the atlatl might not be practical, but hey it’s pretty awesome.

 The Nitty Gritty

I’m about to give you a list of items that are easy to pack in any emergency survival kit but that don’t usually get included. Let me explain one thing before I start, though. If you don’t know how to use a tool then it’s useless. No matter how good your survival kit is, knowledge is priority number one. Get some knowledge so you can feel confident and actually survive in any situation. Learn to tie knots, to use a fire bow, to build a shelter, purify water, etc.

Okay, we’ve arrived at the list! Take notes and include these in your survival bags, you’ll be happy you did. 

8 Commonly Overlooked Items to Include in your Survival Kit

GI Joe Can Opener- This is a small but handy tool for opening cans. Chuck it in the bottom of your bag and it may come to good use some day. If not, it’s not like it's going to weigh you down or take up space.

• Strobe Light- Let’s say you’re lost in the wilderness and you go to bed. What if a helicopter were to fly over? A flashlight only points in one direction, and if you’re asleep you can’t aim it at them. Strobe lights shine in all directions, so if you have one just turn it on before you go to bed and you’re set.
• Extra Batteries- This is self-explanatory. Don’t get caught in the dark!
• 55 Gallon Trash Bag- You can use this as a poncho, tarp, or stuff it with leaves and make some bedding. It weighs next to nothing, and takes up little space.

Courtesy of www.outdoorsafe.com/read/

• Duct Tape- Rather than carrying a whole roll wrap some duct tape around your lighter, flashlight, or other round object. Use it with gauze as a bandage, make a spear out of it with your knife, or reseal packages of food or bags of water. We all know duct tape fixes everything!
• Brightly Colored Vinyl Poncho- If you are putting a trash bag in your kit, make it an orange one and you can skip this. If you don’t have an orange one or you want extra protection, it’s not a bad idea to also include a brightly colored poncho. Vinyl is best since it's more durable. Like the strobe light this is another tool for signaling a search party, but this one will actually work in daylight.
• Redundant Fire Starting Tools- You will need more than just matches in a survival situation. You can buy ferro rods, they produce extremely hot sparks and are small. You can also use a 9 volt battery and steel wool to get some hot embers. If you bring para-cord (which I hope you haven’t overlooked) you can use it for a bow drill. The options are endless, so just make sure to include multiple ways to start a fire, just in case.

Courtesy of www.preparedforthat.com

• Whistle- With the poncho and strobe light you have visual emergency signals for day and night. However, It’s also useful to have an audible emergency signal like a whistle, especially since they take up no room at all in your pack. If you want a whistle, compass, and waterproof match carrier all in one, those are great options.

So there you have it. I hope there’s something there that you didn’t already have. If you have already thought of these 8 things then way to be! You’re well prepared.

Now, please share your ideas in the comments! What other things can you think of that are commonly overlooked?