In Case of Disaster…
April 20, 2008
According to the 2007-2008 National Pet Owners Survey, 63 percent of U.S. households own a pet. This equates to approximately 71.1 million homes. Each year, many of those families come home to find their beloved pet missing. Unfortunately, an estimated 30 to 60 percent of lost pets are in shelters because they cannot be properly identified and returned to their owner.
The awareness of the need for a pet recovery system is growing, especially after the devastating results of Hurricane Katrina. This unfortunate natural disaster left the owners of approximately 600,000 missing pets grieving. Several of those pets lost their lives due to the brutal weather conditions, however well over 200,000 pets survived, and were taken into shelters.
Although safe in a shelter, those rescued pets were missing something critical: A piece of information that links them to their owner. Because of this, many of the surviving pets of Hurricane Katrina were put up for adoption, and never reunited with their owner.
A new resource is available at www.pet-tracks.net - check it out and register your pet so they can be reconnected with you in the event of a disaster - earthquake, tornado, hurricane…
Thanks for posting this one! My husband and I recently moved from Michigan (CBW Kentwood & Hudsonville) to Louisiana (no CBW, yet) and we are quickly learning how important it is to keep up-to-date details for our dog, Felix. If anything as devastating as Katrina strikes while we live here, we want to make sure we keep him as safe as possible. He is well accounted for in our family emergency evacuation plan, but since it’s an emergency plan, we have to cover all of our bases.