The human-animal bond

Over and over again, the human-animal bond demonstrates its strength during disasters.

How well individuals, groups/families, neighborhoods, and the community reacts to the threats a disaster can make to this bond is an integral part of an area's planning efforts.

More
Page Banner
Dog kissing girl

The Workshop

The Animals In Disaster workshop is intended to improve animal-related disaster capabilities of individuals, groups & families, neighborhoods, and communities.

It can also help local animal-related agencies, businesses, and local jurisdictions understand and design their support plans.

Special focus is on integrating animal-related disaster plans, resources, and skills into Neighborhood Emergency Teams or their equivalent.

This includes providing for animal care and dealing with the issue of separation and, in some unfortunate cases, grief..

Scope

The workshop focuses on small domestic pets (dogs, cats, ferrets, "pocket pets", lizards, snakes, turtles, birds, etc.)

The scope does not include farm or wild animals but can easily be adapted for those scenarios.

More

The agenda

The simple formula for preparedness includes:

  • Plans
  • Resources
  • Skills

Planning includes before, during, and after a disaster.

Resources include animal supply kits.

Skills include animal care, animal handling & transport, and animal first aid.

The AID Workshop revolves around the them of the human-animal bond so it includes the topics of separation, lost & found, and grief support.

Thank you to all those that participated in the workshop! We learned quite a bit about individual, neighborhood, and community animal-related disaster preparedness and have already started on the next steps to improve the information and help you and Federal Way in this important work.