Saturday, October 4, 2008

Rescued: Life-changing Stories of Saving Animals from Disaster

Rescued is the story of the individuals and organisations who took part in the evacuation of pets and livestock in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

It may be a little over-sentimental for British tastes, but the practical "lessons learned" and sections on what individual pet owners can do in the way of preparation to give their animals the best possible chance of surviving an emergency situation are of real importance.

We're fortunate in this country that large-scale disasters like Katrina are very unlikely, and we're also lucky not to have rabies (so we can handle animals of unknown health status with a degree of confidence the Katrina rescuers didn't enjoy). That doesn't mean we can't learn from this very large-scale animal emergency — for example the importance of micro-chipping to enable pets to be reunited with their owners; the value of having pre-existing teams of trained volunteers for essential roles such as assessing emergency foster homes (and what went wrong for groups who weren't able to do these checks).

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