How to Get Your Dog Ready for a Hurricane

You live in Texas, it's hurricane season, and there's a name on a map somewhere out in the Gulf. You already know how this goes.

Most hurricane prep lists for dogs are the same list: food, water, leash, records. That list is fine, and you can put it together in an afternoon. It's the easy half. The hard half is everything that has to already be true about your dog before the day you need any of it, and that part takes weeks.

So here's both halves.

Two weeks of food, not three days

Most preparedness lists say a few days, and FEMA's own pet guidance says at least a week. Pack two weeks.

The power goes out. Roads close, or they're open and nothing is moving on them. Stores empty and stay empty, and the ones that restock are the ones you can't get to. Harvey is the example everyone here already has, and what lasted wasn't the storm, it was the week after it.

If you run out of dog food in the middle of that, you aren't going to let your dog go hungry. You're going to start splitting your own supplies with them, and now two of you are running short instead of one.

Pack two weeks of food, not three days.

What goes in the bag

• Two weeks of food, and as much of it shelf-stable as you can manage. Dry food is meant to be stored under 80 degrees, which a Houston garage beats for most of the year, and heat and humidity break the fats down. An opened bag is the first thing in a go-bag to go quietly stale. Canned food keeps far longer and does not care whether the power is on.
• Water, counted for the dog, not assumed out of the household spare.
• Meds, in their original labeled containers, with enough to cover the same two weeks.
• Vaccination records, on paper and in the bag. Keep the photo on your phone too, but the paper is the copy that still works when the battery does not.
• A crate or carrier↗(affiliate link) the dog already likes.
• A spare leash, packed and left in the bag. The one you use every day is the one that gets left behind at wherever you ended up, and a dog you cannot keep hold of somewhere unfamiliar is the hardest thing on this list to fix once it has happened.
• Bowls, poop bags, and spares of every everyday thing you'd normally just grab off the hook on your way out.
• A dog first aid kit↗(affiliate link). The nearest vet may be closed, flooded, or on the far side of a road nobody is driving down, and the things you'd normally get in the car for are the things you now have to handle at home.
• Somewhere waterproof for the paperwork. This list asks you to pack vaccination records, and a reactive dog's handling notes, into a bag, during a flood. Paper and water is the obvious failure and it is worth one pouch to solve.
• Something that smells like home. A worn shirt, their blanket, the cover off their bed. It's the cheapest thing on this list and it does the most work in a room that smells like nothing they recognize.
• A current photo of you with your dog. A clear one that shows what they actually look like, with you in the frame, because that's what proves they're yours.

The part everyone forgets: rotate it

Canned food lasts a long time, but not forever, and a go-bag is designed to be ignored, which is exactly how you end up standing in a dark kitchen holding food that expired in March.

Set a calendar alert a month before the earliest expiration date in the bag. When it goes off, pull that food out, feed it to your dog over the next few weeks, and replace it. Nothing gets thrown away and the bag is never stale.

Do the same for the meds.

The half you can't pack

An evacuation asks your dog to do a list of things they may have never done: ride in a car for hours, sit in a crate in a room full of strange dogs, be handled by somebody who isn't you, sleep somewhere that smells wrong, and possibly be left with a friend or a facility at no notice.

None of that fits in a bag. It only gets trained, and the time to train it is while nothing is coming.

• Crate trainedTeaching a dog to be comfortable resting in a crate, so that it becomes a place they choose rather than one they are shut into.Read more →, before it matters. A crate is only a safe place if your dog already believes it's one. The first night in a crate shouldn't be the night the power is out and there are strangers in the house.
• Microchipped, and registered to a phone number that still works. A chip is only as good as the number attached to it, and that number goes out of date without anybody noticing. Look yours up this week and check it is the one in your pocket.
• Comfortable being handled by someone who isn't you. Collar taken hold of, harness put on, feet touched, lifted, all by a stranger, calmly.
• Muzzle trainedTeaching a dog to wear a basket muzzle comfortably, built in advance of any situation that requires one.Read more →. A basket muzzle↗(affiliate link) is safety equipment in the same way a life jacket is, and a dog who has been taught to wear one happily has more options in an emergency, not fewer. If the only place you can get to takes dogs on the condition they're muzzled, that's a far better problem to have now than on the day you are trying to leave.
• Able to be left with somebody else. And have the somebody picked before you need them.

If your dog is reactive

This is the part I haven't seen on a single hurricane list, and it's the one I wouldn't skip.

If your dog is reactiveAn outsized response, such as barking, lunging or spinning, to an everyday thing that most dogs pass without comment.Read more →, or has a bite history, there's a real chance that somewhere in an evacuation you hand them to somebody. A boarding facility. A vet's office you've never been to. A friend doing you an enormous favor. A volunteer at an intake table who has never met your dog and has people waiting behind you.

Have the paperwork ready to go with them, written down, not explained out loud in a parking lot while you're both stressed:

1. What sets the dog off, in plain language.
2. What they look like when they're getting close to their limit, so somebody who has never met them can see it coming.
3. How to handle them safely. Where to take hold, where not to reach, what to do if they get stuck or panic.
4. Whether they're muzzle trained, and where the muzzle is.
5. Your vet, your name, and two phone numbers.
6. Any bite history, stated plainly.

That last one feels like handing somebody evidence against your own dog. In practice it's what stops them being handled badly by a person who didn't know, and a bite that happens at an intake table follows a dog a great deal further than a line on a piece of paper does.

The day it actually happens

If you've been watching the forecast at all, this shouldn't be the first you're hearing of it, and that's most of the advantage right there. You have hours rather than minutes, so use them slowly.

Before you start packing, put your dog in their crate with something good to work on. A stuffed Kong↗(affiliate link), a lick mat↗(affiliate link), a chew that takes a while. Then go and pack.

Your dog doesn't need to watch you move through the house fast, grabbing things, talking in a voice you don't normally use. They can't tell the difference between "we're leaving in two hours" and "something is very wrong right now," and the only information they have to go on is you. A dog who spends the whole afternoon watching a frantic person gets in the car already wound up, before a single thing has actually happened to them. That is trigger stackingThe build-up that happens when stressful events land close enough together that a dog has not recovered from one before the next arrives.Read more →, and it is happening before the storm has done anything at all. There is more on it in the note on trigger stacking.

Out of sight is fine here. A dog shut in a room with something good to chew is having a better time than one following you around while you pack. The enrichment library is the whole list of what to give them.

And while you're doing it, fake it. Walk past them at a normal speed. Talk to them the way you do on a Tuesday. You don't have to feel calm, you only have to look boring, and boring is the most useful thing you can be for them right now.

Start here

None of this is dramatic work. A few short crate sessions. A muzzle you get out on a Tuesday for no reason. A phone call to whoever holds your chip registration. Do it while there's nothing on the map worth watching.

Here is the whole thing, short enough to keep:

• Two weeks of food, and meds to match.
• Vaccination records on paper, in something waterproof.
• A photo of you with your dog. On your phone, and printed.
• Microchip registration, checked this week.
• A crate they already like.
• A page of handling notes, if your dog is reactive or has a bite history.
• The person or the place you would leave them with, picked before you need them.

Screenshot that. Then write it out as well and put a copy in the bag, because the rest of this note assumes your phone dies at some point and there is no reason this list gets an exception.

Every one of those lines is one less thing your dog has to work out for the first time in the worst week of your year, from a person who is already frightened.

Written by

Kourtenay Dolmos

Founder, Hearth & Hounds · LIMA-Informed · Houston, TX

Kourtenay is the trainer behind Hearth & Hounds, working hands-on with reactive, anxious, and rescue dogs across Houston. These notes come straight from that everyday work.

Work with Kourtenay →