Severe Weather Preparation Resources From The Horse.Com

My heart goes out to folks whenever I hear in the news of severe weather events. The first thing I think about is how are the horse owners.

I once evacuated with two cats at the last minute ahead of a hurricane when I lived down South. I did not have horses of my own at that time. I still have no first-hand experience in equine evacuation.

I can tell you though that evacuating with the two cats, and choosing to leave behind a third semi-feral cat because I couldn’t catch him, is not an experience I want to repeat. I still recall that horrible, sinking feeling I had in the pit of my stomach as I drove away. Fortunately the left-behind cat did in fact survive the hurricane unscathed. I also remember my husband, young son, the two cats and I sleeping in our car in a parking lot for the first night of our evacuation.

We had no where else to go. We couldn’t find an open hotel room since we were one of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the same weather event. Having an evacuation plan might have saved us a lot of grief.

For anyone facing a potential evacuation now or for those of you who would like to make “what if” plans for future severe weather events when you have to shelter-in-place, here is a link to ten resources on thehorse.com website at https://thehorse.com/148328/10-severe-weather-preparation-resources-on-thehorse-com/. Another useful link is to an Equus article at https://equusmagazine.com/horse-care/prepare-for-emergency. And this link is all about ideas for watering your horses during unusual cold snaps/power outages at https://thehorse.com/197528/making-sure-your-horse-has-water-during-severe-winter-storms/.

For me, an evacuation plan or a shelter-in-place plan is kind of like an emergency-aid kit. You want to have one, but you hope you never have to use it. If you do need to use it, you end up being very glad that you made the effort to have it on hand.