What about my pet?

     One thing that isn't really touched on by survivalists are our beloved pets.  Most survivalists concentrate on civilization coming to an end, so the assumption is that pets are expendable at that point.  And if that does happen, they may very well be.  But because I'm suggesting storage for a number of reasons, I will offer some suggestions for pet storage as well. Food is obvious and for pets fairly easy to store, it's usually dry.

     But don't forget pet meds.  Even if your pet isn't on medication now, think about what could happen and plan ahead.  There are veterinary supply catalogs that you can order meds out of, such as Lambriar Vet Supply.  Dog and Cat antibiotics etc. will need a prescription from a Vet.  Fish antibiotics however do not require one and they are the exact same thing as what we take.  You can buy everything from staples and pullers to hemostats, forceps and scalpels.

     One thing that is a very good idea to have on hand is a nursing drug guidebook such as, "Nursing 2008 Drug Handbook", which is highly recommended.  This book can help you to not mix medications that will cause lethal reactions, etc. 


     So what do you do in the worse case scenario.  Some kind of disaster has forced you to evacuate.  You grab what you can and run.  What about your pets?  If you are hopeful about coming back in the near future you can just put pans of food and water out.  Fill up the bathtub with water for the dogs and sinks with water for the cats.  I wouldn't recommend bowls for the water as they are usually fairly easy to tip over and then the water will be wasted.

     Also with cats don't forget to put out extra cat litter.  An easy quick way to make a temporary litter pan is to put a garbage bag in a cardboard box, tape the sides of the bag to the box if you have the tape.  Maybe fold it under the box if you don't.  They may or may not scratch through the plastic, but this should keep the mess and clean up under some kind of control.

     But what if you are never going to be able to come back to your home?  This is a heartbreaking decision that could very well happen to you.  If there is a natural disaster, the shelters may not be in operation.  The roads could have been destroyed so you are forced to walk out.  A dog is easy, just put him on the leash and away you go.   A cat on the other hand is harder.  Not very many cats are leashed trained and those that are, are used to a little stroll around the yard.  I don't know of any cat that will walk on a leash for miles by your side. 

     If you were able to bike out, you could possibly attach a carrier to the bike to carry your cat.  Or another way could be to backpack your cat out like this guy.      In order for this to work however you would have to start your cat out hiking with you quite awhile beforehand to get them used to it.   And not all cats may be up to the challenge.  Cats have different personalities just like humans and some could not handle the stress.

     And then we come to the heartbreaking decision.  If we are not able to take our pets with us (most likely a cat) what do we do if the shelters are not running, the whole town is evacuated?  Or heaven forbid, our government collapses into anarchy.  In a last case scenario, I would suggest leaving down all food and water you can, then leave a window open.   Cats are very self reliant and given the chance to hunt for their food, become very proficient in a short amount of time. 

     If in the worse case scenario social order has broken down, how do you justify saving your pet?  Cats are very efficient small game hunters.  I have had cats bring home mice, gophers and snakes to mention a few.   In a world without grocery stores, an animal that keeps the vermin population down, could be worth their weight in gold.  Dogs of course are the guards and can be trained to be a hunting partner.  When I lived out in the middle of nowhere we had a sweet little beagle cross dog named Brandy.  She loved everyone and everyone loved her.  One day my best friend came over while I was gone and knocked on the door.  She told me later that the most ferocious growling came from inside the house and Brandy slunk slowly out of the petdoor in attack mode.  Which promptly disappeared when she realized who it was. haha  But the point is, for the most part, the most loving of dogs takes his job as guard serious when the need arises.

     I will end this on a positve note.  Yes it can be more difficult to provide for a pet in an emergency situation.  But with a little (or a lot of) planning you can give your pet the best shot at surviving a disaster.

Why Prepare?

     So why prepare?  Why not?  You can prepare without being one of those crazy hermits living in the hills shouting the end is near.  You can prepare yourself for anything.  An earthquake, floods, loss of a job and yes anarchy in case social order breaks down.  Preparation is not crazy it's just smart planning. 

     So where do you start?  Food is the obvious choice.  Other things can most likely be fabricated or scrounged up.  But if the infrastructure of our society goes down, there will be no more food deliveries until it comes back up, if ever.  Almost none of our food comes from a local point.  Even in a farming community the food is shipped elsewhere and the food in our supermarkets is shipped in.  Does this make sense?  Not really, but that is the way our country works, bass ackward.  ;)  Short term bartering with local farmers can snag some fresh produce.  But all too soon those supplies will be used up, or they will start to hoard as they realize relief is not coming soon.

     So the first question is, how much food do you stock pile?  The Church of Latter Day Saints are pretty close to being the experts in this.  They recommend that you start out trying to store at least a 3 months supply of necessities.  Once you have your core stock pile for three months then you can add to it little by little as money and space allows. 

     I'm not going to get into a comprehensive list of different foods to store, but there are some things that will store for a long time, such as rice, wheat and beans.  Here is a link to an excellent food storage guide, http://www.ehow.com/how_2220971_Store-Food-Long-Term-Survival.html.

     One thing you need to do with stored food is trade it out.  Rotate the packages of food and use them up before they get too old.   Just replace them as you use them.  The rice, beans and wheat can store for years if done right.  But almost all other foods need to be rotated.

     Where do you store your supplies?  Where you store your survival supplies is important and easier than you might think.  Not all of us are blessed with a nice big basement with endless storage possibilities.  If you are lucky enough to have a nice big pantry in your kitchen, good for you.  For the rest of us, food should be kept in a dry, relatively cool environment.  Run down to your local Walmart and buy some cheap plastic bins.  I got a couple of three foot long, 18 inch wide and high, plastic bins for about 5 bucks each.  I am currently using one as a coffee table in the living room.  The other is in my bedroom.  Lower flat bins could possibly be slid under the beds, just think of the storage space under a queen-size bed!


  
     My next article will focus on pets, our fur kids, adopted babies, our best friends.  What do we do for or with them in an emergency?  Hurricane Katrina highlighted how our fine feathered/furred friends often get over looked in an emergency.  Preparation can help you to avoid the heartbreak of losing your pets.

Welcome

     Hi! Welcome to my survival blog. Just a little bit about me. I have been fascinated by survival since I was in High School (many centuries ago ;)) I would check books out of the library (we had to do that in those days, no Google :p) about making snares to catch animals for food, making a fish trap in a stream, identify edible plants, etc. It continued after I married and became a mother, with a subscription to Mother Earth News learning more about living with the land, and becoming more self-sufficient. I tried my hand at living in the middle of nowhere for 13 years, with no running water, an outhouse and only homemade power. I raised rabbits for food and learned to butcher them myself (although I found out I didn't really like the way rabbit tasted unless it was made into Chinese dishes. lol  My sweet "n" sour rabbit was to die for!). We raised horses, goats, chickens, a calf and a pig. We also had fruit trees and a vegetable garden. With no running water! lol  Although I have to say most of that was thanks to my ex-husband and the four 55 gallon blue plastic barrels of water he hauled 5+ days a week.

      And speaking of the pig. We went down to the local auction to see what was for sale. An adorable bunch of baby pigs were run into the arena and the bidding was furious. At the end we were the proud owners of a baby pig. Now we live in a farming community and sorry to all the pig lovers out there, but our aim was to fatten him up and then make bacon (so to speak. hehe) out of him. I love animals and baby animals of any kind are adorable, but I am a country girl and if it's been bought to be food, food it's going to be. With that in mind we named him Pork Chops (rabid animal rights activists need not respond, lets just agree to disagree. I don't preach to you, please don't preach to me. :))

      So Pork Chops came to live on our little ranch (we called it the Half Ass Ranch). At first he was a dutiful little pig and stayed in his sty, but that soon changed. He was the hoodini of pigs. No matter how many times I fixed his sty, no matter how many different ways I fixed it, he would escape. Pigs are notoriously extremely smart animals. I would have just given up and let him run loose, but we have a bad coyote problem here and I didn't want to feed them a nice pork dinner.

     Finally in desperation, I threw him in the dog run with our dogs. This run was about 48 feet long, 8 feet wide with a shed made out of sheets of plywood (4 feet wide, 4 feet tall and 8 feet long). The fencing was welded wire, semi-rigid panels. Finally something he couldn't get out of! Soon the dogs and pig adjusted, he was just one of the guys. He grew bigger and then one day we realized that the pig thought he was a dog. How do we know that? The run was parallel to the road and whenever a car would go by, the dogs would bark their heads off as they ran up and down the run. 


     One day I was outside by the run when a car passed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing. The dogs were doing their usual bark and run routine, with a slight addition. You guessed it, the pig was running up the down the run with the dogs barking (Yes barking....he sounded just like a dog). It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. We had a barking pig. I thought about how funny it would be to turn him loose the next time a car went by to see what he would do. But I was afraid he would either get run over or someone would wreck at the sight of a pig chasing their car.

     Well as you can imagine, we didn't end up eating the pig. Instead we sold him (in the country it's not as easy to justify keeping an animal like that just as a pet, especially for the ex-husband). He would have grown up to be a huge pig and potentially dangerous animal. But I will never forget our barking, car-chasing pig. :)

     Back to the real subject. We learned to take showers using five 1-gallon jugs of water, heated up on either the propane or wood stove, depending on whether it was winter or not. Conservation is the key, we had to learn to not waste our resources. Everyone should spend a few months at least living in this manner, it is a real eye opener about what you actually need to survive, as opposed to what we "think" we need.

     And I learned that even in the High Desert the temperatures can drop to extremes. One winter (and only one thankfully) we woke up to about 18 inches of snow on the ground and temperatures during the day started to drop. By that night they were below zero and a freezing fog (known to the local natives here as Pogonip, which means something like white death in Paiute) had rolled in. The fog stayed for about two weeks with the temperature dropping lower and lower, the snow sticking around. Now in the Nevada desert it snows, but it's gone almost as soon as it stops snowing. Not this time. A neighbor came by a week or so after it started to check and see if we were all right. He said his thermometer had recorded a low of minus 27. It's like we were living in Alaska not Nevada.

     At that point in my life, I didn't work. I was a ranch wife, or as I like to say it. I played with animals all day long. Such a tough job! Well my days with the snow quickly developed into a routine. I had a teapot and an old style camp coffee pot. I filled them both up with water and set them on the wood stove which had two burners on it (I miss that old stove! Soup cooking on the front burner all day smelled so heavenly and tasted divine!), then when one was boiling hot I took it out and poured it on someones water dish so they could have a drink. No water tank heaters for us with no electricity. On the way back into the house, I would grab an armload of firewood which was stacked in the front yard. Rinse and repeat for the about two dozen chickens, assorted goats, rabbits and 5 horses. The horses I would have to make multiple trips to make sure they got enough to drink otherwise they can colic, which can kill them. 


     This was my life for at least 2 weeks (I don't remember exactly how long it lasted, but it seemed like an eternity at the time). We lived in a single wide trailer that had two bedrooms, one at each end. We had to take blankets and hang them at the beginning of the hallways to block them off and we moved into the front room and kitchen to live. Our only sources of heat were the aforementioned wood stove and a portable kerosene heater that is not really supposed to be run in the house or unattended. We would run the kerosene heater at night while we slept to supplement the coal we threw in the wood stove to keep it burning all night. Thankfully we didn't asphyxiate from carbon monoxide. We ended up sending my daughter into town to stay with grandma to make sure she stayed warm. Btw there is nothing quit like an outhouse in below zero weather. *shudder* But the temperature finally broke, we and all our animals survived and all was well.

     So those are a basic outline of my credentials such as they are. No I haven't survived a disaster, but I survived 13 years living in conditions that a lot of people cannot even imagine. So I want to share what I  have learned and I want to learn even more that I hope you all will share with me. :) I have a couple of friends who will be joining me on this blog, but I will let them speak for themselves.

     Thank you for reading and if you managed to reach the end here, great! Jewels