Americans love affair with pets goes back 100’s of years. Before we had the weather channel when disaster struck people hunkered down or escaped with their pets.
Back in 2004 when the first of the major hurricanes hit South Florida I noticed a tremendous problem. During the mass evacuations and long power outages people had no good plan for their beloved pets. Those people who evacuated had no place in hotels for their pets. There was no place to get them food or medicine. Those who stayed faced the same problem. No one thought of storing food or medicine.
Those with large animals like horses could not get them water since no wells were working. Animal shelters were never built to handle the true volume. They were able to handle only about 3% of the volume. Even the shelters were not equipped for long power outages. By the end of the season all I heard were horror stories of pets dyeing. It was very upsetting. Almost 500,000 salt-water aquariums worth millions were destroyed. Reptiles were released into urban areas.
By the end of 2004 our phones were ringing off the hook from pet owners of all kinds. People who owned every imaginable creature that swam, flew, or walked this earth realized the best way to protect their pets was to buy a standby generator. Animal shelters, veterinarians, horse farms, aquarium owners, cat and dog owners would say to me never again.
I heard some amazing stories. There was a horse owner in Wellington who had to drive his luxury car into town to fill up 5 gallon buckets of water. He then put them in his car and drove back to the farm. There was a lady who had a generator and invited her daughter to stay and told her to bring her dog. Unfortunately the mothers dog a fought with the daughters’ dog every day for a month. Later that year the daughter bought her own generator. I received hundreds of these stories.
Yes it was great for business but it was just as great to know I was helping the animals who are loved every bit as much as people.
To learn more, watch this informative video here on MSN.
