Guadalupe County welcomes addition of pet disaster relief trailer

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today

Cindy Aguirre

(Seguin) — Guadalupe County is one of nine in the state of Texas who are now fully equipped to handle pets during an emergency crisis or natural disaster. In observance of Disaster Preparedness Month, Guadalupe County is sharing more about its AKC Pet Disaster Relief Trailer.

Among those who initially pursued the idea for such a program was Niclaus Taulai, an adult probation officer for Guadalupe County. Taulai, thanks to his affiliation with the Alamo Brittany Club, was able to learn more about the American Kennel Club’s program AKC Reunite.

“It started out as a program to help people find their lost pets and in 2013 after a tornado outbreak in Oklahoma, they found a need that when people evacuated, they needed to take their pets somewhere. So, they started a pet disaster relief program through trailer deployments that local emergency management could (partner) with AKC’s — to receive  set up emergency shelters for pets,” said Taulai.

Although the trailer has been in the county’s hands since April, fundraising for the trailer actually began in 2017. Officials says the trailer was made possible after the AKC matched the $12,000 that was raised locally.

Patrick Pinder, the Guadalupe County emergency management coordinator and fire marshal, says the trailer is not exclusive to only flooding, tornados, hurricanes, fires and snow storms.

He says it can be deployed after any man-made situation or if animal control was forced to remedy an issue within the county.

Nearly 40 percent of pet owning evacuees did not return to their homes for at least four days, and in some cases up to two weeks. In addition, it is reported that one in five pet owners have evacuated their homes due to a disaster or emergency and nearly half left at least one pet behind during an evacuation.

Allison Lewis, the emergency management program specialist for Guadalupe County, says this trailer is vital in ensuring the safety of these animals lost or left behind. She says the trailer is only a handful of its kind in the entire state.

“We are one of 9 in the state of Texas and one basically in this area. The other ones are in the Houston area and then North Texas, in the Dallas area,” said Lewis.

The county has partnered with the Texas A&M Veterinary Medicine Program to develop a sheltering and disaster plan. Pinder says the county has conducted the homework in ensuring that the trailer can be deployed at a minute’s notice.

“It’s not just tied to small animals. It’s tied to large livestock, exotics, bird, snakes — those types of things so we incorporated al those into our plan and we looked at all the facilities that were throughout the county. We traveled to Schertz, Cibolo, here in Seguin. We looked at all of the animal control facilities,” said Pinder.

Encouraged to have the program in the county is Judge Kyle Kutscher. Kutscher says the trailer only reassures the county’s commitment to saving lives – all lives.

“You think about it and go is it really a need but when you think about and talk about pets truly being family members, a growing county, we’ve had and seen these issues during disasters on large animals like cattle and horses during major flooding events. If we get a major event here and people get displaced and they have to go to a shelter and need those services, now we have this issue that we hadn’t planned for previously, but now, we are set up to handle that. It really is a great asset,”  “While some may go really, ‘a pet trailer?’ I promise you, it’s important if it’s you being displaced or if it’s your pet that doesn’t have a place to go or as what was brought up multiple times just be a partner to neighboring counties and cities around the state and if they need our help, we go because I guarantee there will be a time where we need other folks help to come to Guadalupe County,” said Kutscher.

Officials say sharing the news about this trailer now is also important so that pet owners can become aware and have the necessary knowledge that this trailer exist before the next disaster happens.
Pinder says one of the main requirements of having this trailer is that public awareness. These next few weeks alone have the trailer at various events including at this year’s Guadalupe County Parade.

Other highlighted features of this trailer include scanning for microchips and/or event hosting a microchip clinic in the future.

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