Natural Disasters and Pets

It is five years since Hurricane Charley came ashore on the West Coast of Florida and today is a poignant reminder how Hurricanes, Floods, Tornadoes, Fires and other natural disasters can affect your life and the lives of your family, friends, and clients. Roughly 600,000 pets were killed or were left without a home as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Many pets lost their lives due to the weather, and others could not be taken into safety shelters so they were unfortunately left stranded.

What has this to do with Real Estate, you may ask? With over 63% of United States households owning a pet it is safe to assume that a Real Estate Professional has a great number of clients or prospective clients that own a pet. Would they not appreciate something that could possible help to save their pet's life instead of another calendar, notepad or fridge magnet with your face on it?

After a particularly awful Hurricane Season in Florida and then Hurricane Katrina we wanted to do our part to help pets that were lost and abandoned due to natural disasters. "My pet is micro-chipped so I do not have to worry," you say. But in a natural disaster it is not always possible to get to a Veterinary clinic to have a lost pet scanned and what if there is no electricity? And less than 5 percent of the approximately 145 million pets in the United States benefit from micro-chipping.

It only takes a moment to help your pet and those of your family, friends and clients. Pet Protect(R) PetHealthAlert is an Instant Pet Medical Alert System with a choice of Free Pet Medical Alert Tags (one time $5.00 handling and processing fee). There is a choice of 10 Tags for your pet from Diabetes, Allergies, Seizures,Healthy Pet, etc. and it alerts anyone finding the pet about the pet's medical condition- it gives immediate medical information.

For those that do not like self promoting on Active Rain we are doing this for the pets as it is our way of giving back for we see for ourselves on The Pet Realty Network's Your Pet Friendly Community (Lost and Found Pets) the number of pets that are lost and the beginning of Hurricane Season reminded me of past years and the very sad stories about missing and abandoned pets.