Author: kiladog1

47F8AB24-C2E6-4C13-A955-6A9861CA1D59

I take my doggie to a daycare around three times a week to allow her some heavy duty play and romping around time (she’s a big dog living in an apartment and we don’t have the time luxury to give her numerous walks per day). One day, I pick her up and take her outside to a patch of grass right in front of the facility. Then she poops but I have no poop bag on hand, so I put her in the car which was about 10 yards away, I turn on the car and the a/c for her and leave her door open as I grab a poop bag and go back to clean up her mess. I could see her as I bagged the poop and she was kindly watching me from the front seat. Unfortunately, the garbage dump was around a wall, so once I went past that wall, I was not able to see Kila. But I thought, “she’s buckled up in the car, she’s safe”. Nonetheless, I hurried to throw away the poop and raced back to the car where Kila sat waiting for me, door still open. When I went back to her, I realized “oh my God! I didn’t even buckle her in!” My heart completely sank thinking about how she could have left the car to look for me and got lost or taken or hit by a car. I had never felt so scared and stupid and careless in my life! I could have lost my beautiful baby dog because of my own absentmindedness! I’ll be more sure to buckle her in next time and always. I pray I never do forget. That was my awful OMG moment.

Quite a number of my friends have recently lost their dogs. Not like they ran away, but their dogs passed away.  Obviously, each incident saddens me like the dickens!  But it also scares me that all of their deaths are occurring all around the same time.  Sometimes I fear it’s a sign that I’ll have to say goodbye to my doggie really soon.  This is the toughest thought to deal with!

Imagine losing your child. No parent should ever have to face such a tragedy! That’s how I would feel if I ever lost my Kila. She really is my baby and I am so blessed to have her. She completes our family and brings us such joy. The thought—the mear THOUGHT—always brings me to tears. My prayer is that I will never have to say goodbye to her ever (and I know that can sound selfish), but if I ever have to, then I pray God prepares my heart for it. I pray He prepares our whole family’s hearts for it.

Residents here in Hawaii experienced a catastrophic scare a couple Saturdays ago, January 13, 2018 when an emergency alert of a “ballistic missile threat” was sent out to numerous cell phones.  For  38 minutes between the alert and the “all clear” (yes, 38 minutes), a lot of mayhem ensued within the islands.  One man reportedly suffered from cardiac arrest, another person suffered an anxiety attack, and some people were racing down the freeway to get home.  As my husband searched his phone trying to confirm the validity of the alert, I held my beautiful dog’s head in my hands and said a prayer.

Thankfully, the alert was a mistake!  But now that the dust has begun to settle, amidst all the news coverage to this day, I began really thinking wow, we aren’t prepared, so how can my family prepare?

Think about this:  Hawaii has fallen victim to hurricanes and tsunami, but it’s been generations since we’ve had worry about being bombed!  Growing up in Hawaii, we’ve learned to be (somewhat) prepared for natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis, but those are different.  For a hurricane, you have days to prepare, and hours for a tsunami.  But a nuclear missile threat???  Wow, we have under 20 minutes.  There’s no time to go to a shelter on the other side of town, you have to shelter in place.  And the danger of a missile is multifaceted.  In other words, we are either prepared or we’re not. Period.  So in natural dog-mom fashion, I start thinking about my babies (dog and human), what do they need?  This prompted me to build our emergency kit.

Now just thinking about an in-home emergency kit (not a vehicle emergency kit or a workplace emergency kit), Ready.gov and our local news recommends a 14-day kit of food and water for every member of the household (humans and pets).  I’m like, what??!  That’s a huge supply of canned goods and bottled water!  It would take up half the space in a bedroom!  On top of that, our apartment is not built to protect us from nuclear fallout, so we would be safest taking shelter in the stairwell of our building…which means smaller space AND we’d have to transfer that HUGE kit into the stairwell in less than 20 minutes! So here is my task:  build a kit and make sure it can be transferred into the stairwell quickly.

But as I started putting the kit together in my mind (all the canned foods and bottled water we already have, plus the puppy pads and formula), I realize that it’s not very simple…each member’s needs are so different!  My husband and I need different foods from Kila and my human baby, and my human baby goes potty differently than my canine baby, et cetera, et cetera!  So really, this kit has the potential to be huuuugge!!

I decided to store as much as will fit into one of our spinner suitcases (why not, right?  We’re not planning to travel anywhere anytime soon!) because let’s say I’m not home when the alert is received and we have to move like jet outta there, then my husband would have to carry a baby and a leash attached to a dog…how would he move any emergency supplies or even carry any supplies?  Having a prepped suitcase on wheels will make him that much more mobile!  Not to mention that it would make it easy to keep everything together.

My thinking is that if we only have less than 20 minutes to get to shelter, then it would be better to get a full set of long term supplies in that suitcase (like cooking gear) and then move as much of the supply of water as possible.  So far, I suppose the following items will go into the suitcase:

• Foldable stove w/fuel
• Foldable pot set (includes spatula, bowl, soup spoon)
• 10L collapsible bag full of water
• 10 cans dog food
• 2 cans of baby formula
• 5 or more nipples (already sanitized)
• 40 pouches for baby formula storage
• 2 baby bottles
• 10 bottles of water
• Radio, crank type with built-in flashlight
• Another Flashlight
• Diapers
• Potty pads
• Wipes (for everyone’s personal hygiene)
• Survival Tabs 10-day supply for 1 person

I’m currently waiting for all of my supplies to come in (I ordered almost all of them on Amazon Smile so that I can simultaneously benefit the charity of my choice Oahu SPCA).  So I’ll see how this goes!  Be on the look out for my next post!