The Horse.com has published some tips on how to protect your animal during transport under hot conditions. You should contact other horse owners as soon as possible to coordinate moving your animals to safety if a disaster occurs.
Hot weather can pose serious health problems for animals both two-legged and four-legged, including dehydration, heatstroke, and exhaustion. USRider, a national provider of roadside emergency assistance for equestrians, encourages horse owners to take steps to prevent these ailments when traveling with horses.
"In addition to providing a reliable and valuable roadside assistance program, it is also our mission is to continually educate horse owners about trailering safety," said Mark Cole, managing member for USRider.
20 Hot Weather Trailering Tips
The long road beckons: It's summer, and all kinds of diverse opportunities await you and your horse--shows, competitions, sales, trail riding, equine vacations, and more. Some events are just a couple of hours away, while others involve many hours, perhaps even a few days, of trailering.
Should your journey take you and your equine traveling companions through areas of scorching heat or sweltering humidity, you need to take steps to protect your charges from the ovenlike temperatures and stresses that can occur in a horse trailer. Here's how.
What you can do today!
Please visit the Equine Evac web site in Santa Cruz . The people behind this web site recently carried out a perfect large animal evacuation during the Lockheed Fire. This group was formed after last year's fire when large animals were seriously endangered and unfortunately some were lost. Equine Evac works with local animal services and authorities to allow emergency evacuations for large animals.This is very important. Having one of these organizations in our area may mean the difference between your animal surviving a disaster or your having to euthanize the animal because you cannot get it out in time (or worse).
If you are interested in setting up a similar group in Contra Costa or the county that you live in to help yourself and other horse owners, please contact them as soon as possible (link to Humane Education in Contra Costa).
Contact the Lamorinda Disaster Animal Response Team if you are a horse owner in Lafayette, Moraga or Orinda! During our recent disaster response during the Lockheed Fire we witnessed first hand the great work Equine Evac have done in Santa Cruz and we would love to help you set up something similar in your area .
