How to make an emergency plan for your pets
1. Choose two people, and ask them
The plan starts with names, not documents. You need at least two people who could get to your home within a few hours, and both of them have to have actually agreed — a person who finds out they were on your list at the moment they are needed is not a plan, they are a surprise.
Ask each of them three things directly:
- Would you be able to get to my place and look after my dog for a day or two?
- Are you reachable by text at short notice?
- Is there any reason that wouldn’t work — allergies, travel, your own animals?
Tell each person who the other one is. If both get contacted and each assumes the other is handling it, you have two people and nobody going.
Pick for proximity before you pick for closeness. Your sister three states away is the person you would want. Your neighbour two floors down is the person who can be there before dinner. Most plans need both, doing different jobs.
2. Solve the front door
This is the step that quietly breaks more plans than any other. Everything else can be sorted out by phone; a locked door cannot. Decide now how your person gets in, and make sure it does not depend on you handing something over at the time.
- A spare key with each of your two people, or with one of them and a neighbour.
- A lockbox, with the code written where your contacts can find it — not on the box.
- A smart lock code issued to them in advance, not one you would have to send.
- A building superintendent or doorman who has been told, by name, who may be let in.
Write down anything non-obvious: the door that sticks, the alarm code and how long it gives you, the dog who is frightened of strangers coming in the back way.
3. Write down what your pet needs
Assume the person reading it has met your dog twice and has never fed him. Be specific enough to act on:
- Food: which food, how much, how many times a day, and where it is kept.
- Medication: the drug name, the actual dose, when, and with or without food. “His tablet” is not enough for someone standing in your kitchen.
- Routine: walks, when he is normally let out, where the lead is.
- Allergies and hard limits: what must not happen. This one matters more than the rest and is the one people forget to write.
- Behaviour: the fears, the triggers, whether he can be left with other dogs, whether he bolts through open doors.
Keep it somewhere a person can reach without you — a shared note, a printed sheet on the fridge, or an app that can send it to them. A document only you can unlock is a document that does not exist on the day it is needed.
4. Both vets, with numbers
Your regular veterinarian and your nearest 24-hour emergency hospital are two different places, and the second one is the one nobody can name under pressure. Write both down with a phone number and an address.
Call your regular vet once and ask them to note on your file that these two people are authorised to bring your animal in and make routine decisions. Practices handle this differently and it takes one phone call; it saves an argument at a counter later.
5. Make your pet identifiable
Emergencies displace animals. A pet who is identifiable comes back; a pet who is not becomes a stray.
- Microchip: have it, and — the part that actually matters — keep the registration current. A chip registered to a phone number you gave up in 2019 is a chip that returns nothing when it is scanned.
- A collar tag with a phone number that will be answered. Consider adding one of your emergency contacts’ numbers, since yours may be the one nobody can reach.
- Clear photographs from the side and the front, showing size and markings, taken recently.
If the worst version happens, the guide on what to do when your dog is missing covers what those photographs are for.
6. Decide how anyone finds out
Here is the step that is missing from almost every pet emergency plan you will read, including the good ones: nothing in it triggers itself.
A hospital admits you. It does not know you have a dog, does not have your neighbour’s number, and has no reason to ask. Your phone is in a bag in a locker. Your two carefully chosen people have no idea anything has happened, because from the outside, an ordinary Tuesday and a catastrophic Tuesday look identical for the first several hours.
So the plan needs an answer to: who notices, and how soon?
- A standing arrangement. Someone who expects to hear from you daily, and who has agreed that silence means go and check. Simple, free, and dependent on a human remembering.
- A card in your wallet. “I have a dog at home. Please call —” with two numbers. The ASPCA recommends exactly this. It works only if somebody goes through your wallet, which is not guaranteed and is not fast.
- An automatic check-in. Something that expects to hear from you on a schedule and contacts your people when it doesn’t. This is the only one of the three that works when nobody has thought to look.
That third option is worth understanding properly before relying on it — it is the subject of how a dead man’s switch can protect pets home alone.
If you might be gone longer
Everything above covers days. If you are facing surgery, a long treatment, or you are thinking about what happens if you don’t come back at all, that is a separate and larger piece of planning: a named permanent caregiver, money set aside for the animal’s care, and in some cases a pet trust. The ASPCA’s guidance on making a plan for your pet covers the long-term version and is worth reading in full.
Do the short-term plan first anyway. The emergency is far more likely than the estate, and the estate plan does nothing about tonight.
The one-page checklist
| Done | What |
|---|---|
| ☐ | Two emergency caregivers asked, and each knows about the other |
| ☐ | A way into your home that doesn’t depend on you |
| ☐ | Feeding, medication and routine written where someone else can read it |
| ☐ | Allergies and the things that must not happen, written down |
| ☐ | Your vet and your emergency vet, with numbers and addresses |
| ☐ | Vet told who is authorised to bring your pet in |
| ☐ | Microchip registration checked and current |
| ☐ | Recent photographs, side and front |
| ☐ | A decision about how anybody finds out you’re unavailable |
Common questions
- How many emergency caregivers should I have?
- Two, at minimum. One person is a single point of failure — they travel, they lose their phone, they get sick the same week you do. Two people who both know they are on the list, and who know about each other, is the smallest plan that survives contact with reality.
- Should I give someone a key to my home?
- Someone needs a way in, and a key held by a person you trust is the simplest version. A lockbox, a smart lock code, or a key with a neighbour all work. What does not work is a plan where the only key is in your pocket, because your pocket is the thing that is unavailable.
- Does a pet trust or a will cover this?
- No. A will takes effect when you die and after a legal process that takes weeks. An emergency plan covers the far more likely situation: you are alive, in a hospital, and your dog needs feeding tonight. They are different documents solving different problems, and most people need the second one first.
- What if I live alone and have nobody nearby?
- Distance matters less than you would think for most of the plan, and enormously for one part of it: somebody has to physically open your door. If nobody local can, that is the gap to solve first — a neighbour you are on nodding terms with, a building superintendent, or a paid pet sitter who agrees to be an emergency contact are all more realistic than they sound.
Where Woof fits
Woof is built for step six — the step that has no paper version. It is a free iPhone app that expects to hear from you on a schedule you set. If you don’t answer a check-in, it reminds you, then warns you, and only then contacts the people you chose, with your pet’s details and what you asked them to do.
The rest of the plan lives in it too: the Woof Pet Record holds feeding, medication, both vets and the microchip number, and you can send someone a temporary link to it without giving them an account. Your Safety Network is the two people from step one, and they have to accept before Woof will ever contact them.
What Woof does not do: it never calls 911, never dispatches emergency services, and never requests a welfare check on your home. Reaching the people you chose is the whole of it. That boundary is deliberate and permanent.
Free to download. Free core protection, with no trial and no expiry. iPhone.
Woof is free on iPhone. Check-ins, your Safety Network and the Woof Pet Record cost nothing and don’t expire.