June 20, 2008

Avoid Calamity - Organise Your Dog Emergency Information

by Floella McFee

Introduction

Does Fido need a Filofax? Is keeping track of his personal and emergency information becoming a trial? After all several pieces of paper with all his important numbers and records scattered throughout the length and breadth of your house is hardly efficient. Nor is the complete mess left by you as you trawl through drawers and filing cabinets looking for his vaccination records. What this situation requires is a bit of organisation!

Types of information

The best way to start organising any system of information is to actually work out what sort of information you need; what is the simplest way of accessing it, as well as who are people who will require to use it. Of course the most important information concerns veterinary and insurance details, but perhaps you want to keep a complete medical history, a list of medications and allergies. However, there may be other sorts of information that are not necessarily obvious: legal things such as what happens to your pet in the event of your death, in which case others might need access; or maybe more general information about common diseases, such as symptoms; what about things which might may be toxic for your dog, but not necessarily toxic for you.

Who is going to need the information?

Obviously the person who will be using this information the most will be you! So as long as you understand your system, and can access it quickly and easily, that will be fine. But suppose your family or friends need to access this information, or professionals from a boarding kennel. What ever system you develop has to be user friendly, and easy for multiple person admission.

Computer programs

The most sensible thing would be to make sure all the necessary information is in one easily accessible place. Perhaps Fido could have his own filing cabinet, or a card index system with everything cross referenced. This might be a little labour intensive, and in this age of save the tree and use less paper, it could be construed as no very eco-friendly. Database it is then: easy to store and certainly easy to back-up: why even friends and family could keep a copy for you! And just before you baulk at the thought of spending hours creating this relational database monstrosity, fear not! There is software packages on the market specifically designed to do the work for you. All you have to do is fill in the data! Now where did I put that policy number?

Conclusion

It may seem like a lot of work for no gain, but believe me, you will need the information to hand when calamity strikes, and you will need it fast! It is better to develop a system now and add the necessary information as you go, rather than risk something awful happening, just because you mislaid an important piece of information.

About the Author:

Probably the most important bit of information that you will need to keep is your dog training records. As your dog goes through their training, remember to keep track of all the milestones. When they were potty training, when they stopped nipping, or when they stopped barking at night.