What a disaster!

Well, sort of....Hope and Nick made their acting debut last weekend in Irvine playing the role of evacuees for a diaster drill that was run an organization called SCART (Surf City Animal Response Team). I found out about the drill last month from some HOPE members who are also part of this organization. They were asking for therapy dogs to play the roles of the evacuee dogs. I was able to get permission to bring Nick too, even though he is not a therapy dog.  

The scenario was that there was a wildfire where I lost my home and needed to evacuate my dogs. There was an emergency animal shelter set up and Hope and Nick were processed through the shelter as part of the drill. They went through "intake" where I filled out paperwork for them to get into the shelter, had their picture taken, had my picture taken (for identification purposes), and given an unique ID number that was put on their collars. I was given a bracelet that contained their ID numbers. They were then taken to a makeshift dog kennel and held there until I came back to retrieve them.

Here's a picture of Hope and Nick before the drill started in their working dog mode (they didn't have to wear their vests for the drill):


After they went through Intake (where I filled out the paperwork) and they were given identification numbers, they were taken by volunteers to the kennel area:


Nick goes into the kennel:


The Kennel area (Nick on the left, Hope on the right). There's a miniature schnauzer named Shay in the kennel all the way to the right, he is a therapy dog that visits at hospitals.


After being kenneled for a bit, both dogs were taken to the Vet tent to be checked out for any medical issues (Nick on the left, Hope on the right):


Nick being sprung from the kennel and on his way back to me:


Hope being sprung from the kennel and on her way back to me:

The cool thing is that we also got our picture taken that appeared in the local paper, Orange County Register.  I have no idea when this picture was taken and am just glad both dogs were behaving themselves ;-)  Here's a link to the article (click here)

It was a fun day and we were glad to help out.  It was also good for the dogs and I was pleased with both of them as they were both comfortable being handled by other people (who didn't have much in the way of dog handling skills), remained calm, and were comfortable being kenneled.

Fun day!