Pets and Prepping, My Thoughts On the SubjectPets are a sta­ple all around the world.  They’re part of the fam­i­ly.  They’re used for hunt­ing, secu­ri­ty, ser­vice for hand­i­capped & our mil­i­tary, in law enforce­ment.  As you can see I am lean­ing towards dis­cussing “man’s best friend.” They are preva­lent from the time we wake to the time we go to sleep at night.  They depend on us, and we love them.  They can be a pain in the ass some­times for sure.  But one thing is cer­tain, many of us are com­mit­ted to them.  Last year, almost to the day, I wrote a post about my girl­friend and her dog.  And in one of my lat­est posts, I admit­ted my 2013 Year in Review, that I have done lit­tle prep­ping.  In ramp­ing back up and think­ing about the dog (who will remain name­less), I’m sort of in a quandary, here. My girl­friends dog is 10 years old, has a very bad stomach/colon issue, and can­not eat dog food. We make him, rice, (chick­en, beef, or salmon), veg­eta­bles, includ­ing; car­rots, corn, green beans, sweet pota­toes, lima beans, broc­coli, & some­times spinach every day, twice a day. Some­times when we add some olive oil as well when we run low on the salmon… It is prep­ping for anoth­er whole per­son. It sounds more cum­ber­some than it is, because most of the veg­eta­bles are frozen veg­eta­bles, for con­ve­nience sake. But the month­ly bill is def­i­nite­ly more expen­sive than dog food.  In a longer term SHTF, this is not an option, pre­sent­ing a new dilem­ma for us.

Now don’t get me wrong.  He’s an active 10 years old.  Likes to be active, plays with oth­er dogs three days a week, goes for mile plus walks, still likes to jump up and put his paws on your shoul­ders.  He’s awe­some, healthy, and full of ener­gy as far as that goes.  But, bug­ging out with him is bad op-sec. Trust me on this one.  His bark is DEFINITELY BIGGER than his bite.  He unfor­tu­nate­ly has been raised like a per­son by my girl­friend, and a quin­tes­sen­tial type B

per­son­al­i­ty for a dog. He gets loud when he needs to go out or wants atten­tion. Last­ly, a bit stub­born as well…

I think our best bet with him, would be to bug-in. He “could” act as a deter­rent, but is a dead give away that some­one is inside the apart­ment (urban/suburban prep­per, hence the name of the blog). I’ve resolved myself to the fact that he’s both an asset and a lia­bil­i­ty should the sit­u­a­tion get worse than a short term SHTF, such as Hur­ri­cane Sandy last year (geog­ra­phy is NJ/NYC). Need­less to say, some tough choic­es may have to be made because he’s a “part of the fam­i­ly.” He real­ly is like my own stub­born kid…

So the ques­tion is, if bug­ging out, bring him with?  The alter­na­tive; I’ve been told by oth­er prep­pers and have read that they would use a bul­let to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion and move on.  From a pure­ly tac­ti­cal per­spec­tive, I cer­tain­ly get it.  But from a moral and, well per­spec­tive of car­ing and lov­ing our pets, it cre­ates a new dilem­ma.

What are your thoughts for your pets in a SHTF, short or long?

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