Dogs in hotel rooms and goats in the aviary: pets get care, too, during Haines disaster

More than 200  people are displaced in Haines—evacuated due to the risk of landslides after record-breaking rainfall. But when you leave your home on short notice, what happens to your pets? 

A veterinary appointment isn’t the first stop you might imagine during a natural disaster.

Mandy Reigle and Cori Stennett’s house was okay after mudslides tore through their neighborhood. Neighboring homes were destroyed and the debris flows covered the road and cut them off from town for 3 whole days.  That’s when they were finally able to evacuate with their terrier, Nelson. 

“The truth is, is that Thursday night, we were busy getting packed up. And we just didn’t have a close of an eye on him. And he was very occupied. He was loving his bone. And that’s, that’s what happened,” Stennet said.

The next morning, they moved into relative safety with some friends in the Haines townsite. But by evening, Nelson was writhing in pain. They didn’t know it at the time, but a sharp piece of bone was working its way through his stomach and intestines. They called Dr. Oakley. She’s the only working vet in town. Within hours she’d gathered enough resources for emergency surgery.

“Before she was going to go into surgery, [Oakley] took a, I guess a stomach fluid sample, a belly tap, and it came out in the syringe full of blood. And at that point, I think we all just kind of looked at each other and thought that he was already bleeding out from the inside,” said Stennett.

“And that’s that moment where, you know, I mean, you don’t really care how dirty a vet’s floor is. You want to lay on the floor by your dog and cuddle them while they’re still here.”

Nelson isn’t the only pet who’s needed attention in the last week. Dr. Oakley set up a makeshift clinic in the town’s rescue kennel. In the midst of the disaster, she fields about 20 calls or visits a day.

“We had inappropriate urination, so it’s peeing all over the place. We have one that got really knocked around during the evacuations was really sore and limpy,” she said, scrolling through her appointment schedule.

“So, we’ve got a bite wound…and that’s the third bite wound for today. And then we’ve got one that just really anxious: trembling, shaking, not eating, vomited. So it’s kind of the whole gamut.”

Oakley explained this is normal under the circumstances. Pet owners are distracted, animals are in new environments, and everyone is under stress. 

Cats at friend’s homes. Dogs in hotel rooms. Parrots in hotel rooms. A pair of pygmy goats in a vacant aviary.

Payton and Polymer’s owners had to evacuate their home under Mount Ripinsky. The Haines Bald Eagle Foundation is housing them empty barn space intended for birds on a farm near the townsite. Sidney Campbell, the Foundation’s raptor manager, is in charge of their care.

“I have, like, remarkably little information about these goats,” she said.

“It was just like, in the frenzy of all of the Cathedral and Piedad evacuations, people were looking for places to put them and we very suddenly had two goats to take care of.”

Campbell drives up to the farm twice a day to refresh their food and water. Mount Ripinsky looms overhead and the rain keeps pouring down.

“Animal care doesn’t seem like it would be a super applicable skill in a setting like this, you know. Everybody’s doing their best to help out and this is my skill. This is this is the thing I know. So this is what I can do to help, I guess,” she said.

At his follow-up appointment, Nelson the terrier is doing well. He’s taking his pills and his weight is stable. Dr. Oakley says the bruising from surgery is already improving. Stennet says she’s grateful not to lose anything else.

“I don’t think we even knew how much he meant until we were here on the floor with him on Friday night, thinking that we were saying bye, and crying and just the thought of losing him. I mean, that just plunged us into something that we weren’t expecting on top of what I already had happened that we weren’t expecting to the community. And we love him. I mean, we love him so much.”

Nelson can walk to the truck, but he needs a lift to get inside. They’re headed back to their friends’ home—to pack. It’s in the part of town that’s been warned to prepare for evacuation, so they’re checking into a hotel just in case.