Moving to Hawaii with Dogs - Emergencies

Cover via AmazonWe have a 4-legged house guest this weekend.  His human mommy and daddy are in the process of PCSing from Japan to Hawaii, so he and his furry brother were dropped off at the MWR Kennel in Halawa on their way to the Mainland for leave in transit.  The kennel requires an on-island emergency contact.  We've boarded our dogs there several times and never needed to use it, so I volunteered to be the emergency contact for my friend's dogs.  The dogs were in the kennel for less than a week (out of the month) when one of them (let's call him Lucky) needed emergency surgery for gastric dilatation volvulus (GDV) or bloat/torsion.  (This is what eventually kills Marley in "Marley and Me".)   Fortunately, the prognosis for GDV is pretty good these days and Lucky (a yellow lab like Marley) is stretched out and snoring on the couch (our dogs are not allowed on the furniture but we're giving Lucky a bye since he's had a rough week).  In case you were wondering what happens if your dog has an emergency while you're PCSing to Hawaii, here's how it went for us.

If your dog is in quarantine, they have a vet clinic on site... it's rigged for routine checkups, administering the rest of the rabies vaccinations, etc.  I am pretty sure they can also handle minor illnesses and injuries on site, but I am not sure they can handle emergency surgeries because the vet is not always there.  (My dogs had to stay there for a month in 2006 when we moved here from Virginia.)  The quarantine section is close to but run separately from the MWR Kennel.  (Quarantine is run by the State of Hawaii Dept of Agriculture, the MWR Kennel is run by the Army's MWR program out of Schofield.)  If your pet is at the MWR Kennel, they will call the emergency on-island contact (this may be you if you're staying in a hotel without your dog) for anything not life threatening but still requiring medical attention.  (IE, minor injuries, illness, etc)   The closest full service vet clinic that is open to the general public is over in Pearl City.  (There are some smaller clinics, but the major one is VCA Pearl City, which also has 24 hr emergency services.  It is always VERY busy, but they are also very good and will take new patients, walk ins, and emergencies.  They also take treatment authorizations over the phone.  If you are over on the Windward side- ie MCAS Kaneohe Bay, then VCA Kaneohe also offers 24/7 emergency care.  I should point out that VCA tends to be more expensive than the smaller clinics, but if you don't have an established vet, they will take your pet and they are equipped to handle most emergencies.)

Unfortunately, I don't have my cell phone or internet access at work and my office phone number got messed up so I missed the initial call that one of the dogs was in trouble.  Furthermore, once a dog is bloating, you really have to get them into surgery ASAP.  So although I was able to respond an hour after the initial phone calls, the folks at the MWR Kennel already brought him over to VCA Pearl City.  (German Shepherds and other "deep chested" dogs are also susceptible to GDV so bloat scares the living daylights out of me.)  Since this happened on a Wednesday afternoon, he was held in the hospital for observation until Friday afternoon.  (This is when I picked him up...)   If I wasn't able to take Lucky in for the weekend, the vet would've kept him until Monday afternoon, since the post-op standard is close observation for 4 days and the kennel is not manned 24/7.  We're bringing Lucky back to the kennel on Monday since we both work full time.  (He's on 5 different meds for the next week and he'll be more closely monitored at the kennel.  Not to mention, his doggie brother is waiting for him there.)

If Lucky needed to go back to the vet to have a follow up (ie remove stitches), then it would be on me as the emergency contact to pick him up from the kennel and get him to the vet.  Doesn't really bother me- I love big dogs and he's pretty tame for a yellow lab.  (If I flaked out and the dog really needed to get to the vet, I have no doubt that the folks at the kennel would figure out a way to get him there, but the preference is to have the emergency contact take care of it.)

But what do you do if you're PCSing to Hawaii and don't know anyone willing to be an emergency contact for your pets?  Whatever you do, do NOT just throw some bogus contact on there.  Lucky's human dad is a college classmate of mine that I haven't seen since college, so it's not like we're super close although I think he's a nice guy and consider him a friend... the only way I knew he needed an emergency POC was by a Facebook status asking for help.   People are generally willing to help others, but won't know you need help unless you ask!  If you don't know someone, maybe one of your friends does.  If that doesn't work, ask your sponsor to find one for you.  If that doesn't work, then ask the senior enlisted advisor, command master chief, or top, whatever it's called for your service, and ask them for help.  Every unit has a crazy dog or cat person.  They'll know who it is.  Sometimes it's someone who loves animals but can't commit to having a pet full time.

And in case you were wondering, my dogs seem to enjoy going to the MWR Kennel.  For what it's worth, the people there never seem to remember who I am, but they remember my dogs.

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