In the event of a disaster or crisis, our foremost priority is to save ourselves and our families. And if you’ve owned pets you’d know they are family too.
While a majority of people choose the easy option of letting their pets go, there are others who refuse to leave them, no matter what. In fact, there have been instances when humans grabbed their pets first before everything else in the toughest times.
1. When migrant workers in India chose to walk hundreds of miles back home, with their pets, amid the coronavirus lockdown.
2. When people of Beirut did not forget about their pets after the massive blasts and went searching for them in the wreckage.
3. When a Kerala woman refused to leave her house unless her dogs, all strays or abandoned pets, were rescued too, during the 2018 floods.
Eventually, an animal rescue group had to be called in to relocate her and her family of 25 pet and stray dogs.
4. When a woman from Chennai chose to eat only once a day so that she could save enough for her 13 dogs amid the coronavirus lockdown in India.
5. When Texans refused to leave their pets behind in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
This woman carried her dog, Simba, on her shoulders as she was forced to evacuate her house in Houston.
And this man who carried his dog Bruce through flood waters.
6. When a hardware store owner in Massachusetts rescued his pet birds, after his building caught fire.
7. When the Japanese people chose to sleep in their cars with their pets in the aftermath of the 2016 earthquake as pets weren’t allowed into the evacuation centres.
8. When people of Australia took shelter in a car parking along with their pets amid the raging bushfires.
These instances prove that our bond with animals goes far deeper than just companionship and restore our faith in humanity.