You welcomed your pet into your family. You love them, and research shows they’re bonded to you, too. And while you turn to your pet for companionship and comfort – and maybe even protection – they look to you for everything. You always knew that was the deal, but chances are, assembling your pet’s life care documents wasn’t top of mind when you brought them home.
Nevertheless, pet care involves paperwork. For example, where in your home do you currently keep info like their microchip ID number, vaccination history, medication list, pet insurance information, and more? Consider how quickly you can get your hands on any of the information you may need, such as:
- Identification and adoption information (name, age, date, photo)
- Age, breed (including certifications, if applicable), and general description
- Vaccination history
- Medical History including vaccination records, allergies, special caretaking needs
- Contact information for your vet, emergency contacts, pet sitters, and pet walkers
- Insurance information
- Registration information, including microchip and local municipal registration ID
- Certifications including, service animals, therapy animals, and show animals
Having these details readily available for all the times you need to reference them, and especially in case someone suddenly needs to take care of your pet – think a pet sitter or dog walker – can save time and a lot of unnecessary hassle.
A cloud-based vault is an easy way to organize and access documents with those details.
Read on for three times when a cloud-based digital vault can make a pet owner’s life easier.
1. When you need to prove pet registration or ownership
Pets love being outside, and occasionally they wander off when they’re not supposed to. That’s why it’s helpful to have their adoption paperwork and registration information at the ready. If a good samaritan finds your pet after they lose you, proof of ownership documentation can help you bring your pet home safely. With a cloud-based vault, proving ownership is as easy as taking out your phone.
Similarly, if you live in an apartment or co-op, the management may require you to submit your pet’s adoption paperwork and registration information. This is meant to help you, your pet, and the other people in the building. If your pet gets out of your apartment but is found before they leave the property, you want to make sure they’re registered as a resident’s pet and not sent to a rescue facility.
With a cloud-based digital vault, you can easily access your pet paperwork and provide it to whomever you need to, whenever you need to. This can make the difference between your pet returning to you sooner or having to retrieve it from a shelter later.
When you travel with your pet, you may need records such as a pet passport. And if they’re a support animal, you’ll likely be asked to provide certification of their status.
If these records today are somewhere in a stack of paper at your home, how organized are they to bring along or likely they get misplaced? A cloud-based vault keeps this paperwork safely digitized, collected in one place, and easy to access without worrying about digging through your luggage.
Whether you need to access your pet’s information regularly or only in case of emergencies (like microchip details), a cloud-based vault helps keep you prepared.
2. When you need quick access to veterinary records
Pet owners need to provide vet records in all sorts of cases: at the groomer, trainer, and daycare, to name a few. With quick, remote access to your pet’s health information, you can protect yourself and your pet – and make life easier, too.
If you’re traveling with your pet, your destination may have specific health requirements that animals must meet in order to enter.
And if your pet gets sick while you’re traveling without them, your pet sitter may need to answer questions about their health. An emergency could demand immediate medical attention – even if it’s with a new vet. In that case, your pet sitter will need easy access to existing vet records about medications, treatments, or health history.
In a cloud-based digital vault, you can safely and securely store a medical summary including your pet’s prescriptions and their overall medical history as well as vaccine records. What’s more: you can let others access this information when they need it. With Prisidio, you can invite a pet sitter or dog walker into your vault so they can quickly pull up key paperwork from their phone.
And when your cloud-based vault is accessible with an app, no one needs to remember to bring physical paperwork or whether the vet is available when you need to request it. This can save time – a convenience that can also save your pet’s life in an emergency.
3. When you’re planning for the unexpected
Four out of five pets will have an unexpected emergency in their lifetime. If you have pet insurance, you can plan for these situations – whether they become sick, get injured, or swallow a toy. This will make dealing with your pet’s life events less stressful.
And if you’re temporarily unable to care for your pet (e.g., due to your own medical, family, or travel emergency), who will? Prisidio makes it easy to identify the right people, like a close friend or pet sitter. Just add them to the “People” section of your vault. Then, grant them access to key pet paperwork so they have what they need to keep your pet safe.
It’s also important to prepare for a more permanent transfer of care. Without a clear outline of your wishes, your pet may end up at the mercy of the courts, which may mean they’re sent to a shelter, rather than being cared for by someone you trust.
That’s because pets are legally categorized as property. And though your pet is more than property to you, they need to be specifically accounted for in end-of-life plans, including wills and trusts or a durable power of attorney.
To avoid having the court system decide what happens to your pet, you can outline your wishes, detail who will execute them, and provide access to the items your executors need. With Prisidio’s cloud-based vault, you can designate access to whomever will carry out your wishes, whether at a time of your choosing or after a triggering event.
