Bilingual Pet Emergency Care Instructions: What Three Agencies Actually Publish in Spanish, and Why the Two Columns Do Not Match

Ready.gov, the American Red Cross and the ASPCA each publish official pet-emergency pages in Spanish. Those pages are not translations of their English versions, and they differ on points a caregiver may act on, including whether a Red Cross shelter takes pets. If your pet sitter reads Spanish, give them the agency’s own Spanish page, or the handoff sheet below, which quotes official Spanish word for word and translates nothing.

The scenario is ordinary. You are leaving, or already gone, and the person who will open the door and feed the animal is a neighbor, a building superintendent, a relative or a shelter volunteer who reads Spanish and not much English. You want to hand them a page.

The obvious page is two columns, English on the left and Spanish on the right, one row per instruction. This page does not do that. Ready.gov publishes a pet page in English and one in Spanish, both marked Last Updated: 03/20/2026, plus an English brochure and a Spanish brochure under a 2023-06 path. They do not carry the same instructions. Put two of them in adjacent columns and the layout tells the reader the left cell and the right cell say the same thing, which on these documents is false. The Red Cross and the ASPCA diverge in their own ways.

Why This Page Translates Nothing

This site translates nothing. Every Spanish sentence below is a quotation from a named Spanish-language page, as of August 15, 2026. There is no machine translation here and no paraphrase of a care instruction in Spanish. The only Spanish we composed is a provenance note and three field labels on the sheet, which carry no care instruction.

Two reasons. A quotation can be checked against its source character by character, and a translation cannot. And the agencies’ own versions are not translations of each other, so producing one would put words in an agency’s mouth that it did not say in that language. Where a caregiver instruction has no Spanish publication, this page says so and leaves the gap visible.

Ready.gov: Four Documents, Four Answers on First Aid

The first-aid item shows the gap most clearly, and it is one a caregiver is likely to act on.

• English web page: under First aid kit, it says “Talk to your veterinarian about what is most appropriate for your pet’s emergency medical needs.” That is a referral and it names no contents.
• English PDF: its first-aid item says only to include items appropriate for your pet’s emergency medical needs. No veterinarian, no referral, still no contents.
• Spanish web page: the only one of the four with a contents list. It carries the veterinarian sentence in Spanish, “Hable con su veterinario acerca de qué es lo más adecuado para las necesidades médicas de su mascota en caso de emergencia.”, then adds that most kits include cotton bandage rolls, adhesive tape and scissors, antibiotic ointment, a flea and tick prevention system, latex gloves, isopropyl alcohol and saline.
• Spanish PDF: no first-aid item at all. The words primeros and auxilios do not appear anywhere in it.

One agency, one subject, four answers, and two of the four pages carry the same update date. Whatever a kit contains, the veterinarian referral is the part to carry: ask your vet what your own pet needs.

Where the Spanish and English Ready.gov Pages Differ

Each point below compares what the two Ready.gov versions publish, as of August 15, 2026.

Identification. The English item heading lists a collar with ID tag and a harness or leash. The Spanish heading adds a rabies vaccination tag, which the English does not. What a rabies tag proves and does not prove is covered in our page on what a pet shelter actually checks at intake. The Spanish page also adds adoption papers to its document item and drops the electronic-copy instruction, while the Spanish PDF keeps it.

Timing for large animals. English: “Evacuate animals earlier, whenever possible.” Spanish: “Evacúe a los animales siempre que sea posible.” The English has a comparative in it. The Spanish sentence has no word for earlier. A household reading only the Spanish is told to evacuate whenever possible; one reading only the English is told to go sooner than it otherwise would.

If large animals cannot be evacuated. The English page tells owners to decide whether to move large animals to a barn or turn them loose outside. The Spanish page says to decide whether to move them to a refugio or release them outdoors. The English names a barn. Refugio is the word both Ready.gov pages use for a public emergency shelter elsewhere. That is our reading of a word, offered as a reason for care, not a claim about what Ready.gov intended.

Alerts. The English page tells owners to pay attention to wireless emergency alerts and links to ready.gov/alerts. The Spanish page names an emergency alert system and links to ready.gov/es/alertas-de-emergencia. The English names one channel and the Spanish names a system.

Bringing animals indoors. The English Ready.gov page and the ASPCA’s English page both say to bring pets indoors at the first sign or warning of a storm or disaster. The Spanish Ready.gov web page’s sentence on the same instruction contains a typo, an pronto where standard Spanish reads tan pronto. The Spanish PDF spells it tan pronto and stops sooner, without the words about disaster. Both PDFs close with an English line reading “waring” for “warning”. This page reproduces such errors unaltered, because correcting text inside quotation marks would alter the source. A copy you are handed with these tidied up is not the agency’s text.

A stray letter and a link. The Spanish evacuation page begins one bullet, about finding a place to stay that accepts pets, with a stray capital O. Under it, the word mascotas links to the same English-language address as the English page (ready.gov/animals). Ready.gov marks English-language destinations elsewhere with the phrase (enlace en inglés), and this one is not marked, so a Spanish reader who follows the only link in that sentence lands on an English page. The Spanish PDF’s title is singular, “Prepare a sus mascota para los desastres”, and it carries an untranslated fragment, “Estados Unidos.States.”

Check the Language by Reading the Page

A Spanish web address does not guarantee a Spanish document. As of August 15, 2026, humaneworld.org/es/resources/pet-disaster-preparedness redirected to an English page, and the humaneworld.org/es root carried a Spanish language tag over English content. The ASPCA’s Spanish disaster page, which is entirely in Spanish, is served with an English language tag. A 200 status, a Spanish path and a language tag together still do not tell you what language a document is in.

An agency can mislink its own card too. The Spanish Ready.gov pet page lists a related file, marked as an English-language PDF, that is byte-identical to the English pet brochure already listed beside it. On the English page, the same label points to a video. Follow the label and you may conclude the document is missing; open the file and you find one you already have.

The Red Cross: Spanish and English Split on Shelters

The American Red Cross publishes a Spanish pet-disaster page. It is not linked from the Spanish landing page at redcross.org/cruz-roja.html, where the word mascota does not appear; it sits one level down, on the Cómo prepararse page, behind a card headed Mascotas.

Carry the page’s scope with anything you take from it. In both languages the Red Cross says the guide is primarily about dogs and cats. For livestock, horses, birds, reptiles, or small animals such as gerbils and hamsters, it sends the reader to The Humane Society of the United States and Ready.gov. The Spanish marks the Humane Society link as English, with the words “en inglés”. If your animal is not a dog or cat, the sheet below does not cover it.

On whether a Red Cross shelter will take the animal, the Spanish page says:

“La mayoría de los refugios de la Cruz Roja Americana no puede aceptar mascotas debido a inquietudes de salud y seguridad, y otras consideraciones.”

The English page instead says Red Cross shelter workers will do all they can to accommodate household pets, adding that, depending on the situation, pets may need to be housed in a different location with support from animal welfare groups (quoted in full in Block B below). Both pages say service animals are welcome, and the English adds the word always.

Those are different messages about the same organization. The Spanish starts from most cannot; the English starts from workers will do all they can, followed by a however. This describes what each page publishes, not what any Red Cross shelter will do. What your county actually opens is what matters, and our page on whether pet-friendly disaster shelters exist works through the federal statute and the intake rules.

The ASPCA lands somewhere else again. Its English page warns that not all shelters accept pets, so you should decide ahead of time where your pets will go. Its Spanish page narrows that warning to Red Cross shelters. Both then list four routes in the same order: ask your veterinarian for preferred boarding kennels; ask your local animal shelter about emergency shelter or foster care; identify hotels or motels outside your immediate area that accept pets; and ask friends or relatives outside your immediate area to take your pet. Neither list names a county-run or co-located shelter by type. Ready.gov’s English pages add that many public shelters and hotels do not allow pets inside, that most public shelters allow only service animals, and that you should know a safe place to take your pets before an emergency happens.

The ASPCA’s Steps Are Not the Same Steps

As of August 15, 2026, the ASPCA’s English disaster page had four numbered steps: rescue alert sticker, safe haven, designated caregivers, and emergency supplies and traveling kits. Its Spanish page had six: the rescue sticker, the safe haven, the supplies and travel kit, the designated caregivers, evacuation preparation, and climate and geographic considerations.

Steps 3 and 4 are swapped between the two, and the Spanish page carries two sections the English one does not number. A household in which one person works from each page cannot use step numbers to talk to each other. The Spanish page also has typos of its own, which we leave in place: telefóno for teléfono and a doubled “cualquier cualquier” in the sentence about what a pet’s ID tag should say.

The Handoff Sheet

Print this section. It is deliberately not two columns. It is stacked blocks, each headed with the document it came from, plus a fill-in area and a provenance note. Nothing in one block is aligned with anything in another, because they are not the same instructions.

What this sheet is not. It is not a household planner or a medical record. Our printable pet emergency plan, pet emergency wallet card and pet sitter emergency instructions are fill-in tools, and as of August 15, 2026 none of the three published any Spanish. This sheet covers the case they do not: the caregiver reads Spanish, and you want the instruction in front of them to be an agency’s words rather than yours or ours.

One more step before you print it. If you leave keys with a temporary caregiver, no document cited here says what handing over keys does or does not authorize that person to do. A printed sheet in the right language is not permission to enter, and it is not authority to approve veterinary treatment. Settle that separately, in writing: our neighbor pet emergency access agreement is the fill-in record for key custody and entry, and what a pet sitter’s authorization actually reaches covers treatment decisions.

Block A. Official Spanish text, quoted verbatim

Each quotation is followed by the document it came from. Nothing in this block was written by this site.

What to write down for whoever takes the animal. From the American Red Cross Spanish pet page, listed as an item the emergency kit should include:

“Información sobre cronogramas de alimentación, condiciones médicas, problemas de comportamiento, y el nombre y número de su veterinario” “en caso de que tenga que dejar a sus mascotas en cuidados temporales.”

On housing animals together. Same page: “Si bien sus animales quizás estén más cómodos juntos, esté preparado a alojarlos por separado.”

On behavior after the event, hazard and instruction together because the source publishes them together. Same page: “El comportamiento de su mascota puede cambiar drásticamente después de un desastre; podría tornarse agresiva o defensiva.” “Preste atención a su bienestar y protéjala contra peligros para garantizar la seguridad de otras personas y animales.”

On poisoning, the one emergency in this set with a Spanish symptom instruction. From the ASPCA’s Spanish poisoning page (APCC is the ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center): “Por favor tome en cuenta: Si el animal tiene ataques, está perdiendo la conciencia, está inconsciente o tiene dificultades para respirar,” “llame con anticipación y lleve a su mascota de inmediato a su veterinario local o clínica veterinaria de emergencia.” “Si es necesario, se puede llamar a la APCC.”

On not leaving the animal, with the sentence that follows it in the source. From the ASPCA’s Spanish disaster page: “Recuerde, si no es seguro para usted, no es seguro para sus mascotas.” “Puede permanecer atrapadas o escapar y ser expuestas a numerosos peligros letales.”

On bringing the animal in. Same ASPCA page: “Siempre lleve a las mascotas adentro en la primera señal o advertencia de una tormenta o desastre.”

On acting before symptoms appear. Same page: “Si observa que su mascota consume material que sospecha puede ser tóxico, no dude en buscar ayuda de emergencia, incluso si no nota ningún efecto adverso.” “Algunas veces, aunque esté envenenado, un animal puede aparentar estar normal por varias horas o por días después del incidente.”

On the poison-control line. The same page publishes “(888) 426-4435”, followed immediately by “Hay un cobro de consulta por este servicio.” Print the fee sentence with the number, as the ASPCA does. That page also lists kit items, and its closing sentence tells readers to consult a veterinarian or the APCC on how and when to use any emergency relief item. This sheet does not reproduce the item list, because an item lifted away from that closing sentence becomes an instruction the ASPCA did not give.

Block B. Official English text, quoted verbatim

Not aligned with Block A, and not a translation of it. From the American Red Cross English pet page, the item Block A opens with: “Information on feeding schedules, medical conditions, behavior problems, and the name and number of your veterinarian in case you have to foster or board your pets.” Its wording ends “foster or board”, which is not the same phrase as the Spanish “dejar a sus mascotas en cuidados temporales”, so do not treat one as a rendering of the other. From the ASPCA English disaster page: “Remember, if it isn’t safe for you, it isn’t safe for your pets. They may become trapped or escape and be exposed to numerous life-threatening hazards.” And: “Always bring pets indoors at the first sign or warning of a storm or disaster.”

Block C. The lines you fill in

The Red Cross’s Spanish sentence at the top of Block A names four things and is the only Spanish on the sheet that stands above a blank line. The four lines below follow the order of that sentence: line 1 is the feeding schedule, line 2 the medical conditions, line 3 the behavior problems and line 4 the veterinarian’s name and number. That ordering and numbering are this site’s own choice, not something the Red Cross published. The lines carry no printed label, because a label would be this site composing a care instruction.

1. ________________________________________
2. ________________________________________
3. ________________________________________
4. ________________________________________

Three further lines follow. All three labels are this site’s own wording and carry no care instruction. The owner’s phone line is our addition, not anything an agency put on a sheet: a caregiver holding a veterinarian’s number and a poison-control number still cannot reach the person who owns the animal unless that number is written down too.

Nombre del animal / Pet name: ________________________

Teléfono del dueño / Owner’s phone: ________________________

Fecha / Date: ________________________

Block D. Provenance note. Print this with the sheet.

In English. Everything in Blocks A and B is a verbatim quotation from the document named beside it, as of August 15, 2026. Everything else on this sheet, including this note, the block headings, the three field labels and the numbering of the four lines, is EmergencyPetPrep.com’s own wording and is not any agency’s text. The Spanish and English blocks are not translations of one another and diverge on several points, listed on the page this sheet came from.

En español. Texto propio de este sitio, no de ninguna agencia. Los bloques A y B son citas textuales de los documentos indicados junto a cada cita, obtenidos el 15 de agosto de 2026. Todo lo demás en esta hoja, incluido este aviso, los títulos de los bloques, las tres etiquetas de campo y la numeración de las cuatro líneas, es texto propio de EmergencyPetPrep.com y no es texto de ninguna agencia. El bloque en español y el bloque en inglés no son traducciones uno del otro.

What the Spanish Pages Cover, and What They Do Not

Across the Spanish documents cited on this page, the pet-disaster material is preparedness and evacuation planning, with one exception: poisoning, where the ASPCA publishes symptom-level triage in Spanish. The Red Cross’s and the ASPCA’s Spanish pages both list first-aid supplies, and the ASPCA’s Spanish page has a warm-weather tip for birds. None of the cited Spanish documents says what to do for an animal that is bleeding, overheating, drowning or smoke-exposed. Some of them do give such instructions for people. Ready.gov’s Spanish flood page tells a person “¡Dé la vuelta, no se ahogue!”, its disability page tells a person who is overheating to cool down, and its wildfire page tells a person cleaning up to wear long sleeves, long trousers, work gloves and thick-soled footwear. Each is written for the human reader, and applying one to an animal would be inventing a protocol. For a hurt or overheated animal, call your veterinarian or an emergency clinic.

Ready.gov’s Spanish hazard pages carry short pet lines of their own. The hurricane, wildfire, flood and tornado pages each have a pet sentence in the body. The earthquake page has none in its body, so take pet planning from the pet page rather than expecting the hazard page to repeat it.

This paragraph is this page’s own reasoning, not a published protocol. What belongs on a sheet for a Spanish-reading caregiver is phone numbers rather than procedures. The sources supply two: your veterinarian’s, which the Red Cross’s sentence tells you to record, and the ASPCA poison-control line with its consultation-fee sentence attached, so nobody is surprised by a charge in the middle of an emergency. The third number line, your own phone, is ours. Our page on what a pet sitter’s authorization actually reaches when an evacuation order lands covers who may make the treatment decision when you cannot be reached, and our pet emergency binder covers assembling the per-animal record those numbers sit on.

What This Page Does Not Cover

This page does not cover what FEMA, the CDC or the FCC publish in either language, or whether any alert reaches a Spanish speaker in Spanish. Humane World for Animals’ two /es/ addresses served English, so there is nothing of theirs in Spanish to quote here. That does not mean they publish nothing in Spanish.

Ready.gov’s Spanish and English shelter pages both give a text-message route for finding open shelters, using a five-digit short code. This page does not reproduce the code. Read it on Ready.gov and confirm it before you rely on it.

How to Check Which Languages Exist

Ready.gov’s Spanish page about languages, marked Last Updated: 06/16/2025, tells readers to check the language bar under the page title to see which translations exist for a page.

As of August 15, 2026, the bar on the Spanish pet page listed eleven entries: Spanish, Arabic, English, French, Haitian Creole, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Simplified Chinese. Do not guess the address. The Spanish pet page sits at a translated slug, /es/cuidado-de-los-animales, while the other ten languages sit at /XX/pets, and /es/pets returns 404. A guessed path failing is not evidence that a page does not exist. The bar also differs by page: the Spanish disability page offered only English and Spanish, so eleven entries on one page is not eleven across the site.

Where to Go Next

This page is the language spoke of our pet emergency playbooks hub.

The person on the other end of the handoff. You are the pet sitter when the evacuation order comes is written for them rather than for you. If the arrangement is with a neighbor rather than a paid sitter, the neighbor pet emergency access agreement records key custody and entry. As of August 15, 2026 it, like the three tools listed above, was English-only.

The destination question the Spanish pages disagree about. Do pet-friendly disaster shelters exist settles what the federal statute does and does not require, and what a pet shelter actually checks at intake covers the documents at the door. If the destination is a hotel, hotel pet policy during an evacuation is the booking-eligibility half.

Then do the one thing that costs nothing this week. Open ready.gov/es/cuidado-de-los-animales and the Red Cross Spanish pet page, print them, and put them in the drawer with the leash. A printed agency page in the right language beats a page you have to find on a phone with no signal.