The Post-Disaster Exposure Log: What Your Animal Touched, When, and for How Long

The clinic is a folding table in a fire station, or it is your own practice with a generator running and nine people ahead of you, or it is a strange hospital two counties inland whose staff have never met your animal. Somebody with a clipboard asks what happened. And the honest answer that comes out of your mouth is a shape rather than a fact: he was in the water for a while, sometime yesterday, I think in the afternoon, it was that brown water that came up the street, I hosed him off after.

That answer is not wrong. It is just not usable. The person holding the clipboard cannot do anything with “a while” and “that brown water”, and by the time somebody asks you again, in a quieter room, the timeline has already begun to smooth itself out in your memory into something tidier and less accurate than what happened.

This page is one sheet of paper that fixes that, and nothing else. You fill it in, you hand it across the counter, and the person who reads it knows what your animal touched, by what route, when it started, when it stopped, what the water was, what you had already done to the animal before you arrived, and what you do not know. It is a record. It is not a triage tool, it does not interpret anything, and it will not tell you whether to go.

Four pages on this site already tell readers to arrive at a veterinary practice with an exposure history. The dam failure and flash flood page says to be specific about the exposure on the call. The state-by-state algal bloom page says to name the water body, say whether there was visible scum, and say when. The floodwater washing page quotes the veterinary consensus literature on exposure history. The co-located shelter page asks readers to write their shelter dates down so their own veterinarian has an exposure history to work from. Four pages told you to produce the thing. None of them handed you the sheet. This is the sheet.

This Sheet Records. It Does Not Decide.

That rule is not new here and it is not being discovered on this page. It is the governing doctrine of the pet medication log for an evacuation, stated there in five words as This Log Records. It Does Not Decide., and this sheet adopts it by name so that a household holding both printables is holding two documents that agree with each other about what a printable is for.

What that means in practice, here:

There is no cell on this sheet that resolves to serious or not serious. There is no severity scale, no colour coding, no scoring, no threshold and no rule beginning with the words “call now if”. There is no printed list of symptoms to tick. There is nothing on it that tells you whether the exposure warrants a visit, because that question belongs to a veterinarian who can examine the animal, or to one of two telephone services that make exactly that call for a living, and it does not belong to a web page that has never met your dog.

This site has no credentialed veterinary reviewer. That is the honest reason, and it is the one that stays true no matter who is reading. It is not that an owner cannot be trusted with information. It is that every clinical judgment on this page would be a judgment nobody qualified made, printed in a format that looks official, and read by somebody under pressure at the exact moment they are least able to notice the difference.

So there is a mechanical test that every field on this sheet had to pass before it earned a line, and it is worth stating up front because it is the thing that keeps the sheet honest as it gets longer:

Every cell must be answerable by an owner, from memory or from something they saw. No cell may be answerable only by a judgment.

“How long was the dog in the water” passes. “Was the exposure severe” fails. “What colour was the water” passes. “Was the water dangerous” fails. “What did you already put on the animal” passes. “Did you decontaminate the animal adequately” fails. Every field below was written against that test. The things that failed it are named rather than quietly dropped: a severity rating, a symptom checklist, a score, colour coding, a threshold, and any cell resolving to whether the exposure was bad. The section on why there are no tick boxes explains the first of those at length, and the printable ends by listing all six as absent.

What the Sources Actually Publish

There is a persistent belief that no veterinary authority writes down what a clinician wants to know after an exposure, and that anything resembling an exposure form must therefore be invented. That belief is false, and the evidence is worth walking through source by source, because knowing which parts are published and which parts are not is the difference between a sheet you can defend and a sheet that merely looks official.

Merck publishes the field set, and it is six items long

The Merck Veterinary Manual, Professional Version, carries an article titled Diagnosis of Toxicosis in Animals, authored by Renee D. Schmid, DVM, DABT, DABVT, of Pet Poison Helpline and peer reviewed by Ahna Brutlag, DVM, DABT, DABVT. The page states Full Review: Jun 2024 and its structured metadata carries a dateModified of 2024-06-04. It was retrieved by curl with a browser user agent, HTTP 200, on August 20, 2026.

The sentence that sets up the list reads: “A complete history is necessary to develop a plan for further investigation and to formulate differential diagnoses.” Then it introduces the list itself: “Pertinent information to consider when assessing an exposure or diagnostic laboratory submissions includes the following:”

The article then splits into two lists, one for production animals and one for companion animals. The companion-animal list, reproduced here in full and in the order Merck prints it, is six items:

• “specific substance, strength, form, and amount of the toxic agent”
• “route of exposure”
• “species and breed of the animal”
• “amount of time since the exposure”
• “current medical concerns and medications”
• “current clinical signs”

Read those six headings and you have the spine of the sheet below. Substance, route, animal, time, medications, signs.

Two scope facts travel with that list and both matter. First, it is the Professional Version, written for veterinarians rather than for owners, and its purpose is to tell a clinician what to gather rather than to tell you what to write. Second, it is about toxicosis specifically, not about every post-disaster exposure. A dog that swam through floodwater has a possible infectious exposure, a possible chemical exposure, a possible physical injury and a possible ingestion, and Merck’s list was written about one of those four. This page is borrowing its headings, not its scope, and the borrowing is stated rather than hidden.

The same article carries a caution that belongs on any page about owner-written histories, and it is not flattering to any of us:

“Histories from animal owners can stress obvious factors and omit subtle, important details.”

That sentence is the argument for the sheet, not against it. It is describing what happens when a history is spoken from memory under pressure. A written form filled in field by field is the ordinary remedy for exactly that failure, which is why it is worth doing badly on paper rather than doing well in your head.

Merck’s own key point closes it: “Obtaining a thorough history is imperative for appropriate assessment and diagnosis of toxicosis.”

Merck also publishes what changes the answer, which is where the timing fields come from

A companion article in the same section, Factors Affecting the Activity of Toxic Agents in Animals, states on its face Full Review: Jun 2024 and Last updated: Feb 2026, with a dateModified of 2026-02-11. Retrieved the same way and the same day.

Under Exposure-Related Factors it runs a bulleted list, and its first five bullets, reproduced here in Merck’s order and run together, read almost like a field list:

“Dose is the primary concern; however, the exact amount of a toxic agent that an animal has been exposed to is seldom known. Duration and frequency of exposure are important. Route of exposure affects absorption, translocation, and sometimes metabolic pathways. Periods of illness, stress, or food intake can be a factor. The presence of food in the stomach can increase the absorption of some toxic agents, altering the amount of gastric acid present.”

Four things fall out of those five bullets and all four are on the sheet. Merck’s fifth bullet does not stop where this quotation does: it continues with a worked example about phosphide rodenticides, which is a clinician’s illustration and is not reproduced here.

The seldom-known sentence is the licence to write unknown. Merck is describing the normal case, not an unusual failure. If the exact amount is seldom known even to the people writing the reference text, then a household sheet that demands a number is a sheet that will be filled in with an invention.

Duration and frequency are their own fields, which is why the sheet asks when it started and when it stopped rather than only asking what happened.

Route is its own field, separate from substance, because Merck says route changes absorption and translocation. Walked through it and drank it are not the same exposure to the same thing.

When the animal last ate is a field, which is the field nobody expects and which comes straight out of that last sentence. Merck’s own key point on the same page puts it as a clinical consideration: “The potential impact of changes in gastric acid production should be considered before feeding or withholding food after ingestion of a potentially toxic substance, because toxic effects can be affected by meals.” That is a clinician’s decision about feeding, and this page is not making it, not repeating it as an instruction and not telling you to feed or withhold anything. What it justifies is one line recording when the animal last ate, so the person who does make that decision is not guessing.

The same page also explains why the sheet asks for the animal’s weight and age even though you might assume the clinic will measure them: “Age and size of the animal are primary factors in toxicosis.” and “The amount of a toxic agent required to produce pathological changes is generally correlated to body weight; however, greater body weight is often accompanied by a disproportionate increase (per unit of body weight) in toxicity of a compound.” Read the next two sentences of that passage as well, because they are the qualifier: “Body surface area might correlate more closely with the toxic dose. No measurement parameter is consistent for every situation.” The weight field is on this sheet because a real number beats an estimate given at a counter, not because weight settles anything, and it takes ten seconds on a bathroom scale in a calm week.

And its closing key point is the sentence that argues for the whole exercise: “When toxic concerns are being evaluated, factors surrounding the exposure, not simply the toxic agent, should be considered.”

The AVMA says the same thing from the owner’s side of the counter

The American Veterinary Medical Association’s owner-facing page on leptospirosis in dogs is the clearest published statement that the history is the owner’s to supply. A retrieval note first, because it matters for anyone checking this page’s work: the page was read in a rendered browser session on August 20, 2026, and every quotation below was then confirmed byte for byte against a full curl response for the same address the same day. If a request of your own comes back nearly empty, repeat it rather than treating it as evidence that a sentence is absent.

What it states:

“Because leptospirosis can look like other diseases, your veterinarian will need your help to make a diagnosis. This includes sharing information about your dog’s lifestyle and travel history, which can help highlight possible exposure to Leptospira bacteria.”

Your veterinarian will need your help. That is a national veterinary association, writing to owners, saying the history is a thing you bring rather than a thing the clinic derives.

Further down, on the diagnosis side:

“Leptospirosis may be suspected based on the exposure history and signs shown by the dog, but many of these signs can also be seen with other diseases.”

Both halves of that sentence are reproduced here on purpose. An exposure history feeds a suspicion. It does not settle anything, and neither does its absence.

The ACVIM sentence, quoted whole, is the guardrail for this entire page

The updated ACVIM consensus statement on leptospirosis in dogs, by Sykes and colleagues in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine in 2023, is the current consensus document, and its full text was read via PubMed Central by curl, HTTP 200, on August 20, 2026. In section 3.1.2, headed Specific laboratory criteria, immediately after the instruction that diagnostic testing should be performed in dogs meeting the clinical criteria, it states:

“Although a history of potential exposure (predation, exposure to other animal species or water sources) should increase suspicion for leptospirosis, all dogs should be considered at risk, regardless of signalment, geographic region, and lifestyle.”

That sentence is quoted whole here and it must be. Cut it after “leptospirosis” and it becomes a sentence that appears to make an exposure history into a filter: exposure means suspicion, therefore no exposure means no suspicion. The second clause says the opposite. All dogs, regardless of signalment, geographic region and lifestyle.

Which sets the ceiling on what this sheet can be. A completed sheet with every line filled in adds information. A sheet with half the lines reading unknown still adds information. A sheet with nothing alarming on it rules out nothing at all, and if you find yourself reading your own completed sheet and feeling reassured by it, that is the moment to put it down and make the phone call it was written to support.

The same live page on this site that already quotes that sentence, our guide to washing floodwater off a dog, quotes it the same way, whole, and the two pages should be read as agreeing.

Penn Vet publishes the one thing to carry rather than describe

The University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s Ryan Veterinary Hospital publishes a walkthrough of an emergency visit at its own emergency service. Read in a rendered browser session on August 20, 2026, after curl returned HTTP 403 on that attempt.

Its history paragraph opens: “History is extremely important for the veterinary team to be able to correctly diagnose and treat patients properly.” The rest of that paragraph, and the general intake history it describes, is already published on this site in the Top Sheet section of the pet emergency binder, which is where it belongs, and it is not re-derived here.

What is new territory for this page is a single line in Penn’s client checklist, and it is the most concrete instruction in the whole source set:

“If your pet has ingested a toxin, it is VERY important that you bring the packaging so that we can read the chemical name from the label.”

The capitalised VERY is Penn’s, reproduced rather than tidied.

That instruction is worth generalising carefully, and the generalisation is this site’s own rather than Penn’s. Penn is talking about ingested toxins and product packaging. After a disaster the equivalent objects are broader: a photograph of the water, the label off the drum in the yard, a picture of the storm drain the dog drank from, the empty container the neighbour’s generator fuel came out of, the placard on the derailed car if you can read it from a safe distance. A photograph on a phone is not the same evidentiary object as a bottle in a bag, and where you can bring the physical thing, Penn’s instruction says bring it. Where you cannot, photograph it, and write on the sheet where the thing still is.

The ASPCA publishes what a phone intake actually asks for

The ASPCA’s own article What to Expect When Calling ASPCA Poison Control, dated April 1, 2020 and read in a rendered browser session on August 20, 2026, walks through the call in two steps, and both steps are field lists in disguise.

Step one, about the animal: “You’ll be asked a series of questions about your pet including their breed, age, weight and health history.” The ASPCA gives its reason in the next sentence, which is that this can be important information because some breeds are prone to certain health conditions that might change its recommendations. The worked example it then gives is about a recommendation its experts make or withhold during a live call, and this page publishes no at-home treatment of any kind, so the example is described rather than reproduced.

Step two, about the substance: “Having as much information on what your pet was exposed to as possible is incredibly helpful. You will be asked questions about the product package, the strength of ingredients and the amount your pet was exposed to; so having the product close at hand is always a plus.”

Then a prompt that becomes one of the sheet’s more useful lines: “If you have tried any home treatments, you should also mention this to your poison control caseworker.”

And, in its closing paragraph, the ASPCA’s own route taxonomy, which is the cleanest published version of the sheet’s route field: if your pet was exposed to something it should not have been, “whether they ate it, it got on their skin, they inhaled it, or something got into their eyes”, you can call your veterinarian or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at (888) 426-4435.

The call ends with two numbers worth a field of their own: “Once you’ve been given all of the information you need, you’ll receive a case number and a call-back number.” And on what those numbers are for: “If you need to take your pet to the clinic, just give the clinic the case number and the call back number, have them call ASPCA Poison Control and they can take it from there!”

NASAAEP publishes the categories of thing your animal may have been in

One more, and it is the source that turns the sheet’s exposure list from guesswork into something with a citation behind it. The 2023 NASAAEP Disaster Veterinary Medical Response best practices, in its section on triage after a natural disaster, states:

“Following natural disasters, animals may be exposed to a variety of household or agricultural chemicals, petroleum products, heavy metals, and/or harmful pathogens from disrupted manure pits or septic tanks. Situations involving agricultural or industrial accidents may result in exposure to chemical spills, radiological materials, or gas leaks.”

That is a national disaster veterinary document naming the categories, and those categories are what the sheet’s contact field prompts for rather than leaving you staring at a blank line. Read the sentence NASAAEP puts immediately after it, because it fixes the scope: “First responders, animal care personnel, and veterinary professionals must be aware of contamination concerns.” That paragraph is addressed to responders and clinicians, not to owners, and this page is borrowing its list of categories rather than any duty it assigns.

The AVMA’s post-disaster recovery list names a shorter, more domestic version of the same thing, in an instruction addressed to you: “Survey the area inside and outside your home to identify sharp objects, dangerous materials, dangerous wildlife, contaminated water, downed power lines, or other hazards.”

Neither of those lists is a hazard explainer and this page will not turn them into one. Leptospirosis, cyanotoxins, ash, antifreeze, mold and floodwater contamination each have a dedicated page on this site already, and re-explaining any of them here would produce a thin second copy of a better page. The sheet names categories so you can write in the box. The hazard pages explain what the categories mean.

What Nobody Publishes, and Exactly How That Was Checked

Now the other half of the honest answer, and this is the half that had to be established by opening documents rather than by assuming.

No published authority issues a post-disaster exposure form for an owner to fill in. That claim is narrow on purpose. It is not a claim that nobody publishes what a clinician wants, which would be false and is refuted four times over in the section above. It is a claim about one specific artifact: an owner-completed exposure record for the aftermath of a disaster. Here is how it was tested.

The flagship national disaster veterinary form has no exposure field at all

NASAAEP’s 2023 Disaster Veterinary Medical Response, part of the Current Best Practices in Animal Emergency Management series produced under a USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service cooperative agreement with the University of Kentucky, in collaboration with NASAAEP, the National Animal Rescue and Sheltering Coalition and the AVMA, is the closest thing to a national standard in this space. Its Appendix J carries a Field Assessment and Triage Form, subtitled Animal Encountered in Hazardous Zone and Sheltered-in Place.

The PDF was downloaded on August 20, 2026, HTTP 200, 2,296,683 bytes, and extracted in both pdftotext -layout and pdftotext -raw, then read in both. The two extractions place the appendix running label on opposite sides of the form heading, which is why no page number is cited for it anywhere on this page.

What the form asks for: date, time, address or geolocation, an assigned animal identification number, permanent identification including tag, microchip, brand and tattoo, species, breed, colour, markings, sex, and the number of animals on the premise. Then, under ASSESSMENT: mentation, attitude, ambulatory, reluctant to move, recumbent, painful, wounds, swellings, bleeding, lameness, body condition score, interest or ability to drink water and eat, respiration rate, respiration effort, nasal discharge, and a comments line. Then, if possible, heart rate, pulse quality, capillary refill time and estimated dehydration. Then a recommendation, care provided and treatment provided.

Every one of those is an observation a clinician makes by looking at the animal. There is no field for what the animal contacted. No field for when the exposure happened, as opposed to when the responder arrived. No field for how long. No field for what water it was. The form is complete and it is competent and it is answering a different question: what condition is this animal in right now.

The same document does contain one hook pointing at owner-supplied information, in its Intake Process list: “Review any information that may have been provided by the owner or finder”. The responder is told to read what the owner brought. The document never says what that information should contain.

One more thing in the same document has to be said out loud, because leaving it out would let this page’s negative finding read as broader than it is. NASAAEP’s Appendix N is a Tracking Form for Animals Exposed to Infectious Disease, so the document does publish a form with the word exposed in its title. Read, it is a shelter’s contact-tracing grid, completed by staff: rows for the index animal and for the animals exposed to it, with columns for identification number, name, sex, intact status, age, date in shelter, the dates of the first and second Da2pp vaccine, medical diagnosis if any, days from vaccination to exposure, date diagnosed with parvo, notes, vaccination check requested and results, and risk assessment results. Its only column carrying the word exposure measures an interval against a vaccination date. There is no field on it for what an animal contacted in the environment, and it is not filled in by an owner. The infectious side of the exposure question is real and it is not this page’s: it belongs to the co-located shelter page, which builds an owner-written record for exactly that case.

A university veterinary emergency team’s own disaster record does not have one either

The California Veterinary Emergency Team at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine publishes a set of exam and record forms for disaster response, linked from its veterinary response resources page. That page was read in a rendered browser session on August 20, 2026, because the link sits inside a collapsed accordion that plain text extraction drops.

Its Generic Small Animal Record was downloaded the same day, HTTP 200, 92,920 bytes, and its text extracted from the document’s own XML rather than read off a preview. Its blocks are: Vet and Shelter Information; Animal Information; Owner Information; Vitals; Other Considerations, which is two bare yes-or-no checkboxes reading Animal Decontamination Needed and Potentially Infectious, plus an Additional Notes box; Presenting Complaint as free text; a full physical exam grid; pain score and estimated dehydration; a diagnosis and problem list; dated diagnostic and treatment tables; medical progress exams; and owner communications.

The extracted text of that entire form contains the word exposure zero times, the word history zero times, the word contact zero times and the word water zero times. There is a checkbox asking whether the animal needs decontaminating and no field anywhere recording what it is being decontaminated from.

That is a second, independent confirmation, from a different institution, that the disaster veterinary record as it currently exists is a clinician’s instrument and does not contain an owner’s exposure history.

The federal planning document does not require one

FEMA’s Key Planning Factors and Considerations for Response to a Chemical Incident, section 1.4, Veterinary Care, is the most likely place in the federal literature for an animal exposure-documentation requirement to live. Automated retrieval returned HTTP 403 on the attempt we made, so it was opened in a rendered browser session on August 20, 2026 rather than reported as unreachable.

It is a page about capability, addressed to emergency planners. It describes the USDA APHIS National Veterinary Stockpile, points at the APHIS Animal Care program for technical assistance, asks planners a set of questions about medical countermeasure availability and distribution, and refers them onward to the CDC and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Managing Hazardous Materials Incidents volumes, the Strategic National Stockpile, NASAAEP’s Disaster Veterinary Care: Best Practices dated June 2012, and the ASPR collection on disaster veterinary issues. It contains no documentation requirement, no form and no exposure-history instruction of any kind.

That is a negative finding from a rendered read, not an inference from a failed fetch, and it is recorded that way.

The AVMA’s own post-disaster list does not contain the instruction either

The AVMA’s Pets and disasters page carries a section headed Recovering after a disaster, which is worth a warning of its own: the entire list lives inside an accordion, and the page’s default extracted text drops all of it. It was read on August 20, 2026 with that accordion expanded.

Its recovery list, in the AVMA’s own order, tells readers to survey the area for hazards, to examine animals closely and contact a veterinarian immediately on observing injuries or signs of illness, to remember that familiar scents and landmarks may have changed, to release cats, dogs and other small animals indoors only, to release birds and reptiles only if necessary and only when calm and in an enclosed room, to reintroduce food in small servings, to allow uninterrupted rest and sleep, to re-establish a normal schedule, and to comfort each other. It closes with “If you notice any signs of stress, discomfort, or illness in your pets, contact your veterinarian to schedule a checkup.”

There is no exposure-history instruction anywhere in it. The AVMA tells you to look at the animal and to call if you see something. It does not tell you to write down what the animal was in.

And the smoke page does not carry one

The AVMA’s Wildfire smoke and animals page was opened in a rendered session on the same day specifically to test whether an ash or smoke exposure-disclosure instruction exists there, since that is the AVMA page most likely to carry one. The word history does not appear on it. It is a protective-measures page with a signs list and a consult-your-veterinarian instruction, and it publishes nothing about recording an exposure. Recorded as a negative finding.

What the searches returned

Two searches for a published owner-facing exposure log or exposure worksheet for animals returned commercial pet-health-record templates from general template marketplaces and no authority instrument. A search of aaha.org for a history-taking or emergency-intake guideline did not surface one on point; that is a description of what a search returned rather than a survey of AAHA’s guideline library, and AAHA guidelines are cited elsewhere on this site, so a relevant document would be findable if it exists.

None of the above is a claim that no such form exists anywhere on earth. It is a claim about six named documents, opened and read on two named dates, and about what two searches returned. If your state department of agriculture, your county animal services agency or your own veterinary practice publishes an exposure form, use theirs instead of this one. Theirs is the one the clinic receiving it expects to see, and a form somebody’s own clinic designed beats a general one every time.

What This Site Concludes, and Which Part Is Ours

Putting the two halves together produces three sentences, and the third one is the one this page is accountable for.

What the sources say. Named veterinary authorities do publish what exposure history a clinician wants. Merck publishes a six-item companion-animal list. The AVMA tells owners in plain words that their veterinarian will need their help and names an exposure taxonomy that includes standing and slow-moving water. The ACVIM consensus statement names water sources inside an exposure history and immediately qualifies what that history can and cannot do. Penn Vet publishes an instruction to bring the packaging. The ASPCA publishes what its own intake asks for.

What they do not cover. Nobody publishes the owner-completed, post-disaster version. The two disaster veterinary records examined here, NASAAEP’s Appendix J triage form and UC Davis CVET’s Generic Small Animal Record, are clinician-completed and carry no exposure fields between them; the one form in that set with the word exposed in its title, NASAAEP’s Appendix N, is a shelter’s infectious-disease contact-tracing grid rather than a record of what an animal was in. NASAAEP tells the intake clinician to review whatever the owner brought without ever saying what that should be. FEMA’s veterinary care planning factor requires no documentation. The AVMA’s own recovery list omits it.

What this site concludes. The assembly of those published headings into one sheet an owner fills in and hands over is EmergencyPetPrep’s own. It is not a protocol, it is not endorsed by any of the organisations quoted above, and no clinic is obliged to accept it or to act on it. What it is is a piece of paper carrying, in one place, facts that five named authorities each say somebody wants. If a receiving clinician glances at it and asks you three questions off it, it has done its whole job.

Two further joins on this page are also ours and are marked where they appear: the line pointing a wildlife or bite entry at the public-health consequence, and the line pointing a handler entry at the human poison route. Neither of those joins is published anywhere as a single instruction, and both are labelled in the sections below rather than presented as somebody else’s rule.

The Fields, One at a Time

Each field below carries the reason it exists. Where the reason is a source, the source is named. Where the reason is this page’s own, it says so.

1. Which animal this sheet is about

Name, species, breed, age or date of birth, sex, colour and distinguishing markings, current weight with the date it was taken, and the microchip number.

Merck’s list names “species and breed of the animal” as one of the six. The ASPCA’s intake asks for “breed, age, weight and health history”. Merck’s factors article explains why age and weight are on there rather than being polite formalities: “Age and size of the animal are primary factors in toxicosis.”

One sheet per animal, not one per household. That is the same rule the medication log runs on, and for the same reason: a per-animal sheet can travel with the animal when the household splits, and a household grid cannot be split without a photocopier that nobody has.

2. What the animal contacted

Free text, prompted by categories rather than constrained by them. Write what it was in the plainest words you have: floodwater in the street, standing water in the yard, mud, a sewage backup, ash, a spill, a container, a dead animal, an unknown liquid in the garage.

The prompt categories on the sheet come from two published lists. NASAAEP names “household or agricultural chemicals, petroleum products, heavy metals, and/or harmful pathogens from disrupted manure pits or septic tanks” and, for industrial and agricultural accidents, “chemical spills, radiological materials, or gas leaks”. The AVMA’s recovery list names “sharp objects, dangerous materials, dangerous wildlife, contaminated water, downed power lines, or other hazards”.

Merck’s own version of this field is more precise and applies when you actually have the product: “specific substance, strength, form, and amount of the toxic agent”. Strength and form are the two most-skipped parts of that. Form means powder, granule, liquid, gel, pellet, bait block, tablet. If the container is in front of you, copy those off it rather than describing them.

3. Bring it, do not describe it

Penn Vet: “If your pet has ingested a toxin, it is VERY important that you bring the packaging so that we can read the chemical name from the label.” The ASPCA: “having the product close at hand is always a plus.”

So the sheet has a line that is not really a field: what physical object are you bringing, and if you are not bringing one, where is it. A photograph counts as second best. A written description of a label is a distant third, because the thing on the label a clinician wants is usually the active ingredient in small type rather than the product name in large type.

If the object is unsafe to retrieve, and after a disaster it often is, write down where it is and stop. Nothing on this sheet is worth going back into a hazard for. That last sentence is this page’s own, and it is stated because a checklist creates its own pressure to complete every line.

4. The route

Write in every one of these that happened, and more than one can be true at once: walked through it, stood in it, swam in it, was submerged, drank it, ate something, licked it off itself, breathed it, got it in the eyes, rolled in it, was bitten or scratched, or unknown.

Merck names route as its own item, separate from substance: “route of exposure”, and explains why on the companion page: “Route of exposure affects absorption, translocation, and sometimes metabolic pathways.”

The ASPCA’s own owner-facing wording is the same taxonomy in plain language, describing a pet exposed to something it should not have been “whether they ate it, it got on their skin, they inhaled it, or something got into their eyes”.

This is the one field on the sheet that comes with a supplied vocabulary, and it is worth naming why that is safe here and would not be safe two fields further down. The route words describe something you saw happen. A symptom list would describe something you are being asked to assess. A route you do not write down means you did not see it; a symptom you do not tick would mean the animal does not have it, which is a clinical claim you are not in a position to make and this page is not in a position to invite. That distinction is why one of those exists on this sheet and the other does not, and it is also why the route words are written in rather than ticked: a printed grid of empty boxes reads as a test whatever the boxes are about.

5. The clock

When it started. When it stopped. How long that was. And, separately, how long ago that was relative to when you are writing.

Merck’s list asks for “amount of time since the exposure”. Its factors article states “Duration and frequency of exposure are important.” Frequency is the third clock field, and it is the one people forget: a dog that went into the water four times over two days is a different history from a dog that went in once.

Where you did not see the whole thing, write two bounds rather than one number. Last seen dry at about six, found soaked at about nine, so somewhere between a few minutes and three hours. That is honest and it is more useful than a confident middle value you made up, which is exactly the failure Merck’s own line about owner histories is describing.

Write clock times, not “this morning”. Two people in two vehicles do not share a definition of morning, and a form that has to be reconciled with a neighbour’s account later needs numbers.

6. The water, in your own words

This one gets its own section below, because two authorities name it and both attach a qualifier.

7. What was on the animal when it came in

Wet to the skin, wet to the belly, mud on the legs, ash in the coat, a film or sheen on the fur, an oily smell, something visible caught in the coat or between the pads, something around the mouth. Where on the animal, and how much of it.

None of the sources named on this page publishes this as a field, and we did not find one elsewhere in what we searched. It is here because it is the observation that decays fastest: within an hour you will have towelled the animal, and within a day you will not be able to reconstruct what you saw. Recording it is this page’s own addition, and it passes the mechanical test because every part of it is something you looked at.

8. What you already did, and what you used

Washed, wiped, rinsed, hosed, bathed, brushed, flushed the eyes, gave something, gave nothing. What product, what water, how long, how many times, and the clock time.

The source for this field is the ASPCA’s own intake prompt: “If you have tried any home treatments, you should also mention this to your poison control caseworker.”

Record the product name off the bottle. This site’s floodwater washing page is where the question of what should go on an animal is worked through properly, with the published veterinary protocols and their limits, and this sheet is not the place to relitigate it. The sheet records what you did, including if what you did was nothing, because nothing is a real and useful answer that a blank line does not convey.

9. When the animal last ate, and last drank

Clock time, and what it was.

Merck’s factors article states: “The presence of food in the stomach can increase the absorption of some toxic agents, altering the amount of gastric acid present.” Its key point turns that into a clinical consideration about feeding or withholding food, which is a decision for a clinician and not a decision this page is making, repeating as an instruction or implying. What the field does is put the fact in front of the person who makes it.

10. Vaccination status, as known

What the animal has had, roughly when, and where the record is. And unknown as a first-class answer, written in rather than left blank.

Unknown is a real answer with real consequences, which is why it deserves ink rather than an empty line. NASAAEP’s intake process tells responders to administer core vaccinations to animals that “have not been vaccinated or lack documentation of current vaccination status”. Lacking the documentation is treated the same as lacking the vaccine, at intake, by a national best-practice document. So writing “vaccinated, I think, records were in the house” is not the same as leaving the line blank, and it is materially different from writing “unknown”.

Rebuilding a vaccination record when the clinic that holds it is gone is a whole problem with a whole page: reconstructing pet records when the clinic is gone covers the custodian, the state board, the county, the microchip registry and the rest of the chain, and it is where that job belongs. This sheet does not attempt it and has one line for it.

11. Current medications

Copied off the label on the container in your hand, not from memory and not from a website.

Merck’s list names “current medical concerns and medications”. Penn Vet’s history step names what medications the pet is taking, and its client checklist asks owners to bring all of them, noting that this matters especially when a medication is compounded.

If you already keep the pet medication log for an evacuation, the regimen block on that sheet is this field, already filled in, and the two sheets are designed to be handed over together.

12. One line for what you have noticed

One blank line. What you have noticed, and when you first noticed it, in your own words.

No tick boxes. No list. The next section explains why at length, because it is the single most important design decision on this sheet.

13. Who handled the animal, and whether they wore gloves

Names, times and whether there was skin contact.

This field is here because of one scope sentence from the AVMA: “There are many strains of Leptospira bacteria that can cause disease, and many mammals are susceptible—including dogs, people, livestock, and certain wildlife.” The same page adds “Although cats also may become ill, this happens only rarely.”

That is a statement about one disease and this page is not widening it into a general claim about floodwater. What it establishes is narrower and sufficient: a record of an animal’s exposure sometimes contains a fact about a person, and a sheet that collects that fact and then has nowhere to send it is a sheet with a hole in it. Where it goes is the section on the two lines that point off the sheet.

14. Wildlife contact, bites and scratches

Species if known, what happened, the date and time, where on the body, who was involved, and whether anybody was bitten or scratched.

This line also points off the sheet, and it points somewhere with consequences. See below.

15. Who else saw it, and what they said

A name and a phone number, next to their account of it, marked as theirs.

Half of what you know about what happened while you were out is somebody else’s observation. Attributing it on the sheet is the difference between a record and a rumour, and it lets a clinician who wants to check something call the person who actually saw it.

16. Case numbers and who you already called

If you have already called a poison control service, its case number, its call-back number, the service’s name and the time of the call.

The ASPCA states what those two numbers are for: “If you need to take your pet to the clinic, just give the clinic the case number and the call back number, have them call ASPCA Poison Control and they can take it from there!” That is the single field on this sheet that most reliably saves a receiving clinic time, and it is the one people leave on a scrap of paper in a car.

The Water Line Deserves Its Own Section

Of every line on this sheet, the water line is the one owners write most vaguely and the one two authorities name most directly.

Write, in your own words: was it moving or standing, how deep relative to the animal, what colour, was there visible scum, foam, sheen or film, did it smell of anything, where did it come from, and what body of water or system was it, if you know. A lake, a pond, a creek, a river, a storm drain, a ditch, street floodwater, a backed-up sewer, a puddle in a yard, the pool.

The ACVIM consensus statement names water sources inside an exposure history, in the sentence quoted whole earlier on this page: “Although a history of potential exposure (predation, exposure to other animal species or water sources) should increase suspicion for leptospirosis, all dogs should be considered at risk, regardless of signalment, geographic region, and lifestyle.”

The AVMA’s owner page publishes a risk taxonomy, and the sentence that introduces it has to travel with it, because on its own the list reads as a filter and with its preamble it reads as what it is:

“All dogs are at risk of leptospirosis, regardless of age, breed, lifestyle, geographic location, time of year, and other factors. The following situations can increase that risk:”

• “Exposure to or drinking from slow-moving or stagnant water sources, like ponds, rivers, lakes, or streams”
• “Roaming on rural properties (because of exposure to potentially infected wildlife or farm animals or urine-contaminated water sources)”
• “Exposure to wild animals (especially rodents) or farm animals, even if in the backyard”
• “Contact with other dogs (such as in urban areas, dog parks, or boarding or training facilities)”

Four categories, and three of them describe an ordinary post-disaster week for a dog in a flooded neighbourhood. Note that the list is about one disease and the sheet is about any exposure; those four items are on the sheet as prompts because a named authority wrote them down, not because they are an exhaustive account of what is in floodwater.

Two things this page will not do with the water line. It will not tell you which water is dangerous, because that varies by what happened upstream of you and by what is dissolved in it, and nothing this page can read settles it for your street. And it will not explain the hazards. Cyanobacteria have their own page in the state-by-state algal bloom advisories guide, floodwater contamination has the flash flood and dam failure page and the washing page, a municipal water advisory has its own playbook, and a chemical release has the hazmat page. This sheet records which water. Those pages explain what water does.

One more instruction that is not about animals at all, quoted with its scope attached because it is the closest thing in this source set to a published record-what-you-saw rule. CDC’s page on protecting yourself from animals after a disaster, dated February 8, 2024 and read in a rendered browser session on August 20, 2026, tells a person bitten by a snake: “Try to see and remember the color and shape of the snake, which can help with treatment of the snake bite.” That is written about a human snakebite and about a snake, not about an animal and not about water. It is quoted here because it is a federal health agency saying, in one sentence, the thing this whole sheet is built on: what you observed at the time can help with the treatment, and observation degrades.

Why There Are No Tick Boxes for Symptoms

This is the design decision that most distinguishes this sheet from the printable an ordinary preparedness site would produce, and it is worth defending properly.

A printed list of symptoms, with boxes, does something no sentence on the page can undo. It converts a record into a test. The owner reads down the list, ticks nothing, and walks away having been told by a piece of paper that the animal is fine. Nobody wrote that conclusion. The format wrote it.

That risk is not hypothetical on a sheet like this, because the sheet’s whole audience is people who are unsure. Somebody who already knows the animal needs a veterinarian is in the car. The person filling in this sheet is the person weighing it up, and handing that person a checklist with a natural “all clear” state is handing them the answer they were hoping for, from a source with no standing to give it.

So the sheet has one line instead: what you have noticed, and when you first noticed it.

That line is fact-recording and it stays inside the line this site can hold. It is also what Merck’s own list points at, since its sixth item is a heading, “current clinical signs”, and not an enumeration for an owner.

The ASPCA does publish a short example set inside its call walkthrough, and it is reproduced here whole rather than trimmed, along with the reason it is not being turned into boxes: “It’s important to let us know if your pet is showing any clinical signs such as vomiting, not eating or acting lethargic.” In the ASPCA’s hands that sentence is a prompt inside a live conversation with a veterinary toxicology expert who is simultaneously asking about the substance, the amount, the animal’s weight and its history, and who will ask you follow-up questions when your answer is vague. On a printed sheet with nobody attached to it, the same three words become a triad the reader grades themselves against. That is the difference, and it is the whole argument.

What to do instead, if you are unsure whether something counts: write it down and say it out loud on the phone. An overinclusive free-text line costs nothing. A missed observation is not recoverable.

The go-or-not sentences on this page, and whose they are

There are two, both belong to the AVMA, both sit in the same recovery list, and both are quoted rather than composed:

“Examine your animals closely, and contact your veterinarian immediately if you observe injuries or signs of illness.”

And, further down the same recovery list: “If you notice any signs of stress, discomfort, or illness in your pets, contact your veterinarian to schedule a checkup.”

Everything else routes to somebody who makes that decision for a living. Which is the next section.

Where Every Judgment on This Page Goes

Three routes, all three verified on the operating organisation’s own current page on the dates given. No route on this page comes from an aggregator, a directory or a government mirror, and no number appears here that was not read on its operator’s own page.

For the animal: ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center, (888) 426-4435. Read on the ASPCA’s own page on August 20, 2026, which describes the service as available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and states: “If you think your pet may have ingested a potentially poisonous substance, call (888) 426-4435. A consultation fee may apply.” Note for anyone checking: the older /pet-care/animal-poison-control path now redirects to /pet-care/aspca-poison-control, and the second is canonical.

For the animal: Pet Poison Helpline, (855) 764-7661, available 24/7, with a per-incident fee. Read on petpoisonhelpline.com on August 20, 2026. Its own page describes doing precisely what this page will not do, which is why it is the correct destination for the question this page keeps refusing: its staff “will gather information about the exposure”, and then “We run calculations and will determine if the pet can be monitored from home or should be seen by your veterinarian”.

For a person: America’s Poison Centers, Poison Help, 1-800-222-1222. Read on poisonhelp.org on August 20, 2026. That site carries its own emergency sentence, reproduced here rather than replaced or extended: “If an individual has collapsed, had a seizure, has trouble breathing, or can’t be awakened, call 911 immediately.” Its first-aid block puts the same rule as a list: call 911 right away if a person is having difficulty breathing, or collapses or is losing consciousness, or has a seizure. And on the poisoning question itself: “If you think someone has been poisoned, use PoisonHelp.org or call Poison Help at 1-800-222-1222 right away.”

Those are three different services with three different jobs, and the animal number is not the human number. Keeping them apart is deliberate.

One number that deliberately does not appear on this page. A second, older toll-free number for Pet Poison Helpline circulates widely on third-party sites. It is not published on the operator’s own current homepage, which was retrieved and text-searched for that digit string on August 20, 2026 with zero matches, and this page makes no claim about whether it still rings. It is not printed here, because a route this page could not confirm at the source is a route it does not publish. The number above, (855) 764-7661, is the one the operator publishes.

The Two Lines That Point Off the Sheet

Two entries on this sheet record a fact whose consequence lives somewhere other than a veterinary examination room. A record that captures the fact and never points at the consequence is a record with a hole in the middle of it, so both lines carry their pointer, and both of these joins are this site’s own reasoning rather than an instruction anybody publishes as one piece.

Wildlife contact, a bite or a scratch

Record it: species if you know it, what happened, date and time, where on the body, who was involved, and whether a person was bitten or scratched.

Then understand that this is not only a clinical fact. A bite or scratch involving a person is a public-health matter with a reporting chain attached, and it can have consequences for the animal as well as for the person. Where the animal is held and who is required to report are state and local questions with genuinely different answers, which is why this page routes them rather than answering them. This site works that chain through properly in two places, from the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians Compendium and from NASAAEP’s own shelter protocols: what happens after a dog bite at an evacuation shelter covers the observation period, the reporting duty, where an animal is confined when your home is gone, and who actually decides each of those; and the page for somebody who has found an animal after a disaster covers the same chain from the finder’s side, including what the Compendium says can happen to a stray that exposes a person.

Do not decide to leave a bite off this sheet in order to protect the animal. A bite that surfaces later, from a household member or from a clinic, surfaces stripped of every piece of context you could have supplied.

For the facts to capture, NASAAEP’s 2023 disaster veterinary best practices publish what a bite report should contain at minimum in a shelter setting: the date and time of the bite, the name, address and contact numbers of the pet owner and of the person with the bite wound, the location of the bite on the body, the circumstances under which the bite occurred including whether the exposure was provoked, the rabies immunization status of the human and the animal, the animal’s name, breed and age, its unique identification number, its cage or kennel number, the quarantine location and the dates quarantine starts and ends. That is a form for a shelter’s safety officer and several of its fields do not exist in your house. It is reproduced here as a model of which facts get captured, not as a duty being assigned to you.

The person who handled the animal

Record who handled the animal, when, and whether they were wearing gloves.

Then note that the routing on the human side is different from the routing on the animal side, and this page keeps them apart on purpose. The two animal poison services above take animal questions. A human wound, a human symptom or a human exposure goes to a health-care provider, or to America’s Poison Centers on 1-800-222-1222, whose own page carries the 911 sentence quoted in full above.

The reason this line exists at all is the AVMA’s scope sentence about leptospirosis and the many mammals susceptible to it, including people. That is one disease, and this page is not generalising it into a claim about everything in floodwater. It is enough to establish that a sheet recording an animal’s exposure sometimes records a human one, and a fact with no destination is not worth collecting.

Where This Sheet Stops, and Which Page Takes Over

This is a narrow document by design, and the boundary is worth drawing explicitly so you are not looking here for something that lives one click away.

This sheet is not your animal’s medical record. The standing per-animal record, built in a calm week, is the pet emergency binder, and its Top Sheet is the one-page intake summary a hospital reads first. This sheet is a one-off record of a single event and it is meant to be handed over alongside that binder, not instead of it.

This sheet does not reconstruct records you have lost. If your clinic is destroyed, closed or unreachable and you need the chart, reconstructing pet records when the clinic is gone is the fallback chain: the custodian, the state veterinary board, the county, your own paper trail, prescription labels, online pharmacy accounts and the microchip registry, with a records-request template. That is an entire job and it is not this one.

This sheet is not the bag you pack. The pet vet hospital stay bag checklist is what to carry to an emergency vet visit or a planned admission, and it already tells you to bring a short written history. The two are complementary rather than competing: that page is the bag, this page is one specific document that goes in it, filled in for one specific event.

This sheet is not the infectious-exposure record. If your animal spent time at a co-located pet shelter, the vulnerable-pet shelter page publishes a seven-line record built for that case: your arrival and departure dates and times, the building and room and roughly where in the room your crate sat, which species and roughly how many animals were within a few feet, whether any animal near you was coughing, sneezing, vomiting or had diarrhea, whether any animal was removed to isolation while you were there and when, whether your animal received any vaccine or treatment on site and what it was, and the shelter’s name, its operating agency and a phone number. That sheet is the infectious-exposure counterpart to this one and this sheet is the environmental counterpart to it. They are not rivals and they do not overlap: one records the animals your animal was near, the other records the substances and water your animal was in. A household that had both kinds of week fills in both.

This sheet does not tell you what a new clinic must accept. Finding veterinary care mid-evacuation works through what a clinic that has never seen your animal needs from you, and it is explicit that nothing in it is a legal entitlement to be seen.

This sheet is not about paying for anything. Paying a post-disaster vet bill covers which programs pay a clinic directly and which reimburse an owner.

And it is not a decontamination protocol. What actually goes on an animal that came out of floodwater, with the published veterinary protocols and their honest limits, is the washing page; for a cat, or for ash, it is decontaminating a cat after ash or floodwater.

The Printable

Print one copy per animal. Print it now, in a calm week, and put the blank copies in the same sleeve as the rest of the paperwork, because the version of this page that helps you is the one already in the bag.

It lives here on the page, in labelled blocks, rather than as a separate download, for the same reason the medication log does: the two sheets are meant to be printed in one sitting and handed over together, and a household that keeps one should keep the other in the same sleeve.

Write in pen. Pencil disappears when paper gets wet and rubbed in a bag, which is the exact condition this sheet is designed for. Photograph the completed sheet with your phone as a second copy, and note that a photograph and a piece of paper fail in different weather, which is the subject of paper versus digital pet medical records.

Unknown is an answer. Write it in rather than leaving a line blank. A blank reads as a question nobody reached. Unknown reads as a fact somebody established.

Block A. This animal, and this sheet

Field	Fill in
Animal’s name	____
Species, breed, age or date of birth, sex	____
Colour and distinguishing markings	____
Current weight, and the date you weighed	____
Microchip number	____
Owner name and phone	____
Second contact name and phone	____
Regular veterinary practice, city, phone	____
Other animals in this household, and whether each has its own sheet	____
Date and time this sheet was started, and by whom	____
Where this animal is right now, and who holds this sheet	____

Block B. The exposure

One row per distinct exposure event. If the animal went into the water three times, that is three rows, not one.

#	What the animal contacted, in plain words	Where it happened	Date	Clock time it started	Clock time it stopped	How long, or two bounds	How many times
1	____	____	____	____	____	____	____
2	____	____	____	____	____	____	____
3	____	____	____	____	____	____	____
4	____	____	____	____	____	____	____

Category prompts for the contact column, to be written in rather than ticked. NASAAEP publishes these as two prose sentences carrying two different scopes, rather than as a category list, and the scopes travel with them. For natural disasters: household or agricultural chemicals, petroleum products, heavy metals, pathogens from disrupted manure pits or septic tanks. For agricultural or industrial accidents: chemical spills, radiological materials, gas leaks. Breaking those two sentences into single prompts is this page’s own doing, not NASAAEP’s. Plus, from the AVMA’s post-disaster hazard survey list: sharp objects, dangerous materials, dangerous wildlife, contaminated water, downed power lines. Plus the ones every flooded household meets: standing water, moving floodwater, mud, sewage, ash, soot, debris, a dead animal, mold, an unlabelled container.

Block C. The route, per exposure row

Write in every one of these that happened. More than one can be true for a single exposure, and writing several is better than choosing the most dramatic one. These record what you saw, not what you concluded.

The route words: walked through it · stood in it · swam in it · was submerged · drank it · ate something · licked it off itself · breathed it · got it in the eyes · rolled in it · was bitten or scratched · unknown

Exposure #	Every route that happened, in these words	Anything you saw that does not fit those words
1	____	____
2	____	____
3	____	____
4	____	____

Block D. The water

Fill this in for any exposure involving water of any kind, including a puddle.

Field	Fill in
What body of water or system (street floodwater, creek, pond, lake, river, storm drain, ditch, sewer backup, pool, yard puddle, unknown)	____
Moving or standing	____
Depth, relative to the animal	____
Colour	____
Visible scum, foam, sheen, film or floating material (what, and how much)	____
Smell, if any	____
Where it came from, as far as you know	____
Any posted advisory, closure or notice you saw, and what it said	____
Did the animal drink it (yes, no, unknown)	____

Block E. The product or object, if there is one

Field	Fill in
Product or substance name, exactly as printed	____
Active ingredient and strength, exactly as printed	____
Form (powder, granule, liquid, gel, pellet, bait block, tablet, other)	____
How much was there before, and how much is missing	____
Manufacturer, and any lot or batch number on the container	____
Are you bringing the container, a photograph, or neither	____
If you are not bringing it, exactly where it is now	____

Block F. The animal on arrival, and what you already did

Field	Fill in
What was on the animal when it came in, and where on the body	____
Washed, wiped, rinsed, hosed, bathed, brushed, eyes flushed, or nothing	____
What product or water you used, exactly as the label reads	____
How long, how many times, and at what clock times	____
Anything given by mouth, what it was, how much, and when	____
When the animal last ate, and what	____
When the animal last drank, and what	____
Where the animal has been since (indoors, crated, yard, vehicle, shelter)	____

Block G. Vaccination and medications, as known

Field	Fill in
Vaccinations the animal has had, and roughly when	____
Where the vaccination record is, or unknown	____
Rabies tag number, if the animal is wearing one	____
Current medications, copied from each label: name, strength, how given, how often	____
Known allergies or past drug reactions, or “none known”	____
Standing conditions the animal is treated for	____

Block H. One free-text line, and who else saw it

Field	Fill in
What you have noticed, and when you first noticed it, in your own words	____
Who else saw the exposure, their phone number, and what they told you (mark it as theirs)	____
Wildlife contact, bite or scratch: species, what happened, date, time, where on the body, who was involved	____
Was a person bitten or scratched (yes, no) and has a health-care provider been contacted	____
Who handled the animal, at what times, and whether they wore gloves	____

Block I. Calls already made

Date and time	Who you called	Case number	Call-back number	What they told you, in their words
____	____	____	____	____
____	____	____	____	____
____	____	____	____	____

Notice what is not on any of these blocks. No severity rating. No symptom checklist. No score. No colour coding. No threshold. No cell that resolves to whether the exposure was bad. If this sheet ever grows one of those, it has stopped being a record and become a verdict issued by a page that has never seen your animal.

Filling It In Under Pressure: The Order This Page Suggests

You will not fill this in top to bottom. Fill it in in the order things decay.

No document in the set inventoried below publishes an owner-completed exposure form at all, so none of them publishes an order for filling one in either. This order is this page’s own reasoning about which of these facts can still be recovered later and which cannot, it is a suggestion rather than a rule, and no authority named on this page stands behind it.

First, the clock. Times are the cheapest thing on this sheet to capture and the hardest to go back for. A weight can be re-measured, a medication can be re-read off its label, a vaccination record can be requested from whoever holds it, and none of them tells you what time the dog came out of the water. Write the times before anything else, even as a scrawl in the margin.

Second, what you can still see. What is on the animal right now, and what the water looked like if you can still look at it. Both of those can be gone quickly, one because you will towel the animal and one because water recedes and clears.

Third, photograph everything you are not bringing. The container, the water, the yard, the animal’s coat, the pawpads, the label including the small print. Photographs are timestamped by the phone, which quietly solves the clock problem for anything you shot at the time.

Fourth, the write-in blocks. Route, water description, what you already did. These are less perishable than the two above, which is the only reason they come fourth rather than first.

Last, Block A and Block G. Identity, vaccination, medications. None of these changes in the hours after an exposure, which is why they belong in a calm week rather than at a counter, and why they come last if they are not already filled in.

If you only get one thing written before you leave the house, make it the clock. If you get two, make the second one what the animal contacted.

If You Cannot Reach a Veterinarian

A sheet that funnels everything to one action is only as good as that action, and after a disaster the usual action is frequently unavailable: your practice is flooded, closed, evacuated or on a four-hour phone queue. So the honest answer to what you do with this sheet when nobody picks up.

Call one of the two animal poison services rather than waiting for your own clinic to open. Both operators publish their number as a direct call for an owner to make: the ASPCA’s own page says to call it if you think your pet may have ingested a potentially poisonous substance, and Pet Poison Helpline’s own page offers expert help by call or chat. Neither of those invitations is conditioned on your own practice being open. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center is on (888) 426-4435, described on its own page as available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with a consultation fee that may apply. Pet Poison Helpline is on (855) 764-7661, available 24/7, with a per-incident fee. Both take these calls as their entire business, and Pet Poison Helpline’s own page describes the output: its staff “will gather information about the exposure” and “We run calculations and will determine if the pet can be monitored from home or should be seen by your veterinarian”. That is the decision this page has been refusing to make for you all the way down, going to the people who make it.

Write the case number on Block I immediately. It is what makes the advice portable. The ASPCA’s own instruction is that if you then need a clinic, you give the clinic the case number and the call-back number and have them call. The sentence it puts between those two is the one worth knowing when nothing else is open: “If you have any questions or concerns, you can always call back anytime.”

If your own practice is gone rather than merely busy, finding one that will see an animal in the middle of an evacuation is its own problem with its own answer: finding veterinary care mid-evacuation works through the emergency and specialty tier, what a strange clinic needs from you and what none of it entitles you to. Nothing on this page is a substitute for that page, and this sheet is the document you carry into it.

If the fee is the barrier rather than the phone line. Both services publish one: the ASPCA’s own page says a consultation fee may apply, and Pet Poison Helpline publishes a per-incident fee. This site has two pages for the cost problem, and neither of them is about a consultation fee, so take them for what they are. Paying a post-disaster vet bill covers the funders for a veterinary bill, most of which pay a clinic directly rather than reimbursing you and some of which will not consider a bill you have already paid. Using 2-1-1 to find pet help covers general routing for a household that has run out of options, and where its coverage thins out.

If a person is involved rather than only the animal, the human route is a health-care provider or America’s Poison Centers on 1-800-222-1222, and the operator’s own emergency sentence is the one to act on: “If an individual has collapsed, had a seizure, has trouble breathing, or can’t be awakened, call 911 immediately.”

And if none of that is reachable either, keep filling in the sheet. That is not a consolation prize. The single most common way an exposure history is lost is that hours pass, then days, and by the time somebody can look at the animal the timeline has been smoothed into a story. A record written while nobody was available is worth exactly as much three days later, and it is the one part of this that never depends on a phone line.

What We Looked For and Did Not Find

Publishing a sheet with no clinical content in it requires having actually looked for the clinical content first, so here is the inventory.

We looked for a published, owner-completed post-disaster exposure form and did not find one. The documents opened on August 19 and 20, 2026 were: NASAAEP’s 2023 Disaster Veterinary Medical Response best practices in full, in two extraction modes, including its Appendix J triage form, its Appendix N tracking form for animals exposed to infectious disease, its bite report contents and its intake process; the UC Davis California Veterinary Emergency Team’s Generic Small Animal Record, extracted from the document’s own XML; FEMA’s Key Planning Factors section 1.4 on veterinary care, opened in a rendered browser session after automated retrieval was refused; the AVMA’s Pets and disasters recovery list, read with its accordion expanded; the AVMA’s Wildfire smoke and animals page; two Merck Veterinary Manual toxicology articles; Penn Vet’s emergency service page; the ASPCA’s poison control page and its call walkthrough; and the ACVIM leptospirosis consensus statement. Two web searches for an owner-facing exposure log or worksheet returned commercial template marketplaces only.

We did not find a threshold, and we did not want one. No source in that set publishes a rule converting an exposure duration, a water description or a substance into an answer about whether to be seen. What every one of them publishes instead is routing: to the veterinarian, to a poison control service, to the health department for a bite.

We did not search AAHA’s guideline library exhaustively. One search of aaha.org for a history-taking or emergency-intake guideline did not surface one on point. AAHA guidelines are cited elsewhere on this site, so a relevant document would be findable, and that is a search result rather than a finding about AAHA’s library.

We did not survey state or county agencies. Fifty state departments of agriculture and several thousand counties publish emergency animal material and none of it was reviewed for this page. If yours publishes an exposure form, use it in place of this one.

We did not check non-English sources. This page is written for the United States and that is a scope note rather than a finding.

And we have not established that any clinic will accept this sheet. No source we read requires a veterinary practice to accept a record in any particular format, or at all. Hand it across the counter, expect to be asked questions off it, and expect the clinician to take their own history regardless. Merck’s own instruction to clinicians is to take a thorough history; your sheet is an input to that, not a replacement for it.

Your Post-Disaster Exposure Log Checklist

• One sheet per animal, with the animal’s name at the top, printed before a season rather than during one.
• Block A and Block G filled in now, in a calm week, off the microchip paperwork and the medication labels.
• A current weight with the date you took it, because Merck names age and body weight as primary factors and an estimate at a counter is not the same thing.
• Clock times written first, before anything else on the sheet, because nothing else on it can be used to work out what time something happened.
• Two bounds rather than one invented number wherever you did not see the whole thing.
• “Unknown” written in as an answer, never a blank line left to be interpreted.
• Every route that happened written in, in the sheet’s own route words, with more than one allowed per exposure and nothing ticked.
• The water described in your own words: moving or standing, colour, scum or sheen, smell, where it came from.
• The container brought if it is safe to fetch, photographed if it is not, and its location written down either way. Nothing on this sheet is worth re-entering a hazard for.
• What you already did to the animal recorded, including “nothing”, with the product name copied off the bottle.
• When the animal last ate and last drank, with clock times.
• One free-text line for what you have noticed, and no symptom checklist anywhere on the sheet.
• A bite or scratch involving a person recorded, and the person’s side of it taken straight to a health-care provider rather than to this sheet.
• Whoever handled the animal recorded, with times, and the human poison route kept separate from the animal one.
• Case numbers and call-back numbers written on Block I as soon as you get them.
• The completed sheet photographed on a phone as a second copy, then handed across the counter rather than narrated.
• Every decision about the exposure left to a veterinarian, to the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center on (888) 426-4435, or to Pet Poison Helpline on (855) 764-7661.
• The two cost routes read in a calm week rather than looked up at 2 a.m.: paying a post-disaster vet bill for the funders, most of which pay a clinic directly rather than reimbursing you, and using 2-1-1 to find pet help for general routing and its limits. Neither is about a poison-control consultation fee.

The Version You Do on a Quiet Afternoon

Three things, one afternoon, and the sheet stops being homework at the worst possible moment.

Print it and pre-fill the two blocks that never change. Block A and Block G are the parts that require reading small print off a microchip certificate and a row of medication labels, and small print is the first casualty of a hurry. Everything else on the sheet is written under pressure by design.

Weigh the animal and write the date next to the number. It takes ten seconds on a bathroom scale with you holding the animal and then not holding the animal. Merck’s own text is the reason: the amount of a toxic agent required to produce pathological changes is generally correlated to body weight, and a number from last year on a growing puppy is worse than useless.

Put the three phone numbers on the sheet in ink, and check them yourself. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center, Pet Poison Helpline and, for a person, America’s Poison Centers. Look each one up on the organisation’s own website rather than copying it from here, because a number on a preparedness page is only as fresh as the day somebody read it, and the ones on this page were read on August 20, 2026. Then write your own veterinary practice, its after-hours arrangement, and the nearest emergency hospital on the same sheet, because those three are the ones that change most often and are least likely to be published anywhere you can find at 2 a.m.

Then do the thing that makes all of it work: put the blank sheets in the same sleeve as the pet emergency binder and the medication log, and tell whoever else in the household might be the person holding the leash where that sleeve is.

Where to Go Next

This page is a records spoke of our pet emergency playbooks hub, and it hands off in four directions.

If the exposure has already happened and you are deciding what to do about the animal. Washing floodwater off a dog covers what the published veterinary protocols actually say and where they stop, decontaminating a cat after ash or floodwater covers the species that makes all of it harder, and the dam failure and flash flood page covers the wider recovery window. For water in a lake or pond rather than in the street, the state-by-state algal bloom advisories page is the one with the advisory lookups.

If you need a clinic. Finding veterinary care mid-evacuation is the how, the pet vet hospital stay bag checklist is what to carry if the animal is admitted, and paying a post-disaster vet bill is the part nobody wants to think about until it arrives.

If the paperwork itself is the problem. The pet emergency binder is the standing per-animal record this sheet slots beside, reconstructing pet records when the clinic is gone is the fallback chain when the chart is gone, the medication log is the running record of doses and the cold chain, and paper versus digital pet medical records is the argument about which copy survives.

If the exposure was to other animals rather than to the environment. Protecting a vulnerable pet at a co-located shelter carries the seven-line infectious-exposure record that is this sheet’s counterpart, and it is the one to fill in for a shelter stay. If a bite is involved, dog bite at an evacuation shelter is the chain, and you found a pet after a disaster is the same chain from the other side of it.

Then do the one thing on this page that costs nothing and pays every time. Take a blank copy of this sheet to your next routine appointment and ask your veterinary practice whether there is anything they would want on it that is not there. Nothing on this page is about your animal. Their answer would be.