Tool
State Pet Shelter Policy Finder
Pick your state and get the official emergency-management links for pet sheltering, plus what that state page itself says about whether public shelters take pets. Everything here points at a government page you can read yourself.
This is a directory of official sources, not an answer.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. The linked state page is the authority; this page is only the index that gets you to it. We quote each state page verbatim where it says something about shelters and describe it plainly where it does not, so you can check our reading against the source in one click. And the question you probably came with, whether one specific shelter will take one specific animal, is answered by your county, not by your state. That is not a dodge: it is how sheltering is actually organized, and the section below on what to do next says exactly who to call.
If the state picker does not appear below, it has not loaded, and nothing is lost: all 50 states are written out in full further down this page, with the same links and the same quotes. Nothing here is locked behind the tool.
The federal baseline, stated once
Every state page in this directory sits on top of the same federal law, so it is worth knowing what that law does before you read any of them. The Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, the PETS Act, was signed in 2006 after thousands of animals were abandoned during Hurricane Katrina. Per the AVMA, it requires that"State and local emergency preparedness operational plans address the needs of individuals with household pets and service animals following a major disaster or emergency,"and it authorizes FEMA to"provide rescue, care, shelter, and essential needs for individuals with household pets and service animals."
Read that for what it is. It is a planning mandate on governments and a funding authorization, not a guarantee that any particular shelter will admit your animal. That distinction is the whole reason this directory exists, and it is also why so many of the state pages below say, in their own words, that most public shelters cannot take pets. We work through what the Act did and did not create inour guide to whether pet-friendly disaster shelters exist, which is the piece to read next if this is new to you.
What we found across the 50 states
44 states publish an official pet page we could verify and link. 6 do not, and those are shown as gaps rather than filled in with something that looks close enough: Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio and South Dakota. Of the pages that do exist, 37 carry a line about pets and shelters clear enough for us to quote verbatim. The rest are left blank on purpose: we could not find a statement on them worth quoting, which is not the same as proving the page says nothing, so we would rather you read it than trust our summary.
A caveat that applies across the whole set. In a number of states the pet page is not published by the emergency-management agency named alongside it. It belongs to a health department, an animal-health or agriculture board, or a separate statewide preparedness campaign. Where our checking flagged that specifically, it is written on the state entry. Where it did not, we have not gone back and inferred it, so read each page's own masthead rather than assuming the agency in our listing wrote it. Several entries also carry a flag because the page is the right topic in the wrong shape: a volunteer-recruitment page, a dated news post, or a manual written for municipal emergency managers rather than for pet owners.
What to do next, wherever you live
The state page tells you the official framing. Your county tells you whether there is a cot and a crate. Three calls, made at the start of your risk season rather than during a watch, get you the real answer.
- Your county emergency management office. Ask whether they open a pet shelter when they open a human shelter, whether it is co-located or off-site, and whether you have to pre-register.
- Your county animal services or animal control agency. In many states this is the agency that actually runs the pet shelter, and it is the one that knows the intake requirements.
- 211. The nationwide health and human services line makes local disaster referrals. Alabama's own state page tells evacuating residents to call 211 to find out which shelter will take them and their pet.
Ask all three the same four things: whether pets are accepted at all, what proof of vaccination is required, whether you must bring your own crate, and whether the animals are housed with you or separately. Write the answers down where you will find them under pressure. The printable pet emergency plan has a place for exactly this, and the pet emergency binder covers the records a shelter will ask you for at intake.
Every state, written out
The same directory the picker searches, in full, so it works without the tool and so you can read across states rather than one at a time. Each entry gives the state emergency-management agency, the official pet page where one exists, and what that page itself says. Where a page carries no shelter statement we say so instead of supplying one.
Alabama
Official pet page: Ready Pets
The page states: "If you are asked to evacuate in the state of Alabama, call 211 to determine which shelter will allow you and your pet."
Worth knowing: The page is published on readyalabama.gov by the Governor's Office of Volunteer Services, not by the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, whose own site carries no pet content.
State agency: Alabama Emergency Management Agency
Alaska
Official pet page: Pets
Worth knowing: The page is a short set of PDF links with no guidance written on the page itself, so there is no shelter statement on it to quote. Open the PDFs.
State agency: Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
Arizona
Official pet page: Pet Preparedness
The page states: "Identify shelters. For public health reasons, many emergency shelters cannot accept pets."
Worth knowing: The page sits on ein.az.gov rather than on the emergency-management site. That is deliberate on the state's part: the department's own page names ein.az.gov as Arizona's official source for emergency updates, preparedness advice and hazards information.
Second official page: Arizona Department of Agriculture, Pets Confirmed live, and it carries a near-identical sentence about emergency shelters and pets.
State agency: Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs
Arkansas
Official pet page: Animals in Disaster
Worth knowing: The page is an earthquake-specific pet checklist. Its only mention of a shelter is a pointer to your local animal shelter if a pet goes missing, which is recovery advice rather than anything about shelter admission.
State agency: Arkansas Division of Emergency Management
California
Official pet page: Animal Preparedness
The page states: "California Department of Food and Agriculture and Cal OES co-lead a workgroup of identified stakeholders to address ongoing issues regarding animal evacuation, care, and shelter in disasters."
State agency: California Governor's Office of Emergency Services
Colorado
No statewide pet page found.
No statewide pet page exists. The division's only "Pets and Animals" entry is an outbound link to the federal Ready.gov site. The Colorado Department of Agriculture's pet and animal emergency page returns an access-denied error, while its own menu still lists that page as live. And the division's READYColorado link now redirects to a domain with no DNS record at all, so the state's flagship preparedness site does not resolve. Colorado did pass HB24-1033 in 2024, which addresses animals in emergency management plans, but we are not going to characterise what it obliges anyone to do: read the bill yourself at leg.colorado.gov and ask your county emergency manager what their own plan actually says.
State agency: Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
Connecticut
Official pet page: Tips for Service Animals and Pet Owners
The page states: "Pets, in contrast to service animals, may not be allowed in emergency shelters due to health regulations, so have some animal shelters identified!"
Worth knowing: This is the thinnest source in the directory and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It belongs to the Connecticut Department of Public Health rather than to the emergency-management division, which has no pet content at all. It sits under a bioterrorism path, is framed as a disability-preparedness checklist, and credits material adapted from a California independent-living center and the American Red Cross. It is official and live. It is not a general pet-owner resource.
State agency: Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security
Delaware
Official pet page: Disaster Preparedness
Worth knowing: The page belongs to the Office of Animal Welfare in the Division of Public Health, not to the emergency-management agency, whose own site has no pet content. It describes the Delaware Animal Response program and volunteering rather than shelter admission rules.
State agency: Delaware Emergency Management Agency
Florida
Official pet page: Make a Pet Plan
The page states: "Service animals who assist people with disabilities are allowed in Red Cross shelters."
Worth knowing: Florida's emergency management agency runs on a .org domain, the same pattern we flag elsewhere as worth suspecting. We checked it rather than assuming: the site identifies itself as the Florida Division of Emergency Management and links back to MyFlorida.com.
Second official page: Sheltering With Your Pet or Service Animal Same agency, and a more direct statement of shelter policy than the main pet page: it states that "most shelters DO NOT PERMIT PETS, although they DO PERMIT SERVICE ANIMALS."
State agency: Florida Division of Emergency Management
Georgia
Official pet page: Georgia Pets
The page states: "Most public shelters can't accept pets due to health regulations, so plan accordingly."
State agency: Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency
Hawaii
Official pet page: Caring for Animals
The statewide guidance states that "with the exception of service animals, pets are not typically permitted in emergency shelters as they may affect the health and safety of other occupants."
Worth knowing: Published by the Hawai‘i Department of Human Services, not by the emergency-management agency, whose site has no pet or animal preparedness page anywhere on it. The page's own breadcrumb places it inside a Maui wildfire resources hub rather than in standing statewide preparedness content.
State agency: Hawai‘i Emergency Management Agency
Idaho
Official pet page: Preparedness Includes Pets
Under "Know Where to Go" the page states: "Not all shelters or hotels accept animals."
Worth knowing: This is a dated news post, published June 11, 2025 for Pet Preparedness Month, rather than a standing preparedness page. The agency's permanent preparedness sections contain no pet content, so this is still the best official Idaho source, but a news post can be taken down without a redirect in a way a navigation page usually is not.
State agency: Idaho Office of Emergency Management
Illinois
Official pet page: Animals / Pets
The page states: "Because evacuation shelters generally don't accept pets except for service animals, you must plan ahead to ensure that your family and pets have a safe place to stay."
State agency: Illinois Emergency Management Agency and Office of Homeland Security
Indiana
Official pet page: Pet Preparedness
Worth knowing: The page covers kits, evacuating early and not leaving pets behind, and tells readers to confirm evacuation locations that allow animals. It states no public-shelter admission policy, so there is nothing on it to quote as one.
State agency: Indiana Department of Homeland Security
Iowa
Official pet page: Prepare Your Pets for Disasters
The page states: "If you need to stay in a shelter for any period of time, however, be aware that most shelters do not accept pets."
State agency: Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
Kansas
Official pet page: Pet Preparedness
The page does not state a public-shelter pet policy. It asks readers to plan for sheltering with their pet at home: "How will you get your pet to your designated shelter area and where they will stay while in the shelter-do you plan to let your pet be loose or do you have a crate for your pet in the shelter."
Worth knowing: Read that quote in context. The "designated shelter area" is your household's own safe area, not a public emergency shelter, so do not carry it away as a statement about shelter admission.
State agency: Kansas Division of Emergency Management
Kentucky
Official pet page: Emergency Planning for Pets
The page states: "When planning your evacuation strategy, research pet-friendly hotels, shelters and boarding facilities that you can stop at while you're away from home."
State agency: Kentucky Emergency Management Division
Louisiana
Official pet page: Pets And Animals Plan
Worth knowing: The page covers evacuation kits, microchipping, pet-friendly hotels, the state tethering law and livestock. It states no emergency-shelter pet policy.
State agency: Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness
Maine
Official pet page: Your Pets and Livestock
Under "Make a Pet Plan" and then "Stay Informed," the page tells readers to "Learn pet restrictions at local shelters."
State agency: Maine Emergency Management Agency
Maryland
Official pet page: Pets and Livestock
The page states: "In the event of a disaster pets are not allowed in emergency shelters for public health and safety reasons."
State agency: Maryland Department of Emergency Management
Massachusetts
Official pet page: Emergency Preparedness for Pets and Animals
The page states: "If you are going to a public shelter, pets may not be allowed, so it is important to plan where you will go in advance."
State agency: Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency
Michigan
Official pet page: Pet Preparedness
The page states: "Many public shelters and hotels do not allow pets inside. Know a safe place where you can take your pets before disasters and emergencies happen."
State agency: Michigan State Police, Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division
Minnesota
No statewide pet page found.
The division's page contains no occurrence of the words pet or animal. The Board of Animal Health's emergency planning page was read in full and is exclusively foreign-animal-disease and livestock content, with no household-pet or pet-sheltering guidance on it, so we are not going to pass it off as one.
State agency: Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Homeland Security and Emergency Management
Mississippi
Official pet page: Evacuation, Transportation and Sheltering
The page states: "Pet friendly emergency shelters are being established but it is best to find alternative sheltering if possible."
Worth knowing: The pet page belongs to the Mississippi Board of Animal Health, which hosts the state's companion-animal sheltering plan, rather than to the emergency-management agency. The agency's own site runs on a .org domain, which is exactly the pattern that should make you suspicious of a fake, so we checked it: the domain registration carries the agency's own state email address and its Jackson street address, and the agency's .gov domain hosts no website at all.
State agency: Mississippi Emergency Management Agency
Missouri
Official pet page: Information on Household Pets and Preparing for the Unexpected
The page states: "However, if you are going to a public shelter, it is important to understand that animals may not be allowed inside."
State agency: Missouri State Emergency Management Agency
Montana
No statewide pet page found.
Montana has no dedicated pet-preparedness page. The agency does write its own pet instructions, but only inside hazard pages such as its wildfire-season and winter-storm resources, so start from those. The Department of Livestock's emergency page was read in full and is livestock-disease content whose only pet material is an outbound federal link, so it is not a substitute.
State agency: Montana Disaster and Emergency Services
Nebraska
Official pet page: What to Do About Pets in a Disaster?
The page states: "Note that not all Red Cross disaster shelters accept pets, so it is imperative that you have determined where you will bring your pets ahead of time."
Worth knowing: The page's own heading is set in capitals and we have sentence-cased it here for legibility. It sits inside the agency's Disaster Preparation section rather than standing on its own.
State agency: Nebraska Emergency Management Agency
Nevada
Official pet page: Caring for Animals During a Disaster
The page states: "For public health reasons, many emergency shelters cannot accept pets."
State agency: Nevada Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security
New Hampshire
Official pet page: New Hampshire Disaster Animal Response Team
The page states: "NHDART opens and operates emergency animal shelters for owned and stray pets impacted by fire, flood, hurricanes, and other natural disasters."
Worth knowing: This is a volunteer-recruitment page rather than pet-owner guidance, and the sentence quoted above appears under a heading about what is required of volunteers. The page describes the team as an all-volunteer organization. It is hosted by the state Department of Health and Human Services and the team is state-coordinated, but read the second link below first if you are a pet owner making a plan.
Second official page: Pet Disaster Plan, New Hampshire Insurance Department Official, live, and actually written for pet owners. It states: "Specialized pet shelters, animal control shelters, veterinary clinics and friends and relatives out of harm's way are ALL potential refuges for your pet during a disaster."
State agency: New Hampshire Department of Safety, Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
New Jersey
Official pet page: Pet and Animal Emergency Planning
Worth knowing: The word shelter appears only in the site navigation and never in the body. The page itself is short: a few sentences and two outbound pointers.
State agency: New Jersey Office of Emergency Management
New Mexico
No statewide pet page found.
We pulled the agency's own sitemap and checked all 94 page URLs listed in it. None is pet or animal related, and the homepage text contains no instance of the words pet or animal. This is a genuine absence rather than a page we failed to find.
State agency: New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
New York
Official pet page: Pet Safety
The page states, "Do not evacuate and leave your pets behind in a crate, because they will be rendered helpless unless you return or until someone else reaches them," and "Call or visit pet-friendly hotels, veterinary hospitals, boarding kennels, and animal shelters outside your area."
State agency: New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services
North Carolina
Official pet page: Pets and Service Animals
The page states, "All shelters should have a plan to accomodate pets - but don't expect to keep your pet beside you in a shelter," and "Pet housing areas at shelters will be away from the living areas for people, and they might even be off-site." The spelling of accomodate is the state page's own, not a typo of ours.
State agency: North Carolina Emergency Management
North Dakota
Official pet page: Animal Disaster Emergency Tips for Pets
The page states, "Remember: Red Cross and other public shelters often cannot accept pets because of state health and safety regulations."
Worth knowing: The page is hosted in the state's animal-health section rather than by the emergency-management department.
State agency: North Dakota Department of Emergency Services
Ohio
No statewide pet page found.
The agency's sitemap lists six pages and none of them is pet related. The state's ready.ohio.gov address redirects into the same agency site, whose preparedness text contains no mention of pets or animals, and the Department of Agriculture's only animal emergency page is about animal disease rather than pet evacuation.
State agency: Ohio Emergency Management Agency
Oklahoma
Official pet page: Toolkit: Pet Preparedness Month
A ReadyOK newsroom toolkit dated June 1, 2026. It carries the heading "Don't leave pets behind" and states, "If conditions are unsafe for you, they are unsafe for your pets too," and "Know where you'll go, how you'll transport them, and which hotels, shelters, friends, or relatives can accept animals if you can't stay home."
Worth knowing: This is a dated newsroom toolkit rather than a standing preparedness page, so treat it the way you would any news item: useful now, and not guaranteed to stay at that address.
State agency: Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management
Oregon
Official pet page: Disaster Preparedness for Animal Owners
The page states, "If local officials ask you to evacuate, that means your animals should evacuate too," and "Have two kits, one larger kit if you are sheltering in place and one lightweight version for if you need to evacuate."
Worth knowing: The page is hosted in the state's animal-health, feeds and livestock section rather than by the emergency-management department, and it addresses animal owners generally rather than pet owners specifically.
State agency: Oregon Department of Emergency Management
Pennsylvania
Official pet page: Include Everyone In Your Plan
The page's Pets section states, "Never leave pets behind when evacuating your home," and "While emergency shelters will accommodate people and service animals, they do not always allow pets."
Worth knowing: Pets are one section of a broader plan-for-everyone page rather than a standalone pet page, so scroll to the pets heading.
State agency: Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency
Rhode Island
Official pet page: Emergency Advice for Animal Owners
An index of guidance from the state environmental-management department, organized before, during and after a disaster, and described on the page as "Advice for animal owners facing a disaster, such as a severe storm or emergency evacuation," with separate links for pets, livestock, horses, and birds and exotics. The shelter-specific guidance sits inside the linked documents rather than on the page itself, so this is a starting point rather than an answer.
State agency: State of Rhode Island, Emergency Management Agency
South Carolina
Official pet page: Preparing Your Pets for Emergencies
The page states, "Most emergency shelters will not accept pets (with the exception of service animals) due to health reasons," and "Service animals are allowed on all means of public transportation and in all human shelters."
Worth knowing: This agency uses a .org domain, which we checked rather than assumed: the official South Carolina state portal links directly to pages on it, including the parent of this pet page.
State agency: South Carolina Emergency Management Division
South Dakota
No statewide pet page found.
South Dakota has no state-authored pet page, not even a PDF. The former emergency-management pages on the Department of Public Safety site all redirect to a single landing page, so every search result pointing at them is stale. We then crawled all ten subpages of the state's own preparedness campaign site: pets appear on three of them, and the one dedicated pet resource it links, labelled as a pet preparedness toolkit, resolves to a federal FEMA document rather than a South Dakota one.
State agency: Office of Emergency Management, South Dakota Department of Public Safety
Tennessee
Official pet page: Is Your Pet Ready for an Emergency?
The page tells pet owners to "Know which hotels, shelters, or friends will allow pets."
Worth knowing: A dated agency news post from June 16, 2025, published for National Pet Preparedness Month, rather than a standing page. The agency has no standing pet section, so this is the best official Tennessee source, and a news post can be taken down without a redirect. The agency was also renamed from Agency to Authority, which is why search results still show the older name.
State agency: Tennessee Emergency Management Authority
Texas
Official pet page: Emergency Planning for Pets
The page states "Most shelters, but not all, will have a location to shelter animals."
Worth knowing: The emergency-management division's own preparedness section has no pet page and points off-site instead. The page above is on texasready.gov, which we confirmed is run by the Texas Department of State Health Services from the page's own branding and its link back to that department.
State agency: Texas Division of Emergency Management
Utah
Official pet page: Preparedness for Pets and Livestock
The page states "Many public shelters and hotels do not allow pets inside."
State agency: Utah Division of Emergency Management
Vermont
Official pet page: Setting up your Municipal Emergency Pet Shelter
The page says the Vermont Disaster Animal Response Team developed this training manual "to provide vital resources to local emergency managers on how to accommodate families with pets during emergencies."
Worth knowing: Read this knowing who it was written for: municipal emergency managers, not pet owners. The manual itself was developed by the Vermont Disaster Animal Response Team, a nonprofit, and published by the state agency on the state domain. Vermont has nothing aimed at ordinary pet owners, and an older agency page about local animal planning that search engines still index is broken. It is still worth opening, because it tells you what your own town is being asked to set up.
State agency: Vermont Emergency Management
Virginia
Official pet page: Plan Ahead For Your Pet
The page states "However, if you are going to a public shelter, it is important to understand that animals may not be allowed inside."
Worth knowing: The emergency-management department's own preparedness section does not mention pets at all. This page belongs to the Virginia Department of Health.
State agency: Virginia Department of Emergency Management
Washington
Official pet page: Pet Preparedness
Worth knowing: The page is genuinely about pets and is published by the emergency-management division itself, but the word shelter does not appear on it anywhere, so there is no shelter statement to quote. Your county is the next call.
State agency: Emergency Management Division, Washington State Military Department
West Virginia
Official pet page: Pet Preparedness
The page states "However, if you are going to a public shelter, it is important to understand that animals may not be allowed inside."
Worth knowing: The page is hosted in the state's health-preparedness section rather than by the emergency-management division.
State agency: West Virginia Emergency Management Division
Wisconsin
Official pet page: Planning for Pets
The page states "Many public shelters and hotels do not allow pets inside."
State agency: Wisconsin Emergency Management
Wyoming
Official pet page: Pet Preparedness
The page states "Pet owners should be aware that public shelters for people cannot accept pets due to health and safety regulations with the exception of service animals who assist people with disabilities."
State agency: Wyoming Department of Homeland Security
How this directory was checked
Every URL on this page was fetched and read in July 2026, and each quote was matched against the live page text rather than copied from a search result. Where a state site refused an automated request, and seven of them do, the page was opened and read in a real browser instead. Where a page had moved, the entry records the destination it now resolves to rather than the address that redirects to it.
The nulls were checked as hard as the hits, because an unverified absence is just a page nobody looked for. For the states with no pet page we pulled agency sitemaps and crawled preparedness sections before concluding nothing was there, and the evidence for each is written on that state's entry. One of those states turns out to have a statewide preparedness site whose domain no longer resolves at all, and another links a pet resource that turns out to be a federal document rather than a state one. Both are recorded as what they are.
Related planning
- Do pet-friendly disaster shelters exist, what the PETS Act created, what intake requires, and how to find your county plan.
- Pet-friendly hotel evacuation, because no law makes a hotel take your animal either.
- Printable pet emergency plan, for writing down the county answers before you need them.
- Pet emergency binder, for the vaccination records a pet shelter asks for at intake.
- Pet emergency kit builder, for the crate, food and supplies you are expected to bring with you.
- Pet emergency playbooks, the hub for the hazard you actually face.
Free checklist
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Frequently asked questions
Does the PETS Act mean my state has to shelter my pet?
No, and this is the misreading that gets people hurt. The AVMA describes what the 2006 law actually does: it requires that state and local emergency preparedness operational plans address the needs of individuals with household pets and service animals following a major disaster or emergency, and it authorizes FEMA to provide rescue, care, shelter and essential needs for those people and animals. That is a planning and funding mandate aimed at governments. It is not a promise that the shelter nearest you will take your dog, and no state page in this directory says it is. Several of them say the opposite in plain terms.
Why does this tool link to state pages instead of just telling me my state rules?
Because a summary written by us would be the wrong thing to trust. Shelter operations are planned and run at county level, so there is usually no single state-level rule that answers the question you actually have, which is whether one specific shelter will take one specific animal. What a state page can tell you is the official framing and the official contacts, and that is worth reading in the state’s own words rather than in ours. So we quote each page verbatim where it says something about shelters, describe it plainly where it does not, and send you to the page itself.
What if my state shows no official pet page?
That happens in 6 states: Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio and South Dakota. We show the evidence for each one rather than substituting a generic link, because a plausible-looking substitute is worse than an honest gap. It does not mean nothing exists where you live. Sheltering is a county function, so the answer is with your county emergency management office and your county animal services or animal control agency. Call both, and dial 211 as well, which makes local disaster and human-services referrals nationwide.
Is this legal advice?
No. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. This page is a directory of official sources. Where it quotes a state page it quotes it verbatim so you can check the wording yourself, and every entry links to the page it came from. If you need to know your legal rights, particularly around service animals, take that to a lawyer or to the agency itself.
Are service animals treated the same as pets?
No, and several of the state pages here draw that line explicitly. Florida’s page states that service animals who assist people with disabilities are allowed in Red Cross shelters. Wyoming’s states that public shelters for people cannot accept pets, with the exception of service animals who assist people with disabilities. Connecticut’s draws the same contrast. Those are quotes from the state pages themselves, not our reading of disability law, and we are not going to give you one: whether a particular animal counts as a service animal, and what access that carries, is a question for the ADA and for the shelter operator, not for this directory. If you rely on a service animal, confirm the arrangement with the shelter or your emergency manager before you need it.
How current are these links, and what happens when one breaks?
Every link here was fetched and read during the July 2026 check, and each entry reflects what the page said at that point. State sites reorganize, and a few of the pages in this directory are dated news posts rather than standing pages, which is flagged on those entries because a news post can disappear without a redirect. If you find a dead link or a page that now says something different, tell us and we will fix the entry. Until then, treat the state page as the authority and this page as the index.
Does this cover Washington DC and the territories?
Not yet. This directory covers the 50 states. The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands are not in it, and we would rather say so than pad the list with entries we have not checked to the same standard.
Sources
- AVMA, PETS Act FAQ: what the 2006 Act requires of state and local emergency plans, and what it authorizes FEMA to provide.
- The 50 state pages listed above, each linked on its own entry. Those are the primary sources for everything this directory says about a given state, and each quote is verbatim from the page it is attributed to.
What this page does not tell you
It does not tell you whether a specific shelter will admit your animal, because no state page publishes that and we are not going to guess at it. It does not cover county-level plans, which is where the real answer lives and which vary within a single state. It does not cover the District of Columbia or the US territories. And it is not legal advice on service animals, disability access or any other right you may have: those questions belong with a lawyer or with the agency itself, not with an affiliate site.