A contingency plan does not answer whether something will go wrong — it answers who does what, with which information, on the morning you cannot get out of bed.
The most important first
- Write the plan down. In England, a written emergency plan acceptable to the local authority is a condition of a breeding license, and it must cover fire, failure of heating, ventilation, aeration or filtration, and relocation if the premises become uninhabitable.
- Name a key holder who can reach the dogs quickly. English statutory guidance treats around thirty minutes’ travel as a reasonable distance, and requires lockable external doors and gates.
- Decide in advance who may authorize veterinary treatment on your behalf, and up to what point, when you cannot be reached.
- Rehearse it. The same guidance expects emergency drills to be tested annually, or as the fire risk assessment determines, and untested plans fail on small details.
- The plan exists so that the clinical articles can be followed under pressure: when to call the vet during whelping and afterwards and infection control and biosecurity for a litter.
Start from the scenarios that actually happen
Crisis planning goes wrong when it is built around the dramatic. Breeders imagine a fire and forget influenza. The scenarios that actually interrupt a kennel are mundane: you are admitted to hospital, or you have a virus that leaves you unable to stand for three days; a dog comes home from a show and brings something with it; a bitch whelps badly and the dam does not survive; the power goes off during a December whelping; a family emergency takes you two hundred kilometers away for a week.
A usable plan is therefore built scenario by scenario, each one answered with the same four questions. Who takes over. What they need to know. What they are allowed to decide. How they reach help. If you can answer those four for six plausible scenarios, you have a plan; if you can only answer them for a fire, you have a fire drill.
It helps to write the plan from the standpoint of the person taking over rather than your own. You know which bitch will not eat from a stainless bowl and which dog cannot be let out with the others. That knowledge is the whole value of the document, and it is invisible to you precisely because it is obvious.
If you are the one who is out of action
This is the most likely scenario and the least often planned for. Decide now who the first and second contacts are, confirm that both have agreed, and make sure at least one of them has physically been in the kennel, handled the dogs and seen the routine. A willing neighbor who has never been inside is not cover.
Three things need to be settled in advance rather than negotiated during a crisis. The first is authority: your veterinary practice will want to know whether the person in front of them may consent to treatment and to what financial limit, and a practice that cannot establish this will reasonably hesitate. Record the arrangement with the practice as well as in your own plan, so the question is answered before it is asked. The second is money: a stand-in should not have to pay for an emergency cesarean out of their own pocket, so arrange an account with the practice, a card held for the purpose, or a named person who can authorize payment. The third is duration. Cover for forty-eight hours is a different arrangement from cover for three weeks, and the second usually requires more than one person.
Where you are licensed or belong to a scheme, there may be further expectations. English statutory guidance requires sufficient competent people to be available, sets a minimum standard of no more than twenty dogs per person (ten adult dogs at its higher standard), and expects a plan covering the care of the animals even in the event that a license is suspended or revoked. Requirements of this kind differ by country and region, so check what applies where you live.
An outbreak inside the kennel
An infectious outbreak is the scenario where delay does the most damage, because the decision that matters is taken in the first hour. The plan should state, in advance, what happens the moment two dogs show the same signs: which room becomes the isolation area, which dogs are moved and which stay put, who handles the affected animals and in what order they are attended to, what cleaning sequence is used, and who is telephoned.
When a contagious illness is suspected, move the sick dog to isolation at once and call your vet for a diagnosis before you guess. Some infections, such as parvovirus, survive indoors for months and resist many household disinfectants, and dogs can shed the virus before they look ill and for days after they recover. Clean off all organic matter first, then use a disinfectant your vet confirms is effective against the suspected agent.
It should also state who you tell. Puppy buyers who have collected recently, people whose bitches have visited your dog at stud, the owners of dogs you have visited, and in some jurisdictions the authorities. France, for instance, requires a declared breeder to report abnormal mortality or repeated illness to the designated health veterinarian without delay, and to inform recent buyers of animals that were in contact with a contagious disease. Writing the list of people to notify while you are calm is far easier than composing it while disinfecting.
Movement restrictions belong in the plan too. Decide now how long you will suspend viewings, deliveries, matings and shows, and whether a planned mating goes ahead; in a real outbreak, keep puppies, visitors and dogs at home until your vet advises otherwise. Those are the decisions most likely to be made badly under commercial pressure, and a decision made in advance is harder to argue yourself out of.
A dam who dies, or a litter without a mother
This is the scenario that most rewards preparation, because it is survivable only if the first six hours go well. Hand-rearing a litter means feeding at least every four hours, around the clock, in the first weeks — your vet will advise on frequency and amount — and no single person can do it alone without the quality of care falling. The plan therefore needs names, not intentions: two or three people who have agreed in principle, and at least one who knows how to tube feed or is willing to be taught before the need arises.
The practical preparation is equipment held in advance. Milk replacer within date, feeding bottles and teats, tube-feeding equipment if you are trained to use it, a reliable heat source with a thermostat, scales, and a written feeding and weighing schedule. Published figures underline why this matters: in a study of nearly five thousand live-born puppies, a third of neonatal deaths occurred within the first two days, and mortality in puppies of very low birth weight was far higher than in those of normal weight. The window in which intervention changes the outcome is short.
Chilling kills orphaned newborns faster than hunger. Keep the puppies’ environment at about 85–90 °F (29–32 °C) for the first few days, lowering it gradually to about 80 °F (27 °C) by the end of the first week or so and about 72 °F (22 °C) by four weeks; a newborn’s own body temperature is normally about 95–99 °F (35–37.2 °C) in the first week. A puppy that feels cold should be warmed slowly, never fed while cold, and seen by your vet. After every feed, gently stimulate urination and defecation with a damp cloth for about the first two weeks. Weigh each puppy daily, and ask your vet about feeding frequency and how much to give.
Fostering onto another lactating bitch is sometimes possible, and sometimes the best option, but it depends on a bitch being available at the right stage of lactation and on a careful introduction. If there is anyone in your breed network with whom such an arrangement is realistic, agree the principle before you need it and put the telephone number in the plan.
Fire, power failure and an uninhabitable building
These are the scenarios regulation tends to address, and the requirements are a reasonable template even where they do not apply to you. The English licensing conditions require the written emergency plan to cover steps to protect people and animals in case of fire, the breakdown of essential heating, ventilation, aeration or filtration systems, and other emergencies, together with how the dogs will be removed if the premises become uninhabitable and an emergency telephone list including the fire service and police.
Power failure deserves particular thought in a whelping kennel, because a heat source that fails for six hours in winter will kill neonates. Decide what the fallback is: a generator, hot water bottles and insulated boxes, or relocating the litter to a heated room in the house. Test whichever you choose before the season in which you will need it.
Relocation is the part most plans skip. Where would fifteen dogs go at eleven at night, who would transport them, and in what. Many boarding kennels will not take unvaccinated puppies or a nursing bitch, so ask in advance rather than on the night. In practice the answer is usually two or three private arrangements agreed in advance, plus crates and a vehicle that can be loaded quickly. Write the addresses down.
Keys, authority, documents and money
A plan fails on logistics more often than on judgment. Every scenario above depends on the same handful of practical items: someone who can get in, someone who can decide, somewhere the information lives, and a way to pay.
Keys and access should be arranged so that a named key holder with access to all the animal areas is reachable within a short journey; the English guidance treats thirty minutes as reasonable and mentions keeping a competent person on site at all times as a higher standard. Documents matter as much as keys. Microchip numbers, registration details, vaccination records, insurance policy numbers, current medication and the location of the records themselves should be in one place a stranger can find, which is what the emergency plan template is for. Your kennel record templates are the source; the emergency page is the extract.
Leave a signed letter with your stand-in confirming that they may act for you, and lodge a signed veterinary treatment authorization with your practice, so care is not delayed while someone tries to reach you.
Rehearsal, review and the version on the wall
An unrehearsed plan is a document, not a plan. Walk through it with the person who would take over, in the kennel, for twenty minutes: let them find the food, the medicines, the lead for the dog who pulls, the records and the fire extinguisher. Every rehearsal uncovers something, usually a telephone number that has changed or a routine that exists only in your head.
Review it on a fixed date each year and after any change of dog, medication, veterinary practice, telephone number or building. Then print it, date the version, put one copy where the dogs are, one in the vehicle and one with the key holder. Business continuity planning of this kind is treated by veterinary professional bodies as central to an animal facility’s survival in a disaster, and the planning has value even if the disaster never comes: the same document makes an ordinary week away from home much less fragile.
In the US, breeders licensed under the federal Animal Welfare Act must have a contingency plan that lists likely emergencies, the actions for each, who decides and what equipment is needed, train staff on it and review it at least yearly. England’s licensing guidance asks for drills annually or as the fire risk assessment determines. Whatever your rules, put a date on each review.
In practice
A breeder was taken to hospital unexpectedly during the fourth week of a litter. Her plan named two stand-ins, both of whom had spent time in the kennel, and gave the practice written authority for either of them to consent to treatment up to an agreed limit against an account already in place. The printed page on the wall listed each dog with its microchip number, its feed and its medication, and said where the records were kept. One detail failed: the emergency clinic number on the page was a year out of date and routed to a practice that had merged. The stand-in lost twenty minutes finding the right number for a puppy that was going downhill. Everything survived, and the first thing the breeder did on returning home was add a dated review line to the top of the page.
(Illustrative, composite scenario.)
When to call your vet
- More than one dog shows vomiting, diarrhea, coughing or fever, or a dog dies without an obvious cause.
- A puppy is cold to the touch, weak, not nursing, or loses weight.
- An orphaned or rejected litter: call the same day for a feeding and care plan.
- A dam is unwell after whelping: temperature above 103 °F (39.5 °C), foul discharge, or not caring for the puppies.
- Dogs were exposed to smoke, heat or flood water, or the kennel lost heating or ventilation for several hours.
- If in doubt, call — your vet would rather hear from you early.
Work on it
A few minutes here will teach you more than re-reading the article.
Ask yourself
- If I were admitted to hospital tonight, who would be in my kennel by morning, and have they ever handled my dogs?
- Could that person authorize a cesarean section and pay for it without reaching me?
- Which of my routines exists only in my own head, and would therefore simply not happen?
Find out & check
- Ask your veterinary practice what they require in order to accept consent for treatment from someone other than you, and record the arrangement in writing with them.
Do one thing
- Walk one named stand-in through the kennel for twenty minutes this month and write down every question they ask, because each one is a gap in the plan.
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Sources & further reading
- The Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018 — Schedule 2, paragraph 10. legislation.gov.uk
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs — Dog breeding licensing: statutory guidance for local authorities. gov.uk
- Service-Public.fr (France) — Breeding of dogs and cats: what are the regulations?. service-public.gouv.fr
- USDA APHIS Animal Care — Tech Note: Guide to contingency plans for emergencies. aphis.usda.gov
- American Veterinary Medical Association — Pets and disasters. avma.org
- MSD Veterinary Manual — Canine Parvovirus. msdvetmanual.com
- Mugnier A, Chastant-Maillard S, Mila H, et al. (2020), BMC Veterinary Research 16:354 — Low and very low birth weight in puppies: definitions, risk factors and survival in a large-scale population. link.springer.com
- VCA Animal Hospitals (Weir M, Williams K, Ward E, DVMs) — Raising orphaned puppies. vcahospitals.com
Where evidence is limited, recommendations rest on established practice and expert judgment, and may be updated as knowledge develops. The licensing conditions and statutory guidance cited here apply in England (with France and the US as further examples) and are used as a worked example of how such requirements are framed; emergency planning duties, licensing conditions and reporting obligations differ between countries and regions, so confirm what applies where you live with your own licensing authority and registry. Decisions about delegated consent to veterinary treatment and about payment should be agreed with your own practice, and nothing here is legal advice.
Next steps
- Read next: Emergency plan template.
- Related: Hygiene, quarantine and disease control.
- Return to the area hub: Running a kennel: operations, records and resilience.
- Everyday risks to plan for: heatstroke and poisoning in the kennel and home.