Load Shedding and Your Pets: A Practical Checklist

Load shedding is a pet welfare issue in ways that are easy to miss. Most of it is manageable with ten minutes of preparation, and a few things genuinely matter.

Dogs and the noise

The bark that follows a power cut is usually about the alarm chirp, the sudden silence, or neighbours' generators starting. Sound-sensitive dogs learn to dread the moment. Leaving a battery radio on low, closing curtains, and giving a stuffed chew as the schedule slot begins gives the dog something to do other than listen.

The gate is the real risk

Most electric gates fail open or can be pushed open manually during an outage, and a lot of dogs are lost this way. Check what yours does without power, and if it can drift open, add a physical latch or chain that you use during scheduled slots. Make sure your dog's tag and microchip details are current — a lost dog with a current cellphone number on its collar is usually home within hours.

Aquariums and reptiles

Fish tanks lose filtration and heating. For outages up to a few hours in most of the country this is survivable, but a battery air pump is cheap insurance and keeps beneficial bacteria alive. Wrap the tank in a blanket to hold heat. Do not feed just before a long outage.

Reptiles that need basking heat are more sensitive. A snake or lizard dropping below its safe range for a full day is a genuine problem — a small gas or catalytic heat source, or a hot water bottle wrapped in towels under part of the enclosure, buys time. Never leave an unattended flame near an enclosure.

Medication and food

Insulin and some other pet medications need refrigeration. A closed fridge holds temperature for several hours; a cooler box with ice bricks holds longer. Do not open the fridge during a slot just to check. Wet food opened and left out in summer heat spoils quickly — refrigerate or portion smaller.

The small things

• Fill water bowls before the slot if you are on a borehole or a pump-fed supply.
• Keep a headtorch by the door so late-evening toilet trips into a dark yard are safe for both of you.
• If your dog is crated, do not crate through a long summer evening outage without a fan — enclosed spaces heat quickly.
• Save your vet's after-hours number offline in your phone, not just in a browser bookmark.