YSK that if you live alone and have a pet, you should carry a card in your wallet to notify the appropriate people of your pet's existence.
Why YSK: There are a lot of people these days living alone with pets and if anything happened to the owner, others may not know to attend to the pet. If something happened to you, a coma, an accident, death, etc, your wallet would be the first place anyone would look for info about you and it would probably be the fastest way to bring attention to your small loved ones.
Oh wow. I can't imagine living so far from family. 30 mins was my maximum amount of drive time away from my family. I ended up getting a house that's 20 mins away.
I would say my first reaction to hearing my parent is dead/severely wounded would not be to look at home how the dog is doing but how my parent is doing or grieve.
After maybe 2 or 3 days I would maybe have a clear enough mind to think about a pet, that's not even mine.