Emergency managers and stakeholders in rural communities have limited resources to travel to conferences and participate in disaster exercise scenarios. A team of University of Kentucky Extension professionals (Andrea Higdon, Roberta Dwyer, Melissa Newman, Kandice Williams) obtained a federal grant to help such communities examine their local animal emergency operations plans. LADDERS is a Local Approach to Discussion-Based Disaster Exercises and Readiness. This game-based exercise has real-world animal disaster scenarios for participants to solve. After a year of development and revisions, initial testing with take place with rural county-level participants. When feedback is complete, the game will be revised and ready to launch in 2020. LADDERS will help communities prepare for disasters that involve pets, service animals, domestic livestock and other species.