It is surprising, to me, that dog owners still leave their pets inside their cars with the windows closed on hot days. The amount of publicity that has been disseminated about dogs getting heatstroke and dying in hot cars is almost countless. It is discussed over and over again and in any case it is common sense. People know that when they get into their car after it has been parked several hours on a hot day that the car is roasting hot. Why, therefore, do they leave their dogs inside the blinking thing expecting everything to be all right?
I recently wrote about heatstroke and cats. Global warming is happening in my opinion. It is warming up the planet and we are getting some weird and freakish weather. We are consistently getting very hot days in summer which I don’t recall happening before. Therefore there is a greater chance for companion animals to suffer from heatstroke under a number of circumstances the most common with is being locked inside a car.
I was prompted to write this because there is a story in the Daily Star about police being Cclled to a car with two dogs inside near Looe beach in Cornwall, UK. They were trapped inside the car on an incredibly hot day when temperatures reached 35°C. Onlookers became very concerned but were no doubt worried that if they broke a window there’d be prosecuted. They had to call the police.
Photographs were uploaded to social media and shared while a desperate search took place to find the owner of the vehicle. We don’t know whether they were found but some people are pressing for charges to be filed.
Comment: it is certainly an act of animal cruelty and technically they could be charged under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. I doubt whether they will. We don’t know the condition of the dogs after they were rescued.
Heatstroke is a killer and there have been numerous instances of dogs dying in the back of cars under these conditions. Please be aware of the possibilities.
