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Two dogs died trapped in a hot car while their owner attended a lecture on how to become a dog trainer.
Tom Rose, owner of The Tom Rose School in High Ridge, Missouri, was hosting a lecture on how to become a paid dog trainer. After the lecture, which ran for over an hour, one of his attendees returned to her vehicle to find the dogs she’d left in her parked car were dead.
“She had cranked up the AC as high as it would go, believing there would be no problem,” Tom Rose told the Post-Dispatch. “The car quit running and she didn’t get there in time.”
Rose suspects that the car ran out of gas during the lecture. With outside temperatures in the low 90’s, it would only have taken a few minutes for the Labrador retriever and German Shepherd to succumb to heat exhaustion.
“It was just a terrible accident,” Rose said. “The owner of the dogs was incoherent. It’s a horrible thing, and she was so upset.” Rose added that police were not called. “There was no reason to notify the police. There was no negligence involved. Just a very unfortunate accident.”
In Missouri, there are no laws that prohibit leaving dogs unattended in parked cars.
Every year, countless dogs die trapped in cars, even when it doesn’t even seem that hot outside, and even when the windows are cracked and the car is parked in the shade, or the air conditioner is left running. Even in seemingly safe conditions the temperature inside your car can soar to life-threatening heights in just a few minutes – about the time it takes to run into the post office or the coffee shop or the pet store.
Coincidentally, the Humane Society of Missouri earlier this week had released their tips for pet owners during hot weather. Their top tip: When it’s over 70-degrees outside, never leave your dog unattended in a parked car.
