A New Law For The Dogs
The Sacramento Bee reports on a new law just signed by Governor Brown. This law allows people who find a dog suffering in a car that's too hot to break the windows to free the dog without facing civil or criminal penalties. I actually support the law but wasn't aware this was an issue. I assumed that, due to exigency (emergency circumstances), anyone would be able to help a dog suffering from being left in a car that became overheated.
And some people don't really care much about their dogs. I recall some time ago a neighbor walking her dog across the street. One of the gals that worked at the group home across the street had just parked her car in front of that house and went to go inside leaving her dog inside the car with the windows rolled up. My neighbor walked by the car and mentioned to the girl it wasn't safe to lock her dog in the car like that. The girl replied, " Don't tell me how to treat my f******g dog", My neighbor just walked off. The dog stayed in the car.
It wasn't that warm that day so I didn't think the dog was in any danger, but sometimes people leave dogs in hot cars out of ignorance. I did myself once years ago.
Right before I moved up here I was living in Costa Mesa, CA. A guy was staying at our house with us. I forget his name but he had a beautiful Alaskan Malemute he named Chad. I had a husky dog, too, but nowhere near the size of Chad.
I took both dogs with me to the beach one day. For whatever reason I took my dog, Nika, with me down to the beach but left Chad in the car with the windows rolled up. It never occurred to me what might go wrong with that.
When I came back to the car, Chad had torn all the rubber seals out from around the windows. I couldn't figure out why, aside from thinking maybe he just wanted to go down to the beach with us so was trying to get out of the car. And this was in June in southern California.
I wasn't made aware, and had never considered, the heat build up in a car until fairly recently when news items and TV commercials pointed it out. That incident with Chad is one that haunts me to this day as I could have killed him. This new law might help others avoid the same situation I put myself in back then. There's much more awareness now of the danger of overheated cars to pets and kids, but some people just don't care.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 10:03 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
At least you learned!
as much as i hate to see any dog or cat suffer in a closed vehicle i dont like this .
now as you walk thru the mall christmas shopping and you get too many packages so you take them back to your car . load them in back seat , pet your pup and go back to shopping . you come back out only to find windows smashed , dog gone and christmas presents gone and cop asking who might have done this
thieves break into cars for a pack of smokes or 1$ on the seat and lots of dogs are there for security and outside temp has no affect .
like i said , i hate suffering animals in closed cars/trucks but think the bill opens up for smash & grabs
You can't leave anything of value in an unattended vehicle. To think otherwise is inviting theft.
..."you come back out only to find windows smashed ,"
I'm not too worried about overreaction. If anything, people underreact nowadays. I just can't see someone finding out about this- yes, it was in the news- and then going around using it as an excuse to break windows and steal from cars.
As an aside, one of the kids that was in juvenile hall when I worked there stole a car from the Bayshore Mall with the family dog still inside it.
Thank you Governor Jerry, you're a good mutt (for a human).
Glad it's now legal for carrying humans to help us poor doggies and babies to get us out of overheated cars that irresponsible humans leave us in.
Cats, well, they're on their own....
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