Don't forget about your pet in the car

11:35 AM, May 21, 2008

With summer coming, pet owners are being reminded that it is not only stupid and cruel to leave a pet in a locked car, it’s also illegal.

A 2007 state law makes it a crime to leave an animal unattended in a vehicle under conditions -- hot or cold -- that could endanger the animal’s health.

A demonstration Tuesday at the Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe showed how the temperature inside a closed vehicle can quickly reach the dangerous, even lethal, level. In one demo, the temperature shot up from 78 degrees to 110 degrees in six minutes. Within half an hour, the temperature can reach 137 degrees, as shown by the thermometer above.

A dog runs a normal temperature of 101 to 102 degrees. At 108 degrees, veterinarians say, the heart, brain, liver, kidneys and intestinal tracts begin to break down.

Puppies, larger dogs or dogs taking medication are particularly at risk, officials said.

-- Tony Perry

Photo: Helen Woodward Animal Center

Posted by Francisco Vara-Orta on May 21, 2008 in Pets | Permalink

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Comments

A lady in Chino Hills last Saturday left her two dogs in the car for over 1/2 hour. At 10:30 a.m. it was already in the 90s. One dog was barking obviously in distress. I along with another lady were in the process of contacting the police department when she came our of Wal Mart with her 4 kids. I said to her lady you can't leave you dogs in the car in this heat. I told her I was on the phone calling the police department. She got very defensive and threatened to call the police and file harassment charges against me. I said go ahead I will wait here and we will see who the police arrest. I told her to sit in her car without the AC and see how long it is before she gets hot. She left. Stupid idiot.

Posted by: Jill Medina | May 21, 2008 at 12:09 PM

Our Bloggers

Tony Barboza, a Colorado native who moved to Southern California as a college student, is a reporter for The Times' Orange County edition, where he covers the beaches and the city of Irvine. A lifelong animal lover, he lives with his 2-year-old cats Mario and Vincent.

Carla Hall, a general assignment reporter, has covered animals and their people across the state of California (and occasionally beyond). She chronicled the Oakland Zoo's attempts to hand-raise a baby African elephant and followed the Los Angeles Zoo's L.A.-born gorilla Caesar on his trek to a new home at Zoo Atlanta several years ago. Preferring to get up close and personal with her subjects, she once fed corn cobs to the L.A. Zoo's now-deceased elephant Gita (no connection between her demise and the feeding) and spent hours interviewing pit bulls at the Laurel Canyon Dog Park. Currently animal-less, Carla still insists on plying people with anecdotes about her cat Arnold, who died 10 years ago.

Francisco Vara-Orta has been a staff writer at The Times since 2006, writing about birth control for squirrels in Santa Monica and pigeons in Hollywood, the hidden culture of TV pet adoptions and puppy theft. Although he grew up with pet dogs, he realized the sad realities of neglected animals after spending a summer in high school volunteering at a local shelter. Francisco, an L.A. transplant, graduated from St. Mary's University in his hometown of San Antonio, where his dog Diego now keeps his mother company.

Questions? Comments? E-mail us at unleashed@latimes.com.