Tuesday 28 June 2011

Some like it hot. Others, tragically, get no choice

The weekend was an absolute scorcher: hotter, I read somewhere, than Athens, North Africa or the Caribbean! I'm not complaining, far from it - although I will say that yesterday had a rather unpleasant heavy humid feel to it. I got the distinct impression a thunderstorm was in the offing, and I was surprised one didn't materialize. I felt sorry for Raggs: she mooched around listlessly looking very hot and bothered with it all. Her fur is still nowhere near as long as it normally is but she's growing it back quite fast since we had her trimmed for the summer - a lot too fast to cope comfortably with temperatures approaching the nineties.

So I was very saddened to read
today's story of the two police dogs left to die in a hot car on Sunday morning. Every summer, despite the warnings put out by animal welfare organizations, dogs are left by irresponsible owners to suffer in cars which become like ovens in a matter of minutes, and the fact that a trained, experienced police dog handler could have made the same "mistake" is almost beyond belief. I have only what's been reported in the news to go on, so I've no idea what mitigating circumstances might be put forward to account for it, but the fact that apparently the officer had been censured once before for allowing the same thing to happen doesn't sit at all well with me. I'm not against the idea of giving people second chances - but surely it's part of the deal that you learn from your mistake and you don't screw up a second time? Despite the best efforts of the poor vet to save them, the two dogs got no second chance.

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