In hot car, ‘just a minute’ can be deadly for dogs

If you’ve ever left your dog in the car for “just five minutes” on a summer day, the officers of the Washington Humane Society want you to hear some cautionary tales.

“They all say the same thing: I never thought that this would happen,” says Mitchell Battle, deputy director of humane law enforcement at the Washington Humane Society. “I was only going to be gone for two minutes.”

But just running inside for a quick errand can be deadly to your pet — even if the weather isn’t all that hot.

In one fatal incident Battle responded to, the temperature was only in the 70s. A woman stopped at home, parked in the shade and came out after what she said was 15 minutes. By the time officers got there, the shade had moved, turning the car into what officer Eve Russell calls “a solar powered Easy-Bake oven.”   [more]