Calls about animals left in hot cars have spiked over the last three years, despite greater public awareness of how dangerous it can be for pets, Victoria Animal Control says.
On Wednesday about 3 p.m., Victoria police and animal control removed three dogs from a van parked in direct sunlight outside Mayfair Shopping Centre, with temperatures in the vehicle rising to at least 50 C.
Thomas Mosig was about to get in his car when he spotted a chihuahua, a Shih Tzu and a black Labrador inside a van. The chihuahua was barking, the Shih Tzu appeared to be panting and the temperature outside was about 27 C, he said.
Mosig went inside the mall and alerted a security guard, who paged the car’s owner twice.
After about 20 minutes and no response from the dogs’ owner, the security guard called Victoria police.
Const. Matt Rutherford said that, when he arrived, the window was open about a foot, enough for him to reach in and unlock the van. “There was a tiny bit of water in the car from a melted ice cube,” he said.
Animal control officer Matt Brownlee was called to the scene to deal with the dogs and found the temperature in the van was 50 C, and that was 10 minutes after the doors had been opened. Brownlee gave the dogs water, then took them to the pound.
By the time the owner came out, police and animal control had left and Mosig told the woman what had happened.
The owner retrieved her dogs from the pound and had to pay a $360 impound fee.
She could have been fined up to $250, but Brownlee chose instead to educate her about the dangers of leaving pets in a car on a hot day.
There are signs on the doors of Mayfair mall warning people not to leave their dogs in vehicles.
“It’s really surprising, considering the media attention and social media attention … that people aren’t getting the message,” Rutherford said.
Flashdance star Jennifer Beals came under fire and made international headlines for leaving her German shepherd in her car in Vancouver on Wednesday.
Victoria Animal Control Services, which covers Victoria, Esquimalt and Oak Bay, has responded to 130 calls about animals in hot cars so far this summer, which is poised to eclipse the 144 such calls last summer. Animal control responded to 120 calls in 2013, a jump from 74 in 2012.
“So it is going up quite a bit,” Brownlee said.
But Saanich police Sgt. Todd Bryant said increased public awareness might be the reason calls are going up, as people have zero tolerance for any dog left in a car on a hot day.
“People are very sensitive to it. We get lots of calls,” Bryant said.
Between October 2009 and October 2014, Saanich animal pound responded to 90 calls about dogs in distress, but in none of those cases did the pound officers have to extricate the dogs, Bryant said.
Annie Prittie Bell, branch manager of the Victoria SPCA, said even with water in the car or a window left partially open, “you’re looking at oven-like conditions.”
“Animals don’t sweat like us,” she said. “None of them can cool down to the degree they need to inside a hot vehicle.”
Brownlee said it’s important for the public to call animal control if they see a dog in a car that appears to be in distress.
“It’s not appropriate to take your dog out when you’re going to leave them for any period of time,” he said. “The best place for a dog when it’s this hot is at home where they have some reprieve from the heat.”
