Nevada, according to a group called "Save Our Animals," still has laws against breaking into cars to "rescue" pets who might become overheated. So ooohhh! ooohhh! waaail! hand-wring! temperatures inside cars can reach 150 Fahrenheit in minutes during a Nevada heat wave...
--They can, mind you, under certain conditions. One reason for posting about this topic is to remind people out west that, while Virginia is basking in a cool July, youall--just in case you had not noticed it--are having a heat wave! Right. These Nevadans think youall need writers back east to tell you, because youall would not have noticed the heat drying your skins and cracking your lips and making your noses bleed. Yes, but (as the T-shirts used to say), it's a dry heat. Humans who drink enough water survive the dry heat in the Western States better than they do the awful humidity in the Eastern States. Cats and dogs, whose natural cooling system is less efficient than ours at best...you know. How stupid do Internet writers think pet owners are? We've been banging on about the need to provide water for your pet, even if your pet's natural response to a nice bowl of cool water is to tip it over, for years now. You already knew that.
We Easterners are not, in fact, reading a lot of news items about Westerners coming back to the cars they've left in the sun, with the windows rolled up tight, and finding the parched bodies of their dogs slumped over the drink holders where the dogs died trying to slurp up a last drop of melted ice from somebody's empty Slurpee cup. Left to ourselves, we'd guess that most if not all pet owners in the Western States had found ways to help their pets survive heat waves.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, where the kind of law "Save Our Animals" apparently want allows people to swoop down on cars the minute they see someone go into a building leaving a dog in the car, the Kingsport Times-News exposed the real motive behind many people's support for these laws: While adults in the family had to go into the county courthouse, a stressed-out primary school boy was left in the car, clinging to his pet pug dog. Windows were partly down, the car wasn't in full sun, and neither child nor dog was in danger until the boy went in to use the bathroom. Instantly a local "animal rescuer" pounced on the pug dog and took it in a shelter. The shelter promptly announced that its "adoption fee" was $400 (which happened to be the going rate for pedigreed pug pups from dog breeders, that year), and, when the parents tried to rescue the child's pet, told them they had to pay a "board fee" which would also be--surprisingly?--$400.
So as I look at this petition in aid of all those hypothetical dogs who might become "hot" in the sense of overheated, I'm wondering: If Nevada's Governor Sandoval heeds this petition, how many dogs will become "hot" in the sense of stolen? Petnapped for profit?
In Tennessee, public reaction to this dognapping story, boosted by many people's knowledge or belief that their pets had been stolen for "adoption" from the same shelter, led to...the closing of that shelter, yes. So now animals "rescued" in Kingsport are taken to a different one, where shelter staff can control which visitors get a chance to see which animals they've taken into their oh indisputably benign, humane, altruistic custody--meaning, of course, only visitors who shelter staff are sure will agree that $400 or $1000 is a fair "adoption fee" for an animal of unknown parentage who's likely to be killed if not adopted in a month?
Beware, Governor Sandoval. Beware, animal lovers everywhere. Though warehousing large groups of animals in racks of cages is harmful to the animals, needed improvements must include procedures that guarantee at least equal transparency--the right of anyone who's lost a pet to see which animals have been "rescued" and, if the pet was stolen, to reclaim it instantly, without paying a penny, and (ideally) with some recourse for damages from shelters with histories of receiving stolen pets.
This post really needs some Petfinder links, and at the time of posting there's an adorable grey-muzzled black Lab for adoption in Kingsport, but until that site has cleaned up its cookie mess we can't use Petfinder links any more. So here's an Amazon link to yet another "hot dog" pun:
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