Dogs riding in cars...and one flew out the window

Dear Ollie,

Please print this letter as a warning to all dog owners who love to take their pets for rides in the family car. I am a responsible dog owner and I love my three dogs very much. All of them love to accompany me on short trips in the car. I know that when the temperature is over 70 degrees, even with the windows down, dogs can quickly succumb to heat stroke and die if left as little as ten minutes in an enclosed car. Even with the air conditioning on, things can happen, like the car stalling or running out of gas. Last Thursday, the weather was absolutely   beautiful so I took my three dogs (one puppy and two adults) to Deep River Park in Hobart for some healthy exercise. They love to chase leaves and just enjoy walking the trials. Yes Ollie, I do pick up their dog poop to make the walks pleasant for those who walk later. After we walked and played, I loaded the three critters in the back of my van and took off for home which is less than three miles away. The dogs have a large dog seat in the back and are able to jump off and get water. They are not strapped in and don’t wear any kind of harness. I have always felt that they were safe because the large dog seat is fastened to the car and was fabricated from heavy metal with a lot of crash resistance. Well, I must admit when I got home, I opened the back of the van’s hatch, pulled stuff out and left the three dogs inside until I had free hands to carry them out. My dogs weigh 23 pounds, 15 pounds and the puppy is six pounds. There is a fall of more than two feet from the door at the back of the van to the driveway. When I came back out to the driveway to get the three dogs, I was dumbfounded to find only the two adult dogs waiting to be transferred into the house. The little guy had vanished. I was in a panic. Did he jump off the tailgate to chase a squirrel? In my haste, did I leave him at the park? I could not imagine where he could be. I called for him in the neighborhood and there was no puppy. Then, I drove back to Deep River Park thinking I left him there, but I knew better.  Of course, he was nowhere to be found. Then I telephoned the Porter County Shelter and they wrote up a lost dog report. In tears, I phoned the Hobart Humane Society. They had a little puppy in custody matching my dog’s description. A kind couple had brought him in after they witnessed him being “thrown out of the back window of a car traveling on County Line Road”. “I’ll be right there,” I said, and I was. Apparently, the back windows of the van were open enough for him to fall out when I turned from the park south on County Line Road. He must have been perched on top on the dog seat and lost his balance. He had a few scrapes but wasn’t any worse for the experience. I want to thank the staff at the Hobart Humane Society for their caring and professionalism and the kind young couple, who stopped their car, picked him up off the road and took him to the shelter. If they hadn’t taken the time to be concerned, the little puppy could have been hit by another approaching car. “All is well that ends well,” Shakespeare wrote. I am thankful that there are good people in this world who care about animals and they happened to be there when I made a very dumb mistake.

Signed,

Dumb, Dumber & Dumbfounded

 

Dear Dumbfounded,

You have said it all.

 

Remember, rescuing one pet can’t change the world…but the world will change for that one pet