Going together with your ‘good boy’ might bring you pleasant feeling of being accompanied with the most loyal thing you have ever known in this world. Well, the feeling seems like also mutual, since dogs look like enjoying being on a trip.
It also doesn’t need a long trip to make your dogs happy, just a short 5-minutes ride from your house to the convenience store is enough for them. That’s why, many people are taking their dogs whenever they go.
However, bringing your dog into convenience store might be a bad thing covered in sugar coating. While they seem happy to see fast-moving objects from your car’s windows, they have to struggle for their lives when the car stops, and you are not in it.
Especially when you turn off your car, for safety reason, and thus you turn the air conditioner off too. It is not about the loneliness and loyalty like Hachiko, but it is about the roasting temperature that you don’t experience while locking your car in the parking lot.
Yes, finally, here we are going to talk about leaving your dog in a car.
Just A Minute
Every years, many dogs are suffering from human’s mistake by leaving them in a car. In a 25 degrees Celsius temperature environment, the temperature in the car can drastically rise up to 37 degrees Celsius in just a minute, the temperature that is not so comfortable for human.
Yes, it doesn’t take long for the temperature inside your car to soar far higher than you can imagine. But before imagining about that quick rise of temperature, first you should start to imagine how high the temperature inside your car if the temperature of your environment is hotter than usual.
In this summertime, the temperature of your surroundings can reach up to 32 degrees Celsius. While inside your car, the temperature can be hotter than 42 degrees Celsius in less than 10 minutes and soar up to 60 degrees in one hour. It equals the temperature of heat waves killing humans all around the world.
So, let us ask you a question: how can you leave your most loyal and adorable ones intentionally in a human-killing box? Most people cannot answer it, since in such condition they do it ‘unintentionally’ and they only want to leave for ‘a minute’.
That ‘a minute’ is a matter of life and death for the dogs. Not only sudden death of heatstroke and dehydration, such high and sudden temperature rise can lead to damages to their bodies. So, not only by doing it once for a very long time, you are also killing your dogs softly by doing it frequently for short period of time.
The Damages
The only mechanism in dogs’ body to allow them cool down their body temperature is by panting. Unlike human, dogs cannot sweat out the heat. This is why they are more prone to heatstroke than human.
Since dogs are warm-blooded animals, their body temperature is always a bit higher than the temperature of surroundings. We have mentioned some dangerous numbers, but the temperature of a dog’s body is always slightly higher than that.
In a very hot environment, a dog’s internal temperature can reach up to 44 degrees Celsius. Upon reaching this number, the circulation will fail. Internal bleeding, kidney failure, and lack of oxygen in the brain start happening in this temperature.
The most commonly found damages in dogs that had been left in a car was brain damage. This is the result of heatstroke those dogs experienced, and it doesn’t take long for the dogs’ brain to be damaged from the heat.
Leaving your dog in a car for only 15 minutes is enough to give them permanent brain damage from heatstroke. The reason is, dogs cannot cool down their body temperature by themselves, and rise of temperature in the environment will result in rise of temperature to their inner parts.
The signs of heatstroke is actually observable. If you see your dog is panting heavily, having excessive salvation, shows signs of lethargy, it is possible that your dog is experiencing early stage of heatstroke.
Opening A Bit?
In this case, when you are leaving the dog in a tightly closed car, the dogs will not also able to get enough fresh air to regulate their own body temperature. It makes them more prone to heatstroke and any damages it can cause.
But it doesn’t mean that leaving your window open of a bit solves the problem. Slightly opened car windows cannot provide enough cooling or ventilation. It might give you more time to prevent any bad things from happening, but the additional time might just be seconds.
Providing a bowl of water will not help too, since the water will only help the dog to combat dehydration but not the heatstroke. The reason is simple, because the temperature in your car gets warmer, the water will get warmer too.
Let alone providing foods, it would be useless since the only thing that your dog want inside the hot car is fresh and cool air. The only reason they are eating the foods provided is a panic response to the life-threatening situation.
So, what can we do if we want to take the good boy for a ride? Make sure your dog always go wherever you go, since you are intelligent enough to make sure in a comfortable environment. Thus, as you feel comfortable your dogs will feel it too.
To Rescue
The problem is, what should we do if it is not our dog that is in a hot car? What if we see a dog being locked in a car in a hot day at some convenience store’s parking lot? The only answer is make sure the dog gets some help.
“Make sure you tell the police of your intentions and take photos or footage of the dog, as well as names and numbers of witnesses. The law states that you have a lawful excuse to commit damage if you believe that the owner of the property that you damage would consent to the damage if they knew the circumstances,” said RSPCA’s spokesperson to Huffington Post.
That is the most proper way to save the dog, instead of just breaking the windows. “Many people’s instinct is to break into the car to free the dog. But please be aware that, without proper justification, this could be classed as criminal damage,” they said.
Anyhow, just like popular opinion says, it is not safe to leave your dog in a locked car. If you still don’t believe it, you can test it out yourself at your own risk. Make sure to take a good care of your loved ones.
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