Don’t Leave Your Dog in the Oven

“WHAT?!” you exclaim. “That’s just stupid. No sane person would leave her dog in an oven.”

Ah, but lots of sane people do. No, not the oven in the kitchen; that’s reserved for psychopaths. I’m talking about the ovens that parked cars morph into in warm weather.

Just yesterday, in fact, I saw a pooch overheating in a parking lot. Just as I was about to take action, the young couple returned to the car. They gave their spotted dog a warm reunion greeting and took off. They obviously loved their dog but were unaware of the potential harm they’d put him/her in.

The weather outside doesn’t even have to be hot to be lethal. With windows cracked open, the temperature inside a car rises nearly 20 degrees in 10 minutes; in 20 minutes, it goes up nearly 30 degrees—and continues to rise.

Just think about it: It was 98 degrees outside yesterday when said couple pulled into their parking space at the grocery store and left Rover in the car (turns out, we passed the couple as we were exiting the store). Now do the math.

And it’s not just that you could potentially kill your pet. There are a whole mess of medical problems heat can trigger if your pet lives through the ordeal. Some states have laws against leaving unattended pets and children in cars; the Bluegrass State does not. Without a law, too many people remain uninformed.

Please help spread the word about this.

[Visit the British Columbia SPCA Web site for symptoms and treatment of heatstroke. Art is from the American Veterinary Medical Association.]

It’s Too Darn Hot

If you live where the temperature is sizzling, you could probably use some relief. Here’s a diversion to help you cool off: snow scenes.

Thanks to the authors of Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans, I learned that crows and ravens enjoy playing in snow. This first raven was caught on film for a PBS “Nature” special. (Warning: The first 14 seconds are titles and a gruesome wildlife dinner; start the video at :15 if you need to skip directly to the raven.)

For a different view of a Corvid at play, check out this amateur video of a crow sledding on a rooftop—with his/her own makeshift sled!

Pretty clever birds, don’t you think? I guess only people have birdbrains.