I did, however, want to point out that not all dog-left-in-car situations are as straightforward as your example of a clueless guy getting his golf fix.

I witnessed a woman angrily call the police, get impatient for them to arrive, then extract a small dog through the partially open window of a car parked in the shade at a neighborhood pool.

The woman was well-dressed, and had an attitude. The pool is in a very nice part of town. The car in which the dog had been had seen better days, and was full of stuff.

The pool personnel (teenagers) repeatedly told the woman that they believed the car belonged to a homeless man who occasionally snuck into the facilities to bathe, and they dashed off to find him. He emerged, skinny as a skeleton, dripping wet, mortified, from the men’s changehouse.

The woman proceeded to verbally rip him a new one, and rebuffed all suggestions by others to maybe cut him some slack. As in: no harm, no fowl. She refused to hand the dog back to him until the police arrived.

I left before the police got there, because, frankly, the whole thing made me sick to my stomach, and there was a good chance that things were going to get even more disheartening once they arrived.

I earned a little something about rushing to judgment that day, and I just wanted to pass it along.

Can you imagine - a golf course? That poor dog could have been in the car four hours! I may be in CT, but we had 99+° temps this week. Kudos to the cop and kudos to my neighbor!

Yes, I know one of these days I will probably end up in cuffs because if I see an animal in a overheated car and the owner or police or animal control doesn’t arrive in time and I see the animal start to faint … I’m breaking in.

Just one more reason I love Ericka.

There can never be too much reminding about car and pets. I go nuts when i see someone has left their dog in a parked car, even if they are ‘just running in for a starbucks’. I wait by car (if I can’t find them in the closest store) and call the police, animal control and pretty much anyone else, so when the owner returns they see me steamed mad on the phone describing their car and license number.

I then ask them if they want to sit in the car without air while I ‘run’ in for a coffee.

Just yesterday I was in my car, the temp read 107 frickin’ degrees and that was just the outdoors!

Yes, I know one of these days I will probably end up in cuffs because if I see an animal in a overheated car and the owner or police or animal control doesn’t arrive in time and I see the animal start to faint … I’m breaking in.