How Many Dogs Die in Hot Cars?
Every year we hear of dozens and dozens of dogs suffering and dying in hot cars in the media, but how many animals does this happen to every year? The answer is way more than we think!
After two hours in a hot car in Sacramento, CA four dogs are dead – the last one, Della, is shown here. She was suffering from kidney failure and had been in intensive care for 18 hours. But this type of tragic incident is entirely preventable!
The Sacramento, CA region received 50 calls to 911 about dogs left in hot cars in 30 days in June 2014. On an average summer, the Central PA Humane Society says they’ll respond to 50-60 calls for dogs left in hot cars. The BC SPCA said, it responded to 228 calls to rescue dogs in distress, which had been left in hot cars in June 2014. From June to Aug 2013, the Davis County Animal Care and Control in Salt Lake City, UT got 150 calls about dogs being left in cars.
A shelter in Nevada reported 70 calls in one weekend and animal control officers in Spokane, WA said they average 12 calls a day. A veterinarian in Jasper, AL said he sees 5 or 6 cases of heat-related illness in dogs in his office each summer, but stresses that there is no way to really know how many animals are impacted. The numbers could easily be in the thousands.
Think about this: If we even take the low end of the numbers, say that animal shelters and control agencies across the US are all getting only 1 or 2 calls a day and there are about 13,600 community animal shelters nationwide… that’s 13,600 to 27,200 dogs being left in hot cars each day across the USA! And that’s not even including all the 911 calls to the 582,000 Police Departments across the country.
This issue is much bigger than we think.
My Dog is Cool is in the process of collecting hot car incidents and compiling a report, so keep checking back on our progress. In the meantime, if you know of an incident, fill out a hot car incident report and let us know so that we can make sure it gets added to our database.