Check Your Vehicles for Pets

[Outtahere]

Last night dh and I were at a friends house having dinner, she received
a call from another friend while we were there. This woman had come home
from grocery shopping yesterday morning, left the van door open, her van has a
button on the key ring to close the doors. She didn't see the dog climb in
the car, she had shut the door from the house without checking, her little son
found the dog later when they went to go out again that afternoon. The temps
here in the Boston area were in the low 90's so you know the poor dog didn't
last long. Please Please check your vehicles before you close the doors this
time of year, not only for your children but your pets as well.

[samclem]

outtahere,

A family we know had a similar tragedy. The mom took the dog with her in the car on a summer day in North Carolina, the dog went to sleep in the back seat on the long drive and the woman forgot about the pooch. They are animal lovers, she would never have left a dog in the car. She went in to work for a few hours, you can guess the rest.

Yep--I normally do a quick scan as I get out of the car. It has even saved me from a few crayon/M&M meltdowns.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Saw a car in the sams club parking lot the other day. Some butthead left their dog in the car, parked in the direct sun with the windows cracked an inch, in 105 degree weather. No water dish. 150 degrees in the car.

I know the last couple of details because I overheard the firemen who were about to break the side window and take the dog out of the car.

Accidentally locking a pet in the car is definitely a concern, especially this week. Its not just in the vehicle either. One of my buddies cats disappeared and a day later a guy called him from another town quite a distance off to say that he'd found his cat and since it had a tag with a phone number called him.

It took a while to sort out how the cat had covered such a distance in a short time, until mark and the guy figured out that they had the same landscaper and got serviced on the same day. Cat must have jumped into the trailer at marks house and jumped out at the next stop...

[REWahoo]

One hot south Texas summer when my daughters were young, their cat disappeared for 4 days. We searched the neighborhood and put up signs to no avail.

Coming home from work on Thursday evening, I parked my car in the driveway behind our tent camper. As I walked past the camper I heard a scratching sound coming from inside. I popped open the top and raised it just enough to get the bottom half of the door open. The cat jumped out, gave me a "Where the **** have you been!?" look, staggered up the driveway into the garage, and began madly lapping water from her dish. I had been in the camper to retrieve something on Sunday, and the cat had obviously gotten in without me seeing her.

I have no idea how she survived in that heat . She lost about a third of her body weight, but she did fully recovered from her experience. No surprise, she wouldn’t get within 10 feet of that camper again and ran to hide if we opened it up.

[lazygood4nothinbum]

this happens in south florida year round and, it seems, more with kids than with pets. we lose the kids in cars, in swimming pools, in retention lakes and to gun play. gays aren't allowed to raise them, but straights get to bake them. go figure.

[Scrooge]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lazygood4nothinbum we lose the kids in cars, in swimming pools, in retention lakes and to gun play.

What? Alligators don't get their share?

[ladelfina]

Scrooge, you are a riot! I love all your posts.

Something similar happened to us when we opened up the car doors in the driveway to clean out the cars; of course, Oscar thought it was time to go for a ride! Now he is a Bernese Mtn. Dog, and thus hard to overlook.. but a little chihuahua could have squirrelled away somewhere inside without out our noticing, and we might have shut him in unintentionally. Beware!

Also, watch out for cats, esp. in cool weather when they could conceivably seek out warmth near the engine. My old boss pureéd a rat that way: starting up his engine when the rat was under the hood!* :P

[Scrooge]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ladelfina Scrooge, you are a riot! I love all your posts.

Why, thank you! That's what happens when you put a recovering workaholic armed with caffeine on a slow-as-molasses-in-winter project at MegaCorp, Inc., where it takes months to do what should take hours at most.

[must keep posting, must stay productive...]

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scrooge What? Alligators don't get their share?*

apparently they're already well-fed on lady joggers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ladelfina Oscar thought it was time to go for a ride! Now he is a Bernese Mtn. Dog, and thus hard to overlook

you have one of my favorite dogs. i was thinking of replacing my wolfpup when he died (last year at age 12). i was considering a dog with a short lifespan as i didn't want to be tied down for long. also if i move aboard in 5 years i thought it best to train a dog on a boat from when it is just a pup. turns out anyway i couldn't get myself to replace my old buddy yet (i have a similar problem with lost love). i still have on the puter a berner picture i fell in love with while researching them. how cute is this?

[ladelfina]

LZG4NB.. sounds like you could use some companionship in your life.. Didn't anyone ever tell you that having a dog is a great way to meet guys? This breed stops everyone in their tracks. If you live in a hot, humid area , though, a Bernese would definitely suffer the heat.

If it doesn't work out, you still have the dog...

Just kidding.. Oscar is a big kid and part of the family. It was kind of ghoulish, your comment about the short lifespan...(!) We put him on a raw diet and hope he lives a good long life. He is 2.5 and still acts like a puppy.

A Bernese (this is true of other dogs, but more so for them..) really needs to have his "pack" around. Anyone single and working shouldn't leave him at home for 8-10 hours.. that's the sure way to a 'problem' dog.

This is my first dog. Somewhere I read that that to get over the loss of a dog you should get another of the same breed right away. Not sure if I would agree with that but perhaps so..


Not too many "baby pix" of Oscar, but hope you enjoy these:
#1:Foot in pic for scale
#2: Under the Tuscan snow

[astromeria]

Oscar is a handsome, well-behaved dog...who understands more Italian than I do!

[AltaRed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ladelfina Also, watch out for cats, esp. in cool weather when they could conceivably seek out warmth near the engine. My old boss pureéd a rat that way: starting up his engine when the rat was under the hood!* :P

Used to be a fairly common winter problem with cats in our part of the world in the days when fans were driven by fanbelts. Nowdays, less of a problem with thermostat controlled electrically driven fans. It mostly just takes away one of their lives when the engine starts up and they get the hell out of there.

[riskadverse]

Quote:

Originally Posted by REWahoo! One hot south Texas summer when my daughters were young, their cat disappeared for 4 days.* We searched the neighborhood and put up signs to no avail.* Coming home from work on Thursday evening, I parked my car in the driveway behind our tent camper.* As I walked past the camper I heard a scratching sound coming from inside.* I popped open the top and raised it just enough to get the bottom half of the door open.* The cat jumped out, gave me a "Where the **** have you been!?" look, staggered up the driveway into the garage, and began madly lapping water from her dish.* I had been in the camper to retrieve something on Sunday, and the cat had obviously gotten in without me seeing her. I have no idea how she survived in that heat .* She lost about a third of her body weight, but she did fully recovered from her experience.* No surprise, she wouldn’t get within 10 feet of that camper again and ran to hide if we opened it up.

Like you, I lost one of my cats for three days.* Lot's of times I solve problems in the middle of the night . . . I woke up with the idea that the cat must have followed me in under the house when I was doing a repair.* *I kept the crawl space well isolated to prevent skunks from setting up a home under the house.* I didn't really believe in my idea enough to do anything about it until the next morning though.* I opened up the entrance to the crawl space and the cat shot out.* Boy was he thirsty and hungry.* For some reason that cat never did meow until he got alot older.* *It amazed me that he stayed under the house all that time without making a sound.*

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ladelfina LZG4NB.. sounds like you could use some companionship in your life..* Didn't anyone ever tell you that having a dog is a great way to meet guys? This breed stops everyone in their tracks.... It was kind of ghoulish, your comment about the short lifespan...This is my first dog. Somewhere I read that that to get over the loss of a dog you should get another of the same breed right away. Not sure if I would agree with that but perhaps

well, oscar looks just wonderful, thanx for sharing. i fell in love with berners the first time i saw one many years ago. sorry about the lifespan thing. while i hope oscar lives long and prospers, berners are about as short lived as gr8 danes, my reason in the past for not getting one. but now i reasoned if i wanted to take off on a boat in 5-6 years or so a berner would have fit my (adjusted) schedule. hey, i can't help it if wolfpuppy died too soon. i was sure he'd be here to help me bury mom. boy, ya just can't count on anyone.

as to getting another hybrid wolf, wouldn't do it. totally loved my time with him. he was amazing, gorgeous and the most loyal pet i ever had but wow, what a handful. for the first couple of years he used to challenge me for my food. definitely was not all dog. wolfpup was also long hair (not as hairy as yours tho). he stayed in the air conditioning during summer days unless he was going to the beach. we only walked slowly & at night or very early in the morning when it was hot. but as soon as it dropped below 74 degrees he turned back into a puppy.

you're right about picking up guys though. and if you think puppies work good you ought to try my little nephew. what a great little scam i got going.

[Andre1969]

you're right about picking up guys though. and if you think puppies work good you ought to try my little nephew. what a great little scam i got going.

Really? I thought having a kid in tow would be good bait for picking up women, but I always thought for guys it would just scream "BAGGAGE" Shows how much I know, I guess. Oh, and like pets, kids don't do so well in the heat, so don't leave them in a closed up car, either!

As for getting the same breed of dog to replace one you had, I dunno if that would work or not. In some ways it would be nice, because it would remind you of your previous dog and the good times you had, but the new one might have a totally different personality and not live up to your expectations. Now if you're really in love with a certain breed of dog, I guess it's fine, but I've always had mutts, and never fixated on any particular breed. I do like German Shepherds, but I hear they tend to get leg and hip problems.

Or is that just big dogs in general? I have this big 110 pound brillo-pad looking terrier mix thing now, who's about 5 1/2 years old, sweet as can be, and acts like a big puppy sometimes. Seems fine so far, nice strong and healthy. Had him a year and a couple months. My one roommate, who works for the SPCA, brought him home because they couldn't place him and were going to put him down. He's aggressive around other dogs (or even images of dogs, horses, or other animals he sees on tv...don't try watching "Gunsmoke", "Little House on the Prairie", etc with him in the room), but fine with people and cats. He's big and clumsy though, and when he gets excited he'll bump into furniture and things in small rooms. And at the SPCA he didn't make a good first impression because with all the other dogs around, all he'd do is bark and growl and look like he was ready to maul you.

I have some pics of him somewhere. I'll try to post them when I get a chance.

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andre1969 ...I have this big 110 pound brillo-pad looking terrier mix thing now, who's about 5 1/2 years old, sweet as can be, and acts like a big puppy sometimes....

just kidding about the nephew. not real into using people, even for picking up guys. but i bet he'd give me that hot dad look.

a lot of big dogs get the hip thing. i suspect inbreeding but i don't really know. maybe it just depends on what gene happens to kick in. i was sort of hoping the wolf genes would keep my pup going for a long time, but he died right at the average age of a shepherd. no hip problems at all but i did have to reconstruct his legs early on when his knees blew out.

110 is big for terrier mix. i think the airdales run around 60 lbs. wolfpup was right at 100. big dogs rule.

[kaudrey]

Ok, I just have to say that those puppies are about the cutest things I've ever seen!

I have two cats, and although they are indoor cats, they get locked in closets/rooms all the time. They follow me in somewhere, I don't see them, I close the door, I walk away. Later, I either hear meowing or I just think, "I haven't seen Dakota/Tahoe in a while...".

Once, Tahoe snuck into the garage when someone was doing work on my house. It was in the morning, summer, and I didn't get home until night. Looked all over, couldn't find him. Finally thought to look there, and found a scared, thirsty cat hovering in a corner. His throat was so dry he could barely meow. I felt awful.

[Andre1969]

just kidding about the nephew. not real into using people, even for picking up guys. but i bet he'd give me that hot dad look.

Hmmm, now that I think about it, having a kid in tow might send a signal to potential mates that you are "taken", and therefore make the challenge that more enticing and intriguing? You know, how when you're not supposed to have something, it makes you want it all the more?

110 is big for terrier mix. i think the airdales run around 60 lbs. wolfpup was right at 100. big dogs rule.

Yeah, it shocked me too when I found out he was 110 pounds! I thought he was only about 70-80 pounds, until one day I picked him up and stood on the bathroom scale, and saw it shoot to over 300 pounds! No wonder my back would hurt whenever I'd pick that dog up! :

Oh, as for cats we have two of them. A black longhaired one named Baby that's about 7 years old now, and belongs to my roommate who works for the SPCA, and a white short-haired one named Kirstie who's about 2 1/2, and belongs to me. I named her Kirstie because when she was a kitten she had these kind of bent-back, pointy ears that made me think of Kirstie Allie in "Start Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". Somewhere along the line she picked up the nickname "Fenooter" (sp?), because we picked it up in one of those "Dumb and Dumber movies", thought it sounded funny, and started calling the kitten that!

Anyway, one other place you might want to check for critters hanging out is the clothes dryer. We leave the dryer door open sometimes, when we're too lazy to take all the clothes out. I've caught her hopping out of it on several occasions. I'd hate to one day turn that dryer on for just a few minutes to fluff something that's in there, and end up fluffing the cat!

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Hmm...when I had gabe out to the park last week I started getting suspicious when the third woman came over to coo at him and say "he's gorgeous...is he yours?". Then I noticed I had forgotten to put on my wedding ring that morning. So check! Babies are good opening gambits.

Speaking of babies...the brown ones about 120lbs now and usually comes equipped with 2' long slobber stalactites and the white one is about 80lbs and must sleep on top of me.

Leading locations of missing cats include under someones house, perhaps yours, and down the sewer drains. In my dads neighborhood theres only about a 3' drop from the opening behind the grate down to the pipes and its a lot cooler there in the summer (and dry) so cats can regularly be seen jumping down and popping back up a few hours later on hot days.

[ladelfina]

ooh for cats, I just remembered: not only closets but also drawers!

I remember meowing coming from a drawer my mom had closed without looking in it first (we were allowed to leave drawers open in a slovenly fashion and the cats thought they were just the place for a snooze).