Dog Dies When Owner Leaves it Home Alone to Attend Competition

I am NOT being the devi's advocate. I think it is scary that from these details given people are this sure of their positions. I think it's scary a woman is facing jail because she left a dog alone for 24 hours, a time period that a dog should reasonably be able to survive 100% of the time. The relative risk of 24 hours under normal circumstances compared to the relative risk of 5 hours under normal circumstances is pretty much equal. that people can't understand that is scary.

I think it is scary that there are people that think 80 degrees is stifling and too hot for a dog. I think it is scary that people think it is just and acceptable that someone is forced to seek care from a traditional vet for all services because they fasted their dog.
I think it is scary that everyone thinks that people that dont' live just like them deserve to be labled criminals if something unfortunate happens to them.

I think it's scary that time after time after time, an article, severly lacking in any substance or details gets posted and everyone instantly jumps in judging and condemning and never stopping to think for even a second. Seriously this happened in April in Fl, temps 80 for a high, low 60's for lows, dog kept in a commercial building and people are talking like she baked her dog in a car. Like it's even remotely similiar.


mine too, but 24 hours laying around in 80 shaded degree temps isn't a "you're screwed" scenerio. It's a "that sucks, i'm sure you'll drink more water when I get back" scenerio. Definitely not nice, but not life threatening under normal circumstances. if it was, there would be dogs dying by the tens of thousands every summer.

sure it's wise to have someone come check on your pets, but I hardly think it's criminal to be gone fo 24 hours without it.

and Sheldon Cooper is a character on Big Bang Theory who has real trouble catching sarcasm when he sees it.

I do not believe, for a minute, people are jumping to judgement without thinking about it. I believe her character, the condition of her dogs, the manners of her interactions, and the discrepancies in her number of dogs have been brought up by many for the "character analysis" portion of judgement.

I think it all depends on the type of dog and health of dog. We have a bulldog at my work that if he at all panics his body temp raises to dangerous heat stroking levels during summer. When we have him at bootcamp he is working on calming and self soothing behaviors to manage this issue and also we keep a kiddy pool around for times of need. Most dogs aren't at all like Bob but there are exceptions to every rule and for all we know a sickly (or allergy ridden, anxious, aggressive double coated spitz) didn't handle heat well.

I don't believe it was the time but the conditions that are leading the court in this case.

I do worry about any attacks on natural living but I still believe if you're going to fast a dog, do it when you're around to watch for distress and to cover yourself, but that could easily be hindsight. I do also wonder what other natural aspects of ownership are not being mentioned, does she vaccinate at all? even the legal requirements?

I think "people who don't live like them are criminals" is a bit dramatic and fantastical. I don't have any chain spot dogs but I have no beef with them as long as they're regularly interacted with and checked on. I also think people who buy and sell/place dogs like trading cards are ridiculous and unfair to their dogs, however if the dogs are finding good, stable homes then it's no skin off my back and not commonly worth my effort in arguing. I also believe those who feed only chicken backs because that's all they can access and the dogs look good enough on it are nuts. Above all none of these imo (and tons more) are things I would do on purpose but none of these (and many more) are by any means criminal.

I don't think it's criminal to be gone for 24 hours, I think it's stupid to plan to do so. I think the court case is more about the conditions the dog was left in than the time limit. I personally think the time of leave (with circumstances be void) is wrong but I also do not believe it is criminal pending you provide as much fool proofing you can offer and 1-4 "small" (which is relative) bowls of water alone is not fool proof enough for my dogs.

I just wanted to reiterate this, as I agree 110%.

There was a neighbor dog I used to "dog sit" before they moved away. He was an older adult Dalmation. The owners would go on a week long vacation over the summer and had me stop by to feed/water the dog. They kept him loose in the garage with a dog door to the yard and they had my stop by once every day to give him fresh food and water. That was it.
I recently watched a family who I baby sit for's Bichon while they were out of town for a day. When I wasn't there with him, he was crated without access to water, food, or a bathroom. They only wanted me to stop by twice, so he was crated for an eight hour block of time, then over night, then another eight hour block of time with me providing food, water, and exercise between "shifts", so to speak.

Is that wrong? Negligent? Abusive? The dogs got along just fine. I did feel bad for the Bichon, but he was an older guy that was used to being crated 8-10 hours a day while the family was at work and he wasn't phased by it in the slightest.

In all honesty, if I had to be away for a day (like, Saturday morning to Sunday morning or something to that effect) and I couldn't find a petsitter, I wouldn't be too freaked out about leaving the dogs outdoors in the kennel with a big bucket of water/shade/shelter/food (although they have missed meals before and are still around to complain about it). Would I like to do it? No. Would I feel a billion times more comfortable if I had someone checking up on them at least once while I was gone, more preferably every 6 hours or so? Yes. Would I think that I was neglecting them if I did leave them without someone checking up on them? No.

This, too.

If it would bother you why would you do it just to go to a dog show?

I can say, my dogs have NEVER been left unattended for more than 8 hours, and that would even be pretty rare.

I think having a dog that lives outside , has access to water is a little different than leaving a dog INSIDE a shop or home where the AC got turned off.

Granted she had no idea that AC would get turned off, but she obviously didn't take into consideration the dog may tip over the water dishes, and where was the dog supposed to go potty? On the floor??

Even tho the above scenerio may not have resulted in the death of the dog, BAD decision on the owners part.

Does everyone here have A/C?
Does everyone here have dogs that require whole bowls of water in an 8 hour period?

I'm just curious because I have neither. My concern with the concept of leaving my dog alone for an extended period of time; is the potty aspect. That truly is unfair to the animal.

No food is not unfair (my dogs fast too; and I don't consult my vet about it), no water is trickier; maybe this dog needed more than what he was allotted; but my dogs don't drink all day and sometimes won't drink until the next morning; so there is wiggle room there. Heat at 80', and he had a fan? I'm pretty sure that's the temps my guys were in all summer, we don't have A/C.

So I am very curious as to the logistics of the event; not the punishment: as what was posted; the no food/water/ ability to not **** on oneself is pretty explicit in the law section posted; but the actual logistics of why this dog died. That would concern me.

Yes, and I would have nothing to do with that family. the Bichon may have looked fine, but I am sure it was sore from not being able to really stretch it's legs in that long.

Yes, I do have A/C. Then again, I also have ferrets, where A/C is a requirement. I don't know how much my dog drinks, I don't measure.

You also live in Ontario, with short-haired dogs (going by your siggie). To them, 80s is nothing compared to an Akita.

No food for that long is, by law, unfair. No matter if the dog died, or WHY the dog died, the dog was not given the very minimum effort that is required to keep a dog. Who knows if she has done it before and it was fine, or she just didn't get caught, it just so happened that this time the dog was found dead so she was caught. I'm not saying she is the only one who does it. But guess what. She was caught. She should have expected it. People have gotten like this on people for far less, but they were not caught so it did not matter.

I am so confused , who is this person ? A member? I have been gone so feeling kinda out the loop.


Anyway , to each there own , i would leave a dog for 24 hours in a pinch , but anything beyond that would require at the least a check up feed and pee break. but was the akita human aggressive? is that the reason no one could go check?

NEVER MIND. I figured it out.

That's what I mean, though...that situation obviously didn't happen every day, but it was no different than them pulling a long shift at work, getting home late and only being able to have the dog uncrated for an hour or two before bed, then getting up in the morning and letting the dog out for an hour or two before leaving again to go to work all day (where they would be getting home at a normal time period and the dog would not be crated).

There were times when Sadie was a puppy that she was crated in the morning for four hours, had a quick pee break due to being a puppy, crated again for four more hours, had another quick pee break due to being a puppy, and then was crated until evening (probably another four hours) due to us running errands that she was not able to attend. Then we'd get home, she'd have maybe an hour of playtime/running around/exercise/stimulation and then it was back in the crate for bed.
Now, that happened very infrequently and we tried our best to not have it happen at all, but it did happen and she wasn't the worse for wear for it.
And although I never crated Chloe, there were days where - like with Sadie - we couldn't be home. Only instead of being in a crate with potty breaks every four hours, she was kenneled outside in a 6'x20' kennel for that 16 hour period.

(And for the record, the reason I purchased the kennel to begin with was so that she could be kept kenneled outside during those periods...I thought that was a more fair alternative than being kept in a crate with potty breaks, because with the kennel she had room to move around, was able to have water ad lib, and could potty when she needed to. And although I want all of my dogs to be able to settle down in a crate when needed, I much prefer to let them have run of the house or be confined to a run/room while I'm gone instead of crated.)

Obviously situations like that aren't ideal, and if they had to happen every day then I would question the intelligence of owning the dog in the first place, because, IMO, long term that would be negligent and abusive...but once in a blue moon? Meh. Not ideal, but not horrible. Again, IMO.

To answer your question, our two borzois go through about 3 gallons of water a day. I know this because I run it through a filter before giving it to them. I would never consider locking them up somewhere without access to it, or without someone to make sure they hadn't spilled it.

Whether a dog is acclimated to heat plays a big part in how they handle it as well.

In the article it says the akita was fed on friday, left with water, with plans for the owner to return on Sunday. And the dog was found dead on Sunday by the landlord. That's longer than 24 hours.

It also says the dog had severe SA. I've fostered a dog with severe SA. She got explosive diarrhea if you left the room and was unable to follow. Being alone is literally torture for a dog with advanced SA. If the dog in question experienced something similar (possible from the landlord's description of overwhelming smell of feces, overturned bowls and ransacked look of the place) the combination of fasting, and dehyrdation from lack of water could certainly kill an otherwise healthy dog in a day or so. And if she was like most dogs with SA, that frenzy of destruction/ransacking/diarrhea/panic peaks within the first 20 mins to half an hour of being alone, then they settle down. So it's very possible the dog had no water for the majority of the weekend.

That is all just guessing though, as I wasn't there and didn't sit on the jury.

Death or not, severe SA is nothing to cough at. It's plain torture to force a dog to "just deal" with it. It's like flooding a person with agoraphobia by dumping a bucket of spiders on their head, you can do severe damage to them mentally, emotionally, and (scientifically proven) physically.

I didn't read that part earlier, how sad to be left like that.

You mean arachnophobia?

Otherwise, you'd have to lock them outside in a big empty field.

/useless contribution

Well can someone loop me in then. Pure gossip, I have nothing to contribute

lmao, thanks, I was coming back to fix that. I'm using the internet when I should be working so it's only in quick bursts and lacking much by way of brain power. Sorry.

that's how I work, too

:yikes: What a thread! One can never trust the media to portray the facts and nothing but the facts. Especially when animal cruelty and the supposed need to "crack down" on animal issues are just about as good as Pit Bull attacks and the need to "crack down" on dangerous dogs. I couldn't really get enough from the news stories to know exactly what happened and the stories seemed to contradict each other in some ways.

I've had ferrets for nearly two decades and have almost never had them in AC. once I stopped feeding them kibble, vaccinating them and exposing them to artificial light cycles, they have lived long, happy lives

Ferrets will very quickly over heat in anything above 70. My house gets far too hot in the summer, and A/C is how I make sure they are safe.
Feeding raw almost killed my ferret. I feed kibble to keep him alive.
They absolutely must be vaccinated, as well. My ferrets are not house pets, they go everywhere they can with me, including one doing therapy visits for children.

Ferrets cannot sweat nor pant, pant=situation critical. I have seen it far too many times

ETA: I'm sorry, I'm super tired and that came out much more bitchier than I meant xD not saying it didn't work for you -- I am sure it does! There are just very specific reasons that I do what I do (such as having an obligate carnivore that is allergic to most meat).

boy aleron, it's a good thing it never gets near 70 in OH

if a mammal can't survive in 70 degree temps without ac in north america, i'm guessing it's already extinct, or one is raising some seriously sick animals.

If a mammal needs kibble to survive, how the hell did it last this long in the evolutionary scale?