Target: Burt Jones, President of Georgia Senate
Goal: Better protect pets against deadly heat-related acts of cruelty.
Police officers discovered a dog in reported distress outside a motel. The animal was apparently found in a truck bed and inside a wire crate on an extremely hot Georgia day. The dog allegedly had no access to food or water and had reportedly been inside the crate for at least ten hours. Temperatures inside the enclosure had reached 120-plus degrees, which seemingly caused burns to the animal’s paws. While this dog received treatment and his owners were arrested on-site, the owners in the dozen or so other reported similar cases in the region merely received a strongly worded warning.
These troubling incidents in Cobb County are evidence of a greater disregard for this particular form of animal cruelty across the entire state. Georgia law prohibits bystanders – including ones who may have witnessed the dog in distress outside the motel – from intervening in vehicle-related heat cases under threat of legal penalty against the good Samaritans. Individuals must call law enforcement or animal control, but by the time help does arrive it may be too late. And as the cases in Cobb County demonstrate, even then the animal could be returned to a dangerous situation.
Sign the petition below to demand state lawmakers take decisive action in correcting this deadly deficiency in the legal system.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Lieutenant Governor Jones,
“Even 20 to 30 minutes can be too long.” A veterinarian had this warning about the rise in pet heatstroke-related cases in her region of practice. This veterinarian has witnessed first-hand the vomiting, pained panting, and severe burns on animals suffering from heatstroke. A sizeable percentage of these animals – like the spate of such cases arising out of Cobb County – resulted from dogs or other pets being sealed into oven-like hot vehicles that might as well be incinerators on the increasingly common 90-and-higher degree days.
It seems that lawmakers fail to take seriously this form of animal cruelty that arguably claims more lives than most other forms of cruelty. In many of the aforementioned county cases, individuals responsible for the care of these animals were not charged or even cited. In one case, a dog allegedly spent ten hours in a 120-plus degree enclosure outside a motel, and any witnesses who may have noticed this dog’s apparent distress had their hands tied by a state law that forbids them from life-saving intervention.
If you truly care about the welfare of all the state’s living beings, amend laws immediately to reflect the dangers of heat-related cruelty and to empower Georgians to take actions during emergencies where every minute counts.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Tim Gouw
