When dogs are left in cars during the warm season, they can face death by heat within a very short time.
Within minutes, temperatures inside a vehicle can rise to up to 80 °C. Here is what attentive bystanders need to keep in mind from a legal perspective if they want to free dogs on their own initiative.
As a rule of thumb: in direct sunlight, the interior of a car heats up by one degree per minute — at an outside temperature of just 30 °C, values of up to 80 °C can be reached within a short time. Even a slightly open window makes no difference. The limited airspace inside the car makes it impossible for the animal to release heat by panting. As heat stress progresses, a dog can die from circulatory collapse. Each year, around a dozen dog owners are convicted for leaving dogs in overheated cars, sometimes facing fines of several hundred to more than a thousand francs.
The right course of action
The following principles should always be observed during a rescue operation — this way, bystanders have nothing to fear from a legal standpoint:
- If you are in a shopping centre, have the licence plate number announced immediately in order to locate the owner of the dog and the car as quickly as possible.
- If the owner cannot be found, immediately alert the police and a veterinarian.
- Only break the car window if the police do not arrive in time or not at all — or if you can see that there is an urgent emergency.
- Warning signs include increased panting, jumping around inside the vehicle, loud yelping or whimpering, but also lethargy, apathy, and loss of consciousness.
- Place the freed dog in the shade and moisten its body and legs with wet, cool cloths, and dampen the mouth cavity with cold water. Leave further treatment to a veterinarian.
- For your own protection, create a record of the rescue operation, supplemented by photos or videos taken on your mobile phone. Animal owners who are upset about the rescue operation could file a claim for damages for the broken car window.
More information: www.tierschutz.com/aktuell/ueberhitzungsgefahr.html
More on the subject of recreational hunting: What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
