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Keep 'Em Cool

Posted: 5:49 PM Jun 13, 2012
Reporter: Terri Russell

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RENO, NV - “It’s gone up a degree in what 30 seconds?” asks animal control officer Bobby Smith.

Smith has placed a county car in the shade most of the day but has brought it out for a demonstration.

Inside the car is a stuffed animal to represent someone's real live pet.

He's closed the windows and doors and has a special thermometer that will measure the temperature in side.

“And you have a little dog in a fur coat and they are hot and its not a nice scene to watch a dog bake,” says Smith.

In just a matter of 15-minutes the inside temperature is at 98 degrees...another 20-minutes one hundred degrees, and that doesn't even measure what the temperature is at the dash board where some dogs sit right next to.

”’It’s one hundred 16 degrees there,” says Smith.

Animal Control Officer Linda Doak says the dogs in cars calls are coming more frequently these days, in just our short time we were there, two calls had come in.

It’s important to remember, by the time someone like Doak who takes the call and dispatches an officer to the car, it could be 30-minutes or more.

That means even on a mild day, temperatures inside the car will be more than 100 degrees.

The calls keep everyone in communications busy, but these kinds of calls are potentially dangerous and unnecessary.

Animal Control suggests as summer approaches and temperatures go up, keep your dog at home. As they say here, "don't be cruel, keep them cool!"