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The Rant

It's A Dog's Life

Especially for those who have the misfortune to be owned by one particular type of individual.

This particular diatribe was provoked towards the end of July, when I visited the Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford. For those unfamiliar with this event, it's billed as Britain's (and possibly Europe's) largest air display [1]. The event takes place on the Saturday and Sunday of a weekend toward the end of July. Each day, the gates open at 7am, and close again at 9pm [2].

All in all, it's a long day, during which an unsurprisingly large number of aircraft take off from, land on, and fly over the airfield. These aircraft make a varying amount of noise. A few are quiet, most are loud, and some are very loud. Anyone who has been close to a hovering Harrier / AV8, or who has watched a Tornado or F16 approach very quickly, but in near silence, and then heard what happens next will know just what I mean. If you've had neither of these experiences, imagine a clap of thunder right overhead, but lasting for several seconds, or even minutes.

Now, I've seen German Shepherd Dogs hide beneath a table, trembling after a single clap of thunder. Granted, dogs can be trained by exposure to noise until they learn from experience that the noise itself won't do them any harm. Police dogs will face gunfire and guide dogs will walk past heavy traffic without turning a hair. However, most dogs - most animals - are afraid of sudden and unexpected noises. So, my question is, if you were a dog, is this where you'd choose to spend your day? I suspect not.

The organisers of the event acknowledge this. It states, quite clearly, on the back of the admission ticket that animals will not be allowed onto the airfield. Which seems quite reasonable to me.

The trouble is, some people either don't read this message, or just ignore it, and take their dog along anyway. What's going through their mind, I dread to think. I suppose that they don't want to leave Rover alone all day. Why they believe that Rover would prefer to spend the day on a noisy airfield, I can't imagine.

Anyway, they turn up, presumably to be told that their dog won't be allowed on the airfield. So what do they do? They leave the dog in the car.

It's time to examine some aspects of canine physiology. Many people think that dogs don't sweat. In fact they do, but only from the soles of their feet. Apart from that, they can only lose heat by panting and letting saliva evaporate from their tongues. Overall, it's not a great deal of surface area, and dogs overheat very easily in the best of circumstances.

Now think about what happens to a parked car. A fairly large proportion of its surface area is glass, so that overall a car functions pretty much like a greenhouse. If the air conditioning is off (for example, if it's parked), or if the car doesn't have air conditioning, then the interior temperature can rise very, very quickly. I've had the experience of returning to a car that's been parked in the sun, and finding the interior baking hot and the steering wheel literally too hot to handle. Couple that with the poor heat regulating ability of a dog, and it's clear that a dog in a parked car is in trouble. It's estimated that, even on a fairly cloudy day, a dog in a parked car can be in real distress within a matter of minutes, and dead from heatstroke in a few more. Placing blinds in the windows isn't much help, and neither is leaving the windows slightly open - long before there's enough space to allow air to circulate, there's enough space to let the dog out (or a thief in).

The result was that, two or three times during the day, there was an announcement for the owner of such and such a car to return to the car park, because his / her dog was in distress. Words of disapproval were spoken by some of the spectators, but frustratingly there was nothing that anyone could do about it, since the location of the car in question was not revealed. Fortunately, since the announcement had been made, that was a good indication that someone was already dealing with the matter. On a couple of occasions, there was a veiled threat in the form of "please return to your vehicle before we are forced to effect an entry". Well, I hope nobody waited too long, as with a display line running the length of a 10,000 foot runway, it could easily take half an hour for the dog's owner to return, by which time it might well be too late.

I also hope that the magistrates would look kindly upon anyone breaking into a car to release a dog in distress, and unkindly upon the person who left the dog there in the first place. It's not even that there hasn't been any publicity - year after year, various animal welfare organisations warn people not to leave dogs in cars, and still they keep on doing it. There seems to be a some problem getting the message to sink in.

Prosecutions for neglect or outright cruelty, with the attendent publicity, may be of some help in driving the message home. Alternatively, at large events, a policy of "naming and shaming" might prove effective. The police (who always attend such events, for traffic control at the very least) can match a car registration number to its "registered keeper" in seconds. Perhaps if the announcements were "Would **** ****** return to the car park where his/her dog is in distress" instead of "Would the owner of car number Z 123 ZZZ ...", then the risk of being publically identified at an event where the odds are good that someone there knows you, or knows of you, might act as a deterrent?

In conclusion - to anyone who might be tempted to take a dog to an air display or any other event where dogs wouldn't be happy, or who might be tempted to leave a dog unattended in a car, the message is ... don't. The dog could end up dead, and the owner could end up in court. It's just not a good idea.

The events at Farnborough and Paris, which are by no means small scale, presumably being classified as trade fairs rather than air displays as such, although the display put on at the USAF base at RAF Mildenhall every May could give Fairford a good run for its money. [Back to Main Text]
This is the official time - in practice, the gates close once all the cars are off the airfield, which can be much, much, later. [Back to Main Text]

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