Published: July 26,2016
More than a dozen American Kennel Club registered dogs died in a hot truck last week on their way to a show in St. Joseph County, Indiana.
All but one of the dogs were golden retrievers, the South Bend Tribune reported, and they were being transported to an AKC dog show at the county fairgrounds by Cortney Corral-Morris of Lakesyde Kennels in Wellington, Ohio.
Corral-Morris parked the transport truck, which was equipped with air conditioning in the cargo area where the dogs were kept, outside a local motel Friday afternoon, the report added.
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Participants
in the American Kennel Club Dog Show in St. Joseph County, Indiana,
show their dogs just a day after 14 dogs slated to appear in the show
died in a hot truck. (Michael Caterina/South Bend Tribune)
She plugged an extension cord into the side of the hotel's exterior wall to provide power to the truck overnight, a setup that worked without incident the previous two nights. She fed and exercised the dogs, then went into the hotel to nap for about two hours.
The dogs were found dead at about 6:20 p.m. Friday evening, St. Joseph County Police Lt. William Redman told the Associated Press. According to Redman, an electrical circuit breaker cut the power, but police still do not know what triggered the circuit breaker.
Corral-Morris, who owned several of the dogs herself, was “almost hysterically upset about these animals,” St. Joseph County Humane Society executive director Genny Carlson told WSBT.com.
Temperatures in the area reached a daytime high of around 86 degrees, according to weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Erdman.
“According to noheatstroke.org, temperatures inside a closed vehicle on a sunny day typically rise 45 to 50 degrees over the course of several hours,” Erdman said, “which would equate to an interior temperature of at least 130 degrees in over an hour.”
Humane society officials confirmed to WSBT that the prosecutor’s office is not set to file any charges for animal cruelty or neglect in the death of the 14 dogs.
Carlson, who led the humane society’s portion of the investigation, told Cleveland.com that the incident was “a very tragic situation," but that she didn’t “think this was intentional at all."
"Everyone hurts when this happens,"the Waters family w/ dog Popcorn,says of the death of 14 dogs due to heat.#wsbt22
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Participants
in the American Kennel Club Dog Show in St. Joseph County, Indiana,
show their dogs just a day after 14 dogs slated to appear in the show
died in a hot truck. (Michael Caterina/South Bend Tribune)
The deaths cast a heavy shadow over the dog show, said Cheryl Crompton, of Mishawaka, Indiana, who served as chairwoman for the Friday portion of events.
"To have something this tragic happen, it affects everybody," Crompton told Cleveland 19 News. "It's been very solemn all day. I've cried, just at the loss of life."
Most of animals’ nine different owners have requested to have their pets returned to them, Carlson told WTSB, but two were taken to Purdue University in West Lafayette for a necropsy on Tuesday.
"I hope we can get across to everybody that, especially in heat like this, we have to take special precautions," said Carlson. "Children and the elderly are at risk, and so are animals. Even if an animal lives outside all of the time, no one is used to this kind of heat.”
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