Dog Blog

“Police arrested a west Florida woman on charges of animal cruelty after finding her dog locked in a car on a hot day”. This owner was 19 and not her first offence. In this instance, she had left her three month old puppy locked in a car (while shopping) with a temperature of approximately 120 degrees and the windows open only a crack. Her first offence was in December 2007 where she left her Chihuahua in a car overnight.

I don’t know where to begin here. Amy Chantarak the 19 year old owner definitely should shoulder most of the blame as she is old enough to know better. In addition to penalizing her she should also be slapped with a ban on any kind of pet ownership. Having said that, I think a ball was dropped in other areas as well.

This article was posted on May 8, 2009 which means that in all likelihood Amy was living at home during her first offence. Therefore, part of the blame should fall on the parents who would have to share the responsibility of caring for the animal. The first offence should have been enough of a lesson to educate Amy on the type of commitment necessary when you become an owner. This education should have already come from the parents, but sadly it didn’t and here we are with another charge of animal cruelty reminding her that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable.

This begs the question of where are the role models in this girl’s life. Someone should have given her advice that reminded her of the mistakes made in the past and how a second dog is even more responsibility. What about the person or business that she bought the dog from. There should be some effort on their end to qualify the potential owner. Handing over a dog to a young girl without knowing anything about her situation is irresponsible.
Parents and Breeder/Pet store owner should also be held accountable in this situation. I think further investigation into how these types of abusive owners manage to obtain pets is in order. Maybe by digging a little deeper we can gain a better understanding of how these problems evolve and therefore establish preventive measures through law.