The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Warning over dogs in hot cars
Emotional plea by man who let his pets suffer in baking car
A man whose dogs died when he left them in a scorching hot car for five hours has made an emotional appeal to stop others making the same mistake. Jonathan Theobald (66) of Lincoln Road left Staffordshire Bull Terrier-type dogs Daisy, Mitch and Rascal inside his vehicle with no water or ventilation when he went to the gym in June last year.
When he returned to his Volkswagen estate, two of his dogs were already dead of heat exposure and he spent 30 minutes desperately trying to revive Daisy before she finally succumbed to the heat.
He was prosecuted at court, given a suspended prison sentence and banned from keeping dogs for 10 years.
Now he has volunteered to work with the RSPCA, appearing in an emotional film to stop other pet owners making the same fatal error after saying he ‘misjudged’ the weather.
He said: “I’ve been prosecuted, I’ve been banned from keeping dogs, and there’s been ferocious publicity, but really that’s just rubbing salt in the wounds.
“I’m not saying I don’t deserve that, but the main hurt is losing the dogs in the first place.”
He added: “The house feels painfully empty, we don’t have dogs now and that’s my fault. My carelessness killed them.”
RSPCA inspector Justin Stubbs, who investigated Daisy, Rascal and Mitch’s deaths, said: “It’s staggering to think that more than 7,000 people called us last year due to concerns about animals in the heat and most of these will have been dogs left in cars.
“Our message has been loud and clear for years: don’t leave dogs alone in parked cars on warm days. And while it’s reassuring that this message seems to be getting through to some people, ultimately we’d like this number to drop to zero. What’s also concerning is that the number of incidents of dogs in hot cars is probably much higher as our key advice is to dial 999 if you spot a distressed animal in a vehicle, so goodness knows how many calls were made to police on the same issue.”
In September last year, Mr Theobald was sentenced at Peterborough Magistrates’ Court to an 18-week prison sentence suspended for two years.
He was also disqualified from keeping animals for 10 years and ordered to pay £1,900 in fines and costs. He’d previously pleaded guilty to one offence of causing unnecessary suffering to the three dogs.