New Canaan Police on Thursday afternoon responded to a call that a dog had been left in a car on Summer Street on a hot day, according to a police report.
Responding officers determined that the dog was in good shape and not excessively hot, according to Animal Control Officer Maryann Kleinschmitt.
Police, if they’re concerned that the immediate welfare of a dog is in danger will take the dog from a car and charge the animal’s owner with animal cruelty, she said.
“It’s not against the law to leave a dog in the car,” she said. “Where problem comes is a dog gets in danger of being overheated—because dogs do not perspire and have no way of cooling themselves down, so they start panting and that can lead to overheating, heat exhaustion and death.”
Two dogs died of exposure to heat in cars in 2012, the last reported cases in New Canaan, she said. In one of those, a dog had hopped into its owners car without the owner knowing, she said.
The call last week was reported at 3:14 p.m. Temperatures here reached 57 degrees that day, according to an Observed Weather Report from National Weather Service.
***
In other news, police on Monday received two separate reports—from the same neighborhood in New Canaan—of coyote sightings in town. Calls came in of coyote sightings in the area of 451 Michigan Road, and then 403 Michigan Road, Kleinschmitt said. It’s likely the same coyote, she said. Here’s an updated map with coyote sightings: