DATE: Wednesday, November 12, 1997          TAG: 9711120045

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: LARRY MADDRY

                                            LENGTH:   93 lines

AFTER DOGS DIED IN HEAT, SHOULD OWNERS HAVE GOTTEN OFF?

When is a pet owner so irresponsible that he or she is guilty of cruelty under the law?

Here's a real case that appeared in Virginia Beach District Court last week. On Aug. 8, W.C. Pierce, an animal control officer, found three large Rottweilers dead in the cab of a rental truck in a condominium parking lot. This is what he found:

Claw marks around the truck doors and windows.

The dead dogs were drenched in saliva.

The dogs were found with legs stuck between seats, half on the floor with rigor mortis.

The dogs had bitten through their tongues, apparently after having seizures.

About three hours later, the officer took the dead dogs to a veterinarian, Margaret Johnson, of Animal Emergency Care on Lynnhaven Parkway, for an animal autopsy.

``At that time the internal temperature of the dogs was 117 degrees Fahrenheit,'' Dr. Johnson said. ``Which I believe is about the temperature of a rare steak.'' (The normal body temperature of a dog is between 101 and 103 degrees. Brain damage usually begins at 107 degrees.)

The dogs died of heatstroke on a day when the maximum temperature was 81 degrees, although the outside temperature at the time of death is unknown.

Were the owners, who confined their dogs in the cab of the truck, guilty of animal cruelty?

Not in the view of Virginia Beach District Court Judge Pamela Albert, who found them not guilty.

I didn't attend the trial, but here's what happened.

The couple owning the dogs said they had driven down from Pennsylvania - on the same day their pets died - to close on a house.

They say they left their pets in the cab of the truck with a dish of water. Truck windows were cracked and they were in the lawyer's office 45 minutes, they said.

Sonny Stallings, the lawyer for the defendants, offered a spirited defense on their behalf.

``They were a nice couple,'' he said this week. ``They loved their dogs and had paid a lot of money for them.

``They couldn't have kept them in their house because the house wasn't available until they closed with their lawyer. When they found their dogs they didn't know whether they were poisoned or not. They were as horrified as anyone. It's not as though they left the dogs chained out in the snow.''

He noted that when a photo of the dead dogs was presented in court, the wife broke into tears. Stallings said the animal control officer presented no evidence of the temperature outside the truck or of the temperature of the vehicle used to transport the dead dogs to the veterinarian for an autopsy.

``The judge wasn't happy the dogs died,'' he said. ``She just couldn't make the leap that this couple did anything so egregious.''

In her ruling, the judge said there was insufficient intent shown by the couple to convict.

Since the ruling, both the veterinarian and an SPCA official have expressed outrage over the judge's ruling in the case.

``I am outraged but not surprised,'' Sharon Adams, executive director of the Virginia Beach SPCA, said.

She says courts have consistently refused to take animal cruelty laws seriously.

Adams and Johnson dispute the judge's ruling, claiming the they-didn't-mean-to-kill-them argument doesn't hold water.

``Under state law it doesn't matter whether they intended to kill the dogs,'' the vet said. ``They did kill the dogs.''

The state code states that any person who ``carries or causes to be carried in or upon any vehicle, vessel, or otherwise any animal in a cruel, brutal, or inhumane manner, so as to produce torture or unnecessary suffering'' is guilty of animal cruelty.

The veterinarian said it doesn't matter if the dogs were in the truck five minutes or five hours, because the dogs died in a horrible way. That there were several dogs in the truck probably hastened their death, because the animals give off body heat and were engaged in frenzied efforts to find air and water, she noted.

Johnson said there was no evidence of water in the truck except for that claim by the defendants. She said the animal control officer found no water container. (Officer Pierce says the police media relations department will not permit him to comment on the case since the defendants were ``exonerated.'')

``As for no choice but to lock them in the truck, everyone has choices,'' the vet said. ``That is what kennels are for.'' Relatives could also have been asked to help, she said.

Adams said it is important for courts to take animal cruelty seriously. If children had been locked in the car and died of heatstroke, no judge would find the absence of intent excusable, she said.

``These owners were given the message that although they killed their dogs they were not responsible,'' Johnson concluded.

The judge, reached by phone, declined to comment. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

GARY C. KNAPP/The Virginian-Pilot

Dr. Margaret Johnson, a veterinarian, expressed outrage at the

ruling.

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