OMG! Spartacus (police dog FORGOTTEN) by handler
 

I am beyond sad. :mad:
Official: Police dog found dead inside patrol car in Georgia - CNN.com

Sorry for the double post...mod please remove this one.

How does this happen? The officer should be dismissed permanently and face charges. :mad:

There is no excuse for this and it happens so often. Service dogs deserve better.

thats very sad...i hope they can determine why this happened so it does not happen again.

The second part I agree with. The first part I patently do not. Filing charges in a case like this does nothing more than allow others to exercise their moral outrage. This person' conscience will be judge, jury, and executioner for the rest of his life. I think that will be sufficient and merciless punishment for him.

You can get arrested for attacking a police K9. They have their own badge and are considered an officer.

Is this guy going to jail for the death of a cop? Doubtful. He's free now and receiving PAY.

sad thing is I've read at least 3 of these this year alone.

That is just so very tragic! He is on suspension right now, and I do so hope, he faces charges, at the minimum he is no longer qualified as a K9 officer.

As Heather wrote, a civilian can be arrested for attacking a police K9. Criminal charges would not be merely expressing moral outrage (just as they are not in cases of human manslaughter or many other crimes of negligence).

These are working dogs. They are the officers' partners. If the officer left his human partner to die, he would be charged.

A man was charged in my town for leaving a dog in his car for an hour while he shopped at WalMart on Father's Day. His dog lived.

:thumbup:

Leaving a dog at WalMart or attacking a K9 are willful acts. If this officer knowingly left his partner in a hot car, then I agree wholeheartedly that he should never be allowed to work with dogs again, and yes, charged with neglect, animal cruelty, and anything else they could throw at him.

If it was an unknowing action, then I stand by my original statement. I guess I was thinking of a local case that happened last summer. Maybe I just need to keep my mouth shut and go back to lurking. All I seem to do on this site is piss people off anyway.

Your point is somewhat valid but there's still no explanation given as to how he could've been forgotten. That's what boggled my brain when I first read the article. HOW do you forget? It broke my heart.

We are having a discussion -- you and I each have an opinion. I'm not p.o.'ed and I hope you aren't.

We have a body of law that covers negligence or unintentional wounding and killing. Just because an act is not willful -- i.e. the officer did not intentionally kill the dog -- does not mean the person is not responsible.

If I left my baby in the car in my garage because I was distracted and forgot to bring him inside, and the baby died, I would be charged.

In my mind the only way we learn is through civil discussions & I hope this came out the way I intended. Nothing short of severe & sudden illness would prevent me from thinking of my partner.

You don't piss me off at all. I actually encourage different points of view. We learn by challenging our ruts of thoughts and behaviour.

An unknowing action - well that is a problem. How do you work 5 or more days a week and leave your doggie partner in car? Unless as someone said there was an emergency that literally knocked out all thought in his head for his partner? And knocked it out for hours and hours.

You know I am not a K9 police officer, but I've spent literally hundreds of hours on the road, travelling to shows, competing, staying in motels, sometimes with a whole lack of sleep.

I can't imagine getting home late one night and leaving my show dogs, in our van, while I stumble in to bed. ONe's first thought is to get the dogs out of the car/van, pee/poo them, and then we all stumble into the house or the motel as the case might be.

If anything I would have been found dead in the car with my dogs, if I had passed out from lack of sleep or something

When you work with dogs (in I suspect what-ever capacity you do), it is so ingrained, in trained, that the dogs come first. You see to their feeding, watering, exercising, before yourself.

I remember driving about 10 or so hours one day on a long drive to Missouri, I of course got lost, and we finally found the motel at 10pm. I was exhausted and so tired I could barely see straight. What did I do? Feed the dogs, walked them one at a time, and then finally went into our room, and fell asleep on the bed, after I made sure all their water bowls were full. I had had no dinner either, because I was just too tired to deal with another drive through restaurant.

The next morning red eyed, they all got fed, walked, watered, and on the way out, I went through a MacDonald's drive through to get my first cup of java!
And I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. It was my fault, at another motel, my "iffy" girl was not controlled enough by me, and almost bit a motel worker on the way past our room, as I was going out to walk her!