Call To Community

By Debra Vey Voda-Hamilton – Hamilton Law and Mediation, PLLC

By now most dog show participants are aware of the recent tragic events that happened in Indiana and Ohio where dogs died. There have been several articles, written by professional dog people, talking about what they believe the underlying issues are that have lead to these accidents. The prevalent thinking is the dog show world needs formalized education in proper animal husbandry. What is happening, according to these professional handlers, is that people are not doing apprenticeships with reputable professional han- dlers. Yet, how does one become an apprentice with a reputable han- dler? How does one evaluate a handler as reputable and one you should want to learn ‘the ropes’ from?

In the incident in Indiana, a fuse blew in an otherwise flawlessly working box truck, which indicates mechanical error not human error. This fact and the likelihood it could happen again, to others, has been lost in the rhetoric. Leaving the dogs alone for two hours in the heat and relying on an air conditioner plugged into a grounded source of power is not unusual. There are many people who show dogs every weekend and have acted similarly; they are just unwilling to remember. The incident in Ohio was the result of distraction or forgetfulness. Haven’t we all forgotten to do things that, if something had gone wrong, the results would have been tragic? We aren’t thinking about the consequences of what might have happened. We speak to what did happen with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. If you think this only happens in the dog show world, you need to go see the new movie Sully. It happens in the world of the NTSB, too. If something fails or we get distracted, and we recognize or remember in time, it didn’t turn out badly and we weren’t held up to public scorn.

Take a minute now and remember that time when a dog got out of your car, saw a squirrel, the gate was open, you didn’t know it and he was gone in a flash? Or how about the time when the crate wasn’t closed completely at a dog show and an inquisitive dog got free and it was your dog they were announcing about over the loudspeaker? If we are honest, we’ve all had experiences that put lumps in our throats at one time or another.

Leaving dogs for two hours in an air-conditioned truck in August may be okay if the truck had worked flawlessly for the past 5 years as well as the past several days. Leaving a dog in an un-air-condi- tioned car for six hours in August due to distraction or forgetfulness may be a more difficult lapse of memory to explain. Many a good handler, if they are honest, can remember getting back to their rig just in time to save their dogs after a mechanical failure they didn’t expect. A generator quit or another unexpected mechanical failure happened. What is lost in the discussion of these tragedies over last three months is the lasting effect these two events will have on the fancy, or will they?

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Posted by Alex on Nov 3 2016. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.