Warning: Hot cars can be death sentence for dogs. If you see this, here’s what to do.

I was thinking about burritos when I looked up and saw a hot dog. I had just pulled into Mariachi’s Mexican Restaurant, when the guy in the car parked next to mine hopped out and locked his car door, leaving his big black dog, panting in the back seat.

Goodbye burritos, hello dilemma. I knew I needed to do something. But what?

“Do you know how hot it is?” I called to the guy, who was en route to the restaurant’s entrance.

He turned around with a surprised look on his face. He was just a kid. Maybe late teens.

“I know someone whose dogs died because she left them in a hot car,” I told him. “When it’s 90 degrees like today, the temperature inside your car can rise to 120 in minutes.”

“I’ll be right back. I’m just picking up a carryout,” he said.

I stood there like an idiot and watched him walk away.

I thought about standing vigil until he came back. Then I thought about breaking his legs.

I am not a violent person. But certain things — like cruelty to children and animals — really get me going. A minute later, I headed inside the restaurant — with no real plan — except to find that kid, get him back to his car and get that poor dog some relief.

I didn’t have to search very long. I found him at the service counter, waiting to pick up his dinner, just like he’d said he’d be doing.

It turns out his cousin works at Mariachi’s. He’s a very nice man who has waited on my table before. I’m guessing the kid is also really nice — just ignorant of how dangerous and cruel it is to leave your dog inside a hot car.

And so I told him. Again.

“When you get back in your car, I want you to sit there and experience what your dog has been experiencing,” I said. “It’s going to be like an oven. You won’t last 30 seconds. And you’re in shorts and a T-shirt. Your dog is wearing a fur coat.”

For good measure I added, “If you weren’t going right back to your car, I would have called the police.”

Hardcore? Maybe. But I was trying to make a point.

Later, my friend, Claudia, whom I was meeting at the restaurant, told me the young man had held the door open for her on her way inside. He showed good manners and seemed very sweet.

So why wasn’t he more considerate of his dog?

I posed this question to my sister, Melanie, who is usually pretty wise about such things.

In this case, however, she was as perplexed as I was.

“You’d never leave your baby inside a hot car or you’d be arrested,” she said. “When it comes to locking a dog in a hot car, they’re as helpless as a child.”

“Dogs can’t sweat,” she added. “If you sat in your car in the summer with the windows cracked, you’d be soaked. You would immediately open a car door and let in some air. But your dog can’t do that. They just sit there and suffer.”

On a 75 degree day, the temperature inside a car can rise to 109 degrees in 30 minutes. At 110 degrees, a dog can suffer heat stroke.

Cautionary tale

That said, most people who leave dogs in hot cars do care about their pets. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t want their dog’s company while driving.

My friend’s mother was one such person. Despite numerous warnings, she always brought her little dogs with her while running summertime errands. She’d be in and out in minutes, she argued.

Until she wasn’t.

One afternoon, she ran into someone she knew and chatted for a while. When she got back to her car, one of her dogs was dead. The other succumbed the next day, despite emergency vet care.

To say she was devastated would be an understatement. But she was still better off than her dogs.

Tips for when you see a dog locked in a hot car

So what to do when you see a dog locked in a hot car? Well, I’ve been known to copy a car’s license plate, go inside the business where it’s parked and ask that the owner be paged.

In worst case scenarios — like the time I saw a Shih Tzu inside a black sedan at the mall on a sweltering day — I have contacted the police.

“You know, some people might call you a crazy animal lover,” my friend, Lydia, has told me more than once.

My patent response: “Don’t worry. My bark is worse than my bite.”

And even if it isn’t, I’ve had my shots.

Michelle Meehan Schrader

Opinion Contributor,

Belleville News-Democrat