Six residents of Almeria city saved two dogs from dying in a locked car yesterday afternoon, but they’re the ones in trouble with the law.
The excitement started at around 3pm when a local man called José, according to local paper La Voz de Almería, was asked to call the local police by a youth who had spotted two dogs locked inside a car parked on the Rambla, the main Avenue in Almería. The car was in full blaze of the sun, and outside temperatures were over 35ºC at this point.
The police were called and they investigated the car, but said that since the window was slightly open, and a small dish of water was available to the dogs, there was nothing they could do. They added that in any case no municipal pound service is available on the weekends so there would be nobody to take care of the dogs.
In a fury at the refusal of the police to do anything, José and several of his neighbours started a watch to spray the dogs with cool water through the open window to keep them cool, and managed to give them additional drinking water once the main platter was empty.
It was at this point, about 5pm, that one of the more cunning neighbours managed to get the car door open and release the pets. The neighbours continued to look after the pets in a nearby park where they could keep an eye on the now open car.
It was at this point that the police patrol swung by to check on the dogs and found the car door open. “It was disgusting” said José. “Imagine our surprise when the first thing the police did was identify us all in case the owner of the vehicle wanted to press charges against us.”
The lady owner of the dogs, identified only as a “foreign national” eventually turned up at around 6pm, was “horrified” at the scene around her car and fled as soon as she could with her two pets. Her car was undamaged, the water being sprayed onto the seats having quickly evaporated in the immense heat. José is in no doubt that without the aid of the good Samaritans, those two dogs would have died in the suffocating heat inside that car.