Interesting that people are talking about how they wouldn’t leave a dog in a hot car.
I’m involved in dog showing as well as agility and hoopers, and there’s a common joke about accidentally leaving the dog at home and travelling to a show without them.
Like a lot of jokes, there’s some truth to it. I’ve stewarded at a breed show where someone’s informed me that they’ve accidentally left Fido at home, and I know several people who have set off and got partway there before realising they’ve let Rex out for an emergency wee just before setting off and forgot to put him back in the car.
Of course it’s nothing like children left in cars but it’s the same process. None of these dog people intended to miss the classes that they’d paid a lot of money to enter, none of them felt like it would be a good use of their free time to drive for hours at stupid o’clock to an agricultural field in the middle of nowhere and then immediately go home.
If you’re going to a dog show, the dog is the most important thing. How could you forget it? Why would you be so careless? Don’t you care? And yet it happens.
I’ve had several vets tell me that it happens sometimes when people book consecutive appointments for multiple pets, say for boosters. Owner gets the first pet ready, pops them in the car, and their brain ticks the “pet ready” box and they drive off without the second. Usually they only take one pet at once. Negligent? Nope. Just out of routine.