Summer Billboards Offer Lifesaving Tips for Dog Guardians

Heat Can Kill Chained Dogs: PETA Urges Everyone to Take Dogs Indoors to Prevent Heatstroke and Flesh-Eating Flystrike

For Immediate Release:
June 7, 2017

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Nine PETA billboards just went up across Halifax County to warn families of the dangers of leaving dogs outside in the summer heat, including dehydration, deadly heatstroke, and “flystrike”—a painful condition in which flies, attracted to dogs’ waste, eat away at their flesh, leaving bloody wounds and infections.

Ads that proclaim, “Dying of Thirst? So Is Your Dog. Give Dogs Fresh Water Daily” and “Heat Can Kill. Take Dogs Indoors,” and billboards that declare, “Warning: Flystrike!” and urge guardians to clean outside areas daily and treat wounds with ointment such as Flys-Off, are now located along Rt. 158 W. and 1-95 S. before exit 173.

“Dogs who are chained or penned and forced to sleep, eat, and relieve themselves in the same patch of dirt suffer all year long, but the scorching summer heat can be a death sentence,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA’s billboards remind everyone to take dogs indoors with the rest of the family—the surest way to protect dogs from deadly heatstroke and being eaten alive by parasites.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—notes that, in addition to causing health and safety issues, keeping dogs chained or penned outside deprives them of the social interaction that they need, which can make them aggressive and nearly three times as likely to attack as dogs who aren’t kept chained. PETA offers assistance with doghouses, flea prevention, flystrike ointment, and lots more. For details, residents should call 1-800-566-9768.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.