Posted on 08/27/2009 3:01:45 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Robin Starr has been an outspoken critic of NFL quarterback Michael Vick for leading a cruel dogfighting ring. Vick acted despicably, then served his time in prison.
But today Starr is dealing with a cruel twist of fate.
A 16-year-old family dog died in the back seat of her car last week after being left there for four hours on a hot day in Richmond, Va.
Let's be clear: By all accounts so far, this was an accident that could have been avoided.
Starr, the CEO of the Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, says she didn't realize the deaf and blind dog -- named Louie -- was in the car.
That's because her husband, Ed, had put the dog in the back seat but failed to tell his wife. The dog died of kidney failure.
Already, internet message boards are full of hateful comments about Starr. Some try to equate the accident involving her dog with the Vick dogfighting incidents.
There is no valid comparison at all, and people know it.
Vick knew exactly what he was doing when dogs were mauled or even killed during the dog fights at his home.
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.kansascity.com ...
"The ASPCA was deeply saddened to learn of the tragic death of Louie, Richmond SPCA CEO Robin Starr's beloved dog, who died after accidentally being left in Ms. Starr's car for several hours on a hot summer day. The ASPCA truly believes that this incident was a horrible and unfortunate accident.
"Robin has dedicated her professional life to saving animals' lives. An outspoken advocate for the prevention of animal cruelty, Robin has worked diligently with her staff for many years to increase the shelter's adoptions and decrease euthanasia since becoming a no-kill facility – a remarkable achievement for the animals at-risk in the Richmond area and a model for the entire nation. If a terrible tragedy like this could happen to someone like Robin, then it can truly happen to anyone.
"Certainly, the grief that Robin and her family must be going through right now is profound. Anytime you lose a pet, it's tantamount to losing a member of the family – but it is hard to imagine the pain that comes with losing a pet in such a tragic way.
"While some might unfortunately call for Robin's resignation as a result of this horrible accident, it is imperative that we focus on the thousands of animals' lives that she has saved through her work with the Richmond SPCA. Louie's death serves as a tragic lesson – animals should never be left alone in a parked vehicle, and pet parents must stay vigilant when it comes to their pets' safety."
About the ASPCA® Founded in 1866, the ASPCA® (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®) is the first humane organization established in the Americas and serves as the nation's leading voice for animal welfare. One million supporters strong, the ASPCA's mission is to provide effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the United States. As a 501 [c] [3] not-for-profit corporation, the ASPCA is a national leader in the areas of anti-cruelty, community outreach and animal health services. The ASPCA, which is headquartered in New York City, offers a wide range of programs, including a mobile clinic outreach initiative, its own humane law enforcement team, and a groundbreaking veterinary forensics team and mobile animal CSI unit. For more information, please visit www.aspca.org.
Robin Starr needs to RESIGN.
When Robin Starr has resigned but this person in a hot car for the same duration and temperature to see what it’s like. I’m so tired of these HYPOCRITES!
First stories were that SHE forgot SHE put the dog there. How noble of her husband to take the heat.
Wasn't the dog who took the heat?
Perhaps the Philadelphia Eagles will take her.
He could be another NFL Quarterback
How on earth can this happen if you care about your dog?? If I stop anywhere I leave the car on and the air conditioner on full blast, who knows I may have a heart attack of Scarlett Johannsen will want to take me to her penthouse.
I’d rather risk someone stealing my car then to have my dog suffer for even a moment in a hot car.
Awww...that poor dog.
The dog was 16 and that’s 112 in people years. Perhaps she felt her dog was no longer a contributing member of society. Maybe the dog already visited an end of life consultant. This is an example of cost cutting Obamacare in the dog world.
:( Poor dog. No sympathy for the owners.
Did she think this was a happy life for her pet?
HA HA Motherf*cker! < / eddie murphy > < /sarc >.
It’s not imhumane when we do it.
2 year ban from the NFL.
How can it happen?
It’s called a mistake. You simply forget the dog is in the car. Unfortunately this happens with infants also with equally tragic results. Before you go off like there is no excuse ask yourself, what safety device does my brain have that would prevent this if I got distracted? The answer is NONE, this could happen to you or anyone else.
How does one not know that a dog is in the back seat?
It could NEVER happen to me, never, ever. Just because stupid people leave dogs and infants in cars doesn’t mean I could.
People do a lot of stupid stuff that I will never, ever do.
The same principle applies to anybody who spends an inordinate amount of time criticizing somebody else for their failings. Be careful of those self-righteous types for they are often attempting to conceal their own faults through pointing out those of others.
In the Boston area, there was a local councilwoman who was a member of MADD and who was always campaigning for tougher and tougher drunk driving laws. In her opinion, ANY amount of alcohol constituted drunk driving. She actually tried to get a law passed that would allow police officers to sit in restaurants and arrest anybody leaving after having a drink who then got behind a wheel. Now she wasn't necessarily referring to just saloons and taverns but ANY restaurant, be it an Applebees or or an Outback! If you were a law abiding person who had a glass of wine at the Olive Garden, this woman wanted to destroy your life and put you behind bars!
You can probably guess the rest. Yep, sure enough, this woman was pulled over for a DUI one night. Predictably, she screamed her innocence in the media and accused her political enemies of setting the whole thing up. Something about her prescription medicine and mouthwash combining to produce a false positive on the Breathalyzer. Or maybe somebody poured some alochol in her Diet Coke without her knowing about it. Nevertheless, once the headlines died down, she pleaded guilty to DUI and put herself in a detox program.
This woman with the dog...just goes to show that one should never be self-righteous. For it usually will come back to bite you on the butt.
Unfortunate accident, but if it were a child that she forgot back there, she would be charged and prosecuted. So finally, an animal activist, to save her own ass, has to admit that the rights of a human child SHOULD supercede the rights of an animal. Welcome back to planet Earth, Ms. Starr. Is Ingrid in the spaceship with you?
This isn't kindergarten, the "Safety Device" in your brain is called common sense, it's supposed to kick in when you have an animal, or more importantly, a child in the car with you. Enlighten me, what could distract you so much that you could forget your own child, in a car, in the summer....
Unless you are not human, which I suspect you are, it absolutely could happen to you.
Have you ever locked your keys in your car? Locked yourself out of the house? Simply forgot where you put something?
This has nothing to do with being stupid it has to do with being human. Your brain can be fooled just the same as anyone elses.
One would almost think that liberals are all hypocrites. ;’) Thanks nick.
Charlie Rangel discloses $660K more in assets
Politico
Posted on 08/25/2009 5:54:23 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2324446/posts
“Enlighten me, what could distract you so much that you could forget your own child, in a car, in the summer.... “
Only about a million different things!
Absolutely no one is exempt from something like this happening. Astrounauts and fighter pilots can make mistakes, get distracted, forget to put the landing gear down. push the wrong button. etc. etc.
Do you really think you are the perfect human being incapable of making these kinds of mistakes? I know the answer. Do you?
That's a dangerous sort of arrogance you've got going on there. It's dangerous to believe you are incapable of error.
See... the thing about mistakes is you don't know you're making the mistake at the time.
No, I am anything but the perfect human. But in all the years of my life, I have never "forgotten" where I put my children, or my animals. Leaving your kids to die in a car is not a "mistake".
Then your priorities are different than mine. My kids are more important than getting my hair done, checking out the latest video or having a blow on a crack pipe. There is nothing more important than your own children, for normal thinking humans.
That’s like saying everybody will forget to feed their pet, or their children.
Now that I have a pet I have to take care of, I never forget to take care of them. It’s part of the routine. And when the kids needed to be fed, we fed them.
You forget to call your mother on her birthday. You forget your anniversary.
You don’t forget that you put a dog in your car. If you think you could forget that, you don’t put the dog in the car.
If EVERYBODY only forgot ONE TIME that they had left their dog in the car, nobody would have a pet because every one of them would be dead.
Instead, it is a rare occurance that a dog, or a child, dies in a car.
That’s because the VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE would NEVER forget. Only a FEW PEOPLE forget.
You are arguing that this is random, that ANY person could be that one of the few that forgot. But if that was the case, with millions of people there would be thousands of cases a day.
No, it is clear that 99.99% of us do manage to NEVER FORGET.
There’s a big difference between saying that anyone CAN make a mistake, and saying that everyone WILL.
How does it feel to know already that for the rest of your life you’ll NEVER make a mistake? Wow... that must feel awesome.
First of all, we aren’t talking about “any mistake”, we were talking about a very specific mistake, leaving your dog, or your child, to die in a closed car.
If you think you have any chance of leaving your child to die in your car, by “mistake”, please don’t ever put your child in a car.
I feel quite confident in saying that, in all the years I had children who had to be put in a car, I never ever had any chance of FORGETTING that I had put them in the car.
That would be like forgetting I was driving the car and letting it run off the road, or forgetting that I was walking and falling on the floor, or forgetting that I needed to eat and starving to death.
Sorry, it isn’t amazing or awesome. It’s the minimum requirement for being a parent — the knowledge that you will be responsible enough not to forget you have them.
I certainly could have made mistakes, and those mistakes could have killed someone. I could have run a red light, or a stop sign, or driven off the road. I could have accidentally fell over carrying the children.
I could have made any number of mistakes that I can’t even think of.
But I was never going to forget I had my child in the car with me.
Oh PLEASE. We're talking about the CEO of the Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. You and another troll come on here talking about how everyone makes mistakes. I would assume the CEO of the Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals might want to know where her dog is.....if for no other reason than it makes her look like a liberal fool with an agenda when the dog is found dead, in her car, from neglect.
Yes but any one of us is capable of being the .01 that do.
If you don’t understand that, I don’t know what to tell you but it is a fact.
That’s why pilots and such have such strict and seemingly redundant procedures. This is because they know anyone is capable of screwing up and killing themselves or others no matter how smart they think they are. Most pilots remember to put the landing gear down 99.99% of the time but they also know at anytime they could be the .o1% that don’t.
LOL! What do you suggest, a checklist for putting the baby/dog into the car? Government nanny to make sure you don't screw up and forget the kiddo? It's called personal responsibility...apparently you can't walk down the street and buy gum.....you might forget you left your child behind. Take it back to DU troll.
Heh... yah. Like they say: There are two kinds of pilots... those who have landed wheels-up, and those who haven’t, yet.
“LOL! What do you suggest, a checklist for putting the baby/dog into the car? Government nanny to make sure you don’t screw up and forget the kiddo? It’s called personal responsibility...apparently you can’t walk down the street and buy gum.....you might forget you left your child behind. Take it back to DU troll.”
I would suggest not trying to argue with someone who can use simple logic. You are looking silly!
bttt
Try your high school debate elsewhere. I will ask again, what could distract you into forgetting you have children in your car? "A Million Things" isn't an answer. Troll.
Actually, they know they won’t be the .01%, because they follow the procedures. The fact that one of them WILL be the one who screws up doesn’t in any way suggest that EVERY ONE OF THEM could have done so. There was a specific type that could — the screw-up.
The “strict and seemlingly redudant procedures” is the method by which pilots prevent themselves from being the .01% that screw up.
The parents who have procedures to ensure they don’t leave their kids in the car are the ones who don’t ever leave their kids in the car.
BTW, in this specific case, if it is true that the husband put the dog in the car without telling the wife, and the wife never knew the dog was there, then yes, that would be the kind of mistake that would be hard for the wife to avoid.
But no sane person would put a dog in a car and not tell their spouse, if they did it for the spouse. Or more to the point, it would be stupid for one parent to put a child or a dog in the car for another parent, because that is exactly the kind of action that increases the risk of forgetting the child is in the car.
So you establish a simple rule — only a person going in the car puts the kid or the dog in the car. And you don’t do so until you are ready to get in the car.
The nice thing about being human is that we are ingeneous people who can in fact make procedures to prevent stupid predictable mistakes.
Forgetful people come up with other devices to ensure they don’t forget things that are important. As one of those forgetful people, I can tell you that while I regularly forget things that are not critical, I have managed through my 49 years of life to never forget anything that would kill somebody.
I just did ziplining at Dollywood. I wasn’t at all worried, because I could tell that the two men who rigged us were following a procedure meant to ensure that they could not forget something important.
If i had seen any indication that they were simply doing the tasks, without any particular rhyme or reason, I would have double-checked everything myself.
Errrrr.....yea, whatever. Apparently you never heard of Bitching Betty......
“That’s a dangerous sort of arrogance you’ve got going on there. It’s dangerous to believe you are incapable of error.”
________________
Nonsense, I’m not incapable of error.
I’m incapable of THIS type of error, just like I’m incapable of trying to dance on the ledge of a 50 foot building, or trying to catch bullets with my teeth.
I assure you when I die, I will have never, ever left an animal or a child in a hot car, of this I’m certain.
Invisible dogs! I knew they were running around, never saw any myself but she leaves one of this rare breed to die in her car!
Well, that's good to know. Now we know that if it ever does happen to you, that it was intentional.
I don't know why you guys get so angry over the possibility that human beings sometimes make mistakes... and for some reason have to equate it with an intentional act. That forgetting (or as reported in this case, not knowing) that the dog is there... is somehow equivalent to intentionally roasting the dog (or the child) in the car. I'm sorry, but I just don't buy the equivalence. Intent makes a difference to me. Intentionally murdering someone, or intentionally making an animal suffer is *worse* to me than is something that happens without intent. Something where only hindsight provides the understanding of what happened. That is: an accident. A mistake. If you can't see the difference between a mistake and an intentional act... well, I can't help you with that.
“The nice thing about being human is that we are ingeneous people who can in fact make procedures to prevent stupid predictable mistakes.”
Yup, but not 100% of the time. No procedure covers every single variable under every single situation. No procedure is fool proof. The most careful people in the world can still screw up and absolutely no one is exempt.
You are saying this is impossible to happen to you because you are not careless whereas others might be. If you don’t believe that your brain can be fooled into doing “something stupid” you are either extremely arrogant but still wrong or delusional.
You “debate” exactly like a liberal.
First you say:
“I don’t know why you guys get so angry over the possibility that human beings sometimes make mistakes”——
Excuse me, that’s not what I or anyone else even came remotely close to saying. Nice strawman there for you to knock down. See how dishonest your statement is? I bet you don’t.
Then you say:
“That forgetting the dog is there...is somehow equivalent to intentionally roasting the dog (or child) in the car.-————
Again, a total misrepresentation of what was being debated and what I and others you’re debating had to say. Another strawman, another twisting of others peoples words that doesn’t come close to what people were actually saying.
Then the kicker, you say:
If you can’t see the difference between a mistake and an intentional act...well, I can’t help you with that.
LOLOLOLOLOL. You build your own fantasy world. If you actually believe that’s what I and others said or implied on this thread only some sort of psychiatry can help you, and I’m not kidding.
Just like a liberal, you ignore what people say to you, totally twist their words and then knock down the ridiculous strawman you built.
Your “debating” tactic is the equivalent of me saying “I’m against gay adoption” and you retorting. SO YOU WANT THE BABIES WITH FAMILIES WHO WILL BEAT THEM AND PUT CIGARETTES OUT ON THEIR FACE!!!
I can imagine that you infuriate people in real life with your twisting of words, I know people like you. It’s impossible to talk to you about anything.
I think paragraph 2 and 3 are separate things. Of course procedures can’t cover every variable. IF you had a procedure for putting your dog in the car, it might not help if a different person put the dog in the car.
However, in most cases where you have procedures, if there is a failure it is because the procedures are not followed.
Too many people don’t have procedures, and I fault them for it. When I hear of something like this, I would love to talk to the people to find out what their procedure was that they put in place to prevent it — if they had one, I wouldn’t fault them so much if somehow it didn’t work.
However, if you gave me a procedure for something, I could tell you what the flaws were and how to make it better.
I once ran my car into a pole in a parking lot, at about 20 mph (kind of a fun thing to do, if you like explosive seat belt bruises). Now, if you had told me before that I could do that, I would have told you it couldn’t happen.
BUT, since that happened, I changed my procedure. I never drive across parking spaces anymore, I only drive in the driving sections. If i do pull through, it is a special case, and I do it slowly, and with keen awareness that I need to watch for things.
If I had put that procedure in place earlier, I would never have run into a pole in a parking lot.
“I once ran my car into a pole in a parking lot, at about 20 mph (kind of a fun thing to do, if you like explosive seat belt bruises). Now, if you had told me before that I could do that, I would have told you it couldn’t happen.
BUT, since that happened, I changed my procedure. I never drive across parking spaces anymore, I only drive in the driving sections. If i do pull through, it is a special case, and I do it slowly, and with keen awareness that I need to watch for things.
If I had put that procedure in place earlier, I would never have run into a pole in a parking lot.”
I agree but some have posted in this thread that they are “incapable of” leaving thier dog or infant in a car because they are not careless and are not stupid. In their minds it simply can’t happen to them, which is absolutely false.
I will say that I can’t imagine how I could ever leave my child in the car by mistake. Obviously I had a “procedure”; but I also wasn’t in a position where I was shuttling my kid places where I wasn’t otherwise going, which seems to be the biggest factor in leaving kids in cars.
In other words, I was never in the mode of “Honey, while you are out, could you take the kid and drop them off at the day care?” If the kid was in the car, it’s because the family was going somewhere and the kid was going in with us.
And my family wasn’t so big that we could lose track of whose job it was to take the kid out of the car when we got there. We had a case in our town where a father of I think 14 kids left a kid die in the car because everybody thought someone else had brought the kid in, and by the time they all realized nobody had, it was too late. I had empathy for that father, since he did seem to have assigned the task of care for the kid to his older children (the mother was gone).
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