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Dog of Michael Vick's Leading Critic Dies in Hot Car (SPCA CEO Leaves Dog in Hot Car)
Kansas City Star ^ | Yael T. Abouhalkah

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 ...


TOPICS: Pets/Animals; Sports; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: animalcruelty; cruelty; dogs; spca; vick
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To: precisionshootist

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.


41 posted on 08/27/2009 6:17:12 PM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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To: Ramius
Heh... yah. Like they say: There are two kinds of pilots... those who have landed wheels-up, and those who haven’t, yet.

Errrrr.....yea, whatever. Apparently you never heard of Bitching Betty......

42 posted on 08/27/2009 6:26:08 PM PDT by ScreamingFist
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To: Ramius

“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.


43 posted on 08/27/2009 6:41:58 PM PDT by word_warrior_bob (You can now see my amazing doggie and new puppy on my homepage!! Come say hello to Jake & Sonny)
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To: nickcarraway

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!


44 posted on 08/27/2009 6:46:13 PM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: word_warrior_bob
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.

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.

45 posted on 08/27/2009 7:06:54 PM PDT by Ramius (Personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: CharlesWayneCT

“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.


46 posted on 08/27/2009 7:41:26 PM PDT by precisionshootist
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To: Ramius

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.


47 posted on 08/28/2009 12:43:37 AM PDT by word_warrior_bob (You can now see my amazing doggie and new puppy on my homepage!! Come say hello to Jake & Sonny)
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To: precisionshootist

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.


48 posted on 08/28/2009 5:41:09 PM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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To: CharlesWayneCT

“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.


49 posted on 08/31/2009 2:53:03 PM PDT by precisionshootist
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To: precisionshootist

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).


50 posted on 08/31/2009 3:06:06 PM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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