Your parked car is not a doghouse | Letters to the editor

A reader who believes in animal rights warns of the dangers of leaving a dog in a hot car.

As the dog days of summer bring scorching temperatures, animal lovers should remember that hot dogs belong on the grill — not in parked cars.

While never a good idea, leaving your pet alone in a vehicle — even during a quick errand — is especially dangerous this time of year.

A parked car can become an oven under the sun, even in mild temperatures. When it’s a comfortable 70 degrees outside, the inside of a vehicle can climb to almost 90 degrees after only 10 minutes and creep into triple-digit temperatures after half an hour.

Research shows that cracking the windows doesn’t have a significant effect on how quickly the temperature rises.

Unlike humans, dogs cannot sweat and do not regulate temperatures as efficiently as we do, making them extra vulnerable to heat stroke, which can be fatal.

This summer, be a responsible pet owner with your own best friend. And if you see a distressed animal inside a parked car, call your local animal control or law enforcement immediately — you could save a life.

Dr. Robin Ganzert, West Palm Beach

The writer is President of American Humane.

So wrong about Trump

For the first couple of years of Donald Trump’s presidency, I was gullible.

I made the mistake in many op-eds in claiming that Trump’s sins were in large part due to his policies and political ideology. How wrong I was.

Watching the recent New York criminal trial and Trump’s untruthful — and incessant — daily discourse in response, we now know that his sins are about his indecency, inhumanity, selfishness and lack of morality.

I never thought I would say this, and some no doubt will attack me for saying it, but for those who still support Trump, no matter what he says or does or how many felony convictions he receives, your soul is on the line.

This includes nearly all Republican congressional leaders, who despite the ongoing criminal cases against two Democratic politicians and President Biden’s son, erroneously assert that the New York legal case against Trump was purely political, having been orchestrated by Biden and the Department of Justice.

Make no mistake. You can pray all you want; it will not make you less accountable.

Like Trump, we all are accountable and will be judged by our actions.

Richard A. Cherwitz, Austin, Tex.

A clear pattern emerges

By now, we’ve all heard the news that Donald Trump was found guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying his company’s business records to keep information from voters that he knew would harm his 2016 presidential campaign.

This isn’t just about “hush money” payments. It’s about breaking the law to hide the truth from the American people 11 days before a presidential election.

Trump has a clear pattern of lying to the American people and trying to undermine our elections in order to cling to power. He still faces three additional indictments and 54 criminal charges, including federal charges for inciting an insurrection to overturn the 2020 election. In spite of all of this, he’s still running for president.

Donald Trump is a convicted fraudster and criminal who still poses a massive threat to our fundamental freedoms. We can’t let him hold the highest office in our land in 2025. It’s up to all of us to hold him accountable and defeat him at the ballot box in November.

Hattie Robinson, Lake Worth Beach

His ‘crime’ is that he won

To those of your readers who claim that former President Trump is a convicted criminal, the only crime or crimes he has committed is winning the 2016 presidential election and running as the Republican presidential candidate in 2024.

Dr. Erik H. Schot, Ph.D., Fort Lauderdale