After San Francisco Animal Care and Control was called to the pet-packed van of a San Francisco dog walking service parked for hours in the mid-day sun, you might think that the owners of the imperiled dogs might be notified of their brush with disaster. However, not only was Animal Care and Control unable to alert the pets owners—after calls from SFist, ACC admitted that there isn't even a list of accredited dog walkers available to San Franciscans.
According to KRON4, on Friday afternoon, Pamela Uberti, the owner of 4 Your Paws Only, a San Francisco based dog walking and pet sitting service, parked her company van in a sunny, disabled parking place outside the Nordstrom at Stonestown mall. Uberti apparently then rolled up all the windows, and went shopping for about 2.5 hours.
And she did all this, San Francisco Animal Care and Control confirms, with eight dogs tied up inside her vehicle.
"She took all these pets from people who paid her and went to the mall," remarkably attired witness Olga Mroz told the broadcast news station, saying that the animals appeared to be in distress.
According to the National Weather Service, temperatures in San Francisco reached 70 degrees Friday. According to the Weather Channel, that means temperatures inside the van could have been as high as 120 degrees. According to Mroz, the dogs in Uberti's van were left with "no water, nothing."
The dogs Uberti was caring for lucked out in this case: none of the dogs succumbed to the heat.
Animal Care and Control told KRON that Uberti's license to walk dogs will be revoked, but that the owners of the pets left in the van will not be notified by the agency that UIberti has lost hers—instead, the ACC told KRON that owners can view a list of licensed dog walkers on the ACC's website.
However, that list doesn't exist. After I couldn't find the list on Animal Care and Control's website, I called Rebecca Katz, Director of Animal Care and Control, who confirmed that a list of licensed dog walkers is not presently on the ACC site.
"That's unfortunate" Katz said, "since that's what we tell the general public to do, to go to our website to see this list."
According to Katz, the list of registered dog walkers was supposed to be posted on July 1, 2013.
"It looks like we missed that deadline," Katz said.
Katz couldn't give a posting date for the list, saying that they'll have it up "sooner rather than later."
When asked about the dogs left in Uberti's van, she said that ACC couldn't notify the animals owners, as they "don't know who they belong to."
"Hopefully, news coverage will make their owners aware," Katz said.
Update: at 4:43 PM Monday, Katz sent me this link to a page entitled "Approved Dog Walkers (w/valid permit)." Katz included no other context in the email, and as of Tuesday morning had not responded to my follow up questions.
As of Tuesday morning, this page was neither linked to from the home page or related pages on the ACC site, nor is it findable using the ACC site's search function.