This July, more than 70 dogs were packed into a Roanoke, Virginia boarding kennel with no working air conditioning while the heat index outside hit 97 degrees. Animal control officers who responded found dogs roaming hallways, packed into cages, and going without ready access to water, in a building where indoor temperatures climbed as high as 90 degrees. Prosecutors have now dropped the animal cruelty charges against the kennel's owner and manager, not because the conditions were fine, but because Virginia law only allows a cruelty charge when a dog is shown to have suffered serious injury. No injury meant no case, even though heat like that has killed dogs in far less extreme conditions.

The kennel has since installed air conditioning, upgraded its wiring, and capped how many dogs it houses at once, and it's fair to recognize that. But those fixes only happened after a heatwave nearly became a tragedy, not because a routine inspection caught the problem first. Roanoke shouldn't need dogs suffering through a 97-degree day to discover a kennel is unsafe.

Roanoke City Council should require regular, unannounced inspections of every licensed boarding kennel in the city, with real consequences for facilities that don't meet basic temperature, sanitation, and space standards, before an animal is hurt, not after.

Sign the petition to demand real kennel inspections in Roanoke, so the next heatwave doesn't come down to luck.