A Halifax-area woman is asking some tough questions about the way the RCMP treat their four-legged members.

The woman called police to complain after seeing a dog left unattended in a vehicle at her apartment complex last weekend. It turns out the dog belonged to the RCMP.

The force admits it happened, but says the officer didn’t do anything wrong, and that the dog is fine.

“I come out at 9 a.m., two hours later, another person walked by the vehicle and the dog barked and barked,” says Jennifer Vaughan. “I said ‘OK, it’s getting hot. It’s full sun. It’s hot.’”

Increasingly concerned, Vaughan called Halifax Regional Police, which dispatched some members to check it out.

What she heard next left her stunned.

“They looked around the front of the grill, and they said ‘Do you realize that, look at the grill, it’s an RCMP truck,’” says Vaughan.

Halifax Regional Police confirm officers did respond to a complaint of a dog left in a vehicle Saturday morning, and it was in fact an RCMP dog.

It was 22 degrees by 9 a.m., but with the humidex, it felt like 30 by that point in the day. The RCMP admit the incident took place, but insist the dog was never in any danger.

The member currently in charge of the nine RCMP dogs on duty in Nova Scotia insists they’re treated more like family than ‘police tools.’

“They’re our bread and butter,” says Cpl. Glenn Brown of the Nova Scotia RCMP Dog Services. “We love them. They stay at home with us. They’re a part of the family.”

Brown notes the canines are used to spending many hours in specially-equipped vehicles with plenty of water, cooling systems, and other amenities.

The dog handler in this case, he says, was on call and did nothing wrong.

“He was visiting a friend and he ended up staying there overnight,” says Brown. “The dog was in the vehicle and the windows were down. There was fresh water and he monitored the dog every couple of hours.”

“I would assume they called the officer, got ahold of him and told him ‘Maybe move your dog, we’re getting complaints,’” says Vaughan.

The SUV finally left Vaughan’s parking lot around 11 a.m. - four hours after she first noticed it.

Vaughan says she's relieved to know the police dog she heard barking suffered no serious injury.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Bruce Frisko