Police dog dies in hot car at PGA

A 3-year-old Brown County Sheriff’s Office police dog died in a squad car Wednesday after the air-conditioning unit failed.

The dog, a Belgian Malinois named Wix, was on assignment with his handler, Deputy Austin Lemberger, at the PGA Championship golf tournament near Sheboygan when he died.

Lemberger had left the dog alone in the squad car with the engine and air conditioning running. He returned around 12:30 p.m. and found Wix unresponsive in the back of the car.

The vehicle’s blower motor stopped working, and a heat alarm installed in the squad car did not activate, said Capt. Dan Sandberg of the Brown County Sheriff’s Office.

An official cause of death has not been determined, however heat is likely a factor.

Temperatures in a closed vehicle can rise quickly, according to The American Veterinary Medical Association, a nonprofit association representing more than 86,500 veterinarians.

“At 60 minutes, the temperature in (a) vehicle can be more than 40 degrees higher than the outside temperature,” the association says on its website.

Sandberg could not say how long Wix had been left unchecked in the vehicle.

He said the heat alarm was no more than a few years old, and the department has not had any other problems with the equipment, which sets off a car alarm if the temperature inside exceeds a manually set level.

The Sheriff’s Office is investigating the incident along with Bay East Animal Hospital in Bellevue.

Police dogs are routinely left inside squad cars if they’re on duty but not working.

“(Officers) don’t have the luxury of tying a patrol dog to the tree when they rest ... They are so well-trained that when they come out of the car they’re on high alert,” said Margaret Eastman, a veterinarian from Bay East Animal Hospital, which partners with the department to care for the dogs.

“Utilizing the vehicle as a place of rest is necessary,” she said.

Lemberger, who has been Wix’s handler for the past 18 months, took the death hard, Sandberg said.

“He’s holding up, but, to be honest, it’s rough for him. It’s like losing a part of your family, so it was really hard on him,” Sandberg said.

Lemberger joined the department in 2007.

The department had six dogs, including Wix. Each one cost roughly $17,000 to purchase and train, Sandberg said.

Brown County insures the dogs, Sandberg said.

Wix is not the first police dog to die in a car this summer. A sheriff’s deputy in Texas was fired this week after his police dog died after being left in a car for 20 hours.

Two police dogs in Georgia died in hot cars in June. There also have been deaths of police dogs this summer in California and southern Alabama. In the California case, a 3-year-old Belgian shepherd named Nitro died because an air-conditioning unit failed, according to the Stockton Police Department’s Facebook page.

— dschneid@greenbaypressgazette.com and follow him on Twitter @PGDougSchneider

— arodewal@pressgazettemedia.com and follow him on Twitter @AdamGRodewald or on Facebook at Facebook.com/AdamGRodewald.​