Opinion | The Heart Index: Can we help in the heat, or are we to mind our own business?

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The clouds rolling in from the north were as dark as slate, lightning stabbed the horizon and the temperature was well into the 90s, with a higher heat index.

Lying on the sidewalk in the sun outside my favorite Trader Joe’s, tethered with a rough rope to the bench, was a big dog.

I’d been swimming in the St. Croix River, and my shorts and T-shirt were still damp. I was relatively cool, but the dog?

He was a brindle pit bull with a broad head. His tongue hung out as far as a tongue can and his ribs heaved as fast as I have ever seen an animal pant. No owner in sight. No shade. No water.

I put my purchases in my car, stroked the burly dog and went back into the store to search for a container and a water fountain.

I approached an employee.

“Could I get a container, please, for water for that dog out there?” I said, directing her gaze to the dog now lying with drool dripping onto the hot concrete.

“We’ll watch him,” she offered.

Watch him? Watch him until he collapses with seizures? What is the problem with putting a container of water down for him now?

Back into the store liquor shop: casting about, no container, peeking behind the counters, no container. I turned to delving into the trash bins.

“Why?”

“It’s not your dog,” she said.

“I’m aware of that. But I know animals, I’ve worked at the humane society, and heat is hard on them. Can we bring him into the air-conditioned hallway and give him water?”

“No. I need you to stop. His owner is here somewhere and people generally are out within 45 minutes.”

Forty-five minutes in this heat, at this stage?

I’ve had heatstroke twice, once from riding my horse in Afton’s July 4th parade, and once from putting up hay in an airless barn loft in August.

In New York, a carriage driver is currently on trial for animal cruelty for driving his faltering horse in 84-degree heat. I’ve been a carriage driver in the Twin Cities, too, and we didn’t drive when it was too cold, icy or hot. Heat is particularly deadly. That skinny carriage horse in Hell’s Kitchen collapsed after 8½ hours. It later died.

The dog’s owner finally emerged, a small, elderly man who appeared to be touching up his cardboard begging sign indoors.

“What’s his name?” I asked. He told me it was Sal.

He brought a plastic bottle of water that he offered to the dog. Dogs can’t drink easily from a bottle, but Sal tried.

Half a century ago in Germany, I was pleased and surprised to discover little hitching posts and bowls of water in the shade outside stores. In great heat, raging floods or on icy roads, small things matter.