Mt. Pleasant, SC - A Charlston, Doctor Who Left 9 Dogs in a Car, Has Been Charged with Animal Cruelty - His Bond Has Been Set at $90,000

A Charleston doctor has been charged with animal cruelty after police said he was found with nine dead dogs.

His bond was set at $90,000, but Bickerstaff bonded out sometime Wednesday evening.

According to a Mt. Pleasant police report, officers were called to the Mt. Pleasant Emergency Hospital for a report of animal cruelty.

Staff members told police that a man had come in with six dead Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, crated in the back of his Ford Explorer. Staff members told police the man said he thought the dogs had passed out.

“This is a medical doctor. This is not acceptable,” said the woman who called 911 from Mount Pleasant Emergency Vet. “He had asked, ‘So, leaving the windows open is not adequate?' No. Not when they're in kennels and they have full coats, and you have them two by two in each kennel.”

According to the report, staff members saw that the dogs were deceased and rigor mortis had set in. They also told officers that the dogs showed signs of disseminated intravascular coogulosathy (DIC).

According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, DIC is a "condition in which blood clots form throughout the body's small blood vessels" that can block blood flow to organs.

Police were given a description of the man and were told that he claimed to be a doctor at East Cooper Hospital. Investigators identified the suspect as 64-year-old Charles Allen Bickerstaff.

The 911 caller at Mount Pleasant Emergency Vet said Bickerstaff told her he had to stop by the hospital to check on a patient.

According to an affidavit, investigators met with him on Monday and he confessed to putting his 8- or 9-year-old spaniel, Butler, along with eight other dogs into five crates in the back of his SUV.

Court documents identified the other dogs as Money, Lucinda, Drayton, Madeline, Shelby, Katie, Freddie, and Willis. Their ages ranged from 5 months to 9 years, documents show.

Bickerstaff told police he left the dogs in the vehicle while he performed his duties at East Cooper Hospital. The affidavit notes that temperatures that day ranged from 73.4 degrees to 82.4 degrees with a heat index of 90.9 degrees.

The affidavit also states the air conditioner was not on and the windows of the Explorer were not open. Another release from police notes that the dogs did not have food or water and that they were caged for over three hours.

Bickerstaff was charged Wednesday with nine counts of ill treatment to animals.

According to the U.S. News and World Report, Dr. Charles Bickerstaff is a gastroenterologist and is affiliated with several hospitals including Bon Secours St. Francis Xavier Hospital and East Cooper Medical Center.

The Charleston Animal Society released a statement Wednesday afternoon, highlighting the dangers of leaving pets in cars for any amount of time.

“The temperature inside of a car during spring and summer and early fall in South Carolina will rise so much, that for a dog, seconds can cost them their life,” said Dr. Sarah Boyd, director of shelter health and wellness at the Charleston Animal Society.

Boyd says it's a deadly misconception that dogs can handle heat. In fact, some are more sensitive than others.

“It doesn't take very long, minutes, for their internal temperature to rise enough that they don't just begin to pant but, their body will start having organ failure and their brain reaches such a high temperature that they will have a heat stroke,” said Dr. Boyd.

Dr. Boyd says the lesson in this tragedy is simple: if you decide to allow your pet to travel with you, they must be with you at all times.

“Even if you think you can just run in and run out, it happens and it could be you and it could be your dog,” Boyd said.


WCIV-TV | ABC News 4 - Charleston News, Sports, Weather

A Medical Doctor Leaves 9 Dogs In Hot Car, All Die While He Makes Rounds At Hospital

A doctor in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina left nine dogs in a hot car while he made rounds at the hospital on Monday. The 64-year-old is charged with animal cruelty and is set on $90,000 bond.

Dr. Charles Allen Bickerstaff was making rounds at one of the hospitals he works for when his dogs died. All nine were crammed into five crates altogether in the back of Bickerstaff’s Ford Explorer. When he returned to his SUV, he noticed the dogs were unresponsive so he took them to Mt. Pleasant Emergency Hospital.

A staff member at the vet’s office called 911 after she saw the animals.

She said:

“This is a medical doctor. This is not acceptable. He had asked, ‘So, leaving the windows open is not adequate?’ No. Not when they’re in kennels and they have full coats, and you have them two by two in each kennel.”

The nine dogs left in the hot vehicle were Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. According to court documents, the dogs are identified as Money, Lucinda, Drayton, Madeline, Shelby, Katie, Freddie, and Willis. Their ages ranged from 5 months to 9 years, the document reveals. The doctor left the dogs inside the vehicle for three hours.

Police used records from the vet’s office to get information on Dr. Bickeroff. He’s a gastroenterologist and is a physician for several hospitals that include Bon Secours St. Francis Xavier Hospital and East Cooper Medical Center, according to ABC 4 Charleston. The allegedly negligent doctor was questioned by police Monday night and arrested on Wednesday.

When Dr. Sarah Boyd, director of shelter health and wellness at Charleston Animal Society, learned of the animals’ terrible fate, she explained how hard it is for dogs to be inside hot cars.

Dr. Boyd said:

“The temperature inside of a car during spring and summer and early fall in South Carolina will rise so much, that for a dog, seconds can cost them their life.”

News 2 mentions that the affidavit says during the time Dr. Bickeroff was at the hospital, the temperatures outside went from 73 degrees to 82 degrees; the heat index was around 91 degrees.

Another tragedy of multiple dogs in a hot car occurred when four pit bulls were left in the back of a man’s car in Sacramento. As reported on The Inquisitr, all four dogs died from heat exposure. One pit bull was rescued alive, but died the next day due to severe injuries to her internal organs.

Arin Greenwood, Animal Welfare Editor, The Huffington Post - 10 Stereotypes About Pit Bulls That Are Just Dead Wrong

HuffPost Green is launching a week-long, community-driven effort to bust the myths and raise awareness about pit bulls, a maligned "breed" that often bears the brunt of dated, discriminatory legislation that can make it near impossible for these dogs to find a forever home. You can follow along with HuffPost Pit Bull Week here, or on Facebook and Twitter where we'll be using the hashtag #PitBullWeek.

To read her article, click here: 10 Stereotypes About Pit Bulls That Are Just. Dead. Wrong

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Puppy Saves 3-Year-Old Girl Who Was Lost in Siberia for 11 Days

The dog stayed with Karina Chikitova, keeping her warm, after she and her pet wandered away from her home in a remote village in diamond-rich Sakha Republic, the largest region in Russia. The area where she lives has large populations of bears and wolves.

Eventually, after nine days in which the girl survived on river water and berries, the dog left her in a protective hole amid long grass and found its way home to summon help. The loyal and loving mongrel is known as Kyrachaan to locals, meaning 'little one' in the Yakutian language.

Remarkably, Karina, aged three years and seven months, suffered minimal injuries - but as our picture shows, she was badly bitten by mosquitoes.

There are more pictures of Karina's dramatic rescue but also the revelation that her family is under investigation for neglect in letting her disappear into the wild.

The truth emerged yesterday of a nightmare confusion between the parents and the child's grandmother over her whereabouts, which meant that long days passed before anyone realised little Karina was missing from her home in Olom village in Olyokminsky district.

The parents were haymaking in a distant field and were absent for a few days while Karina was being looked after by her grandmother.

Huge wild fires in Siberia meant that her father Rodion was summoned on July 29th to work in a volunteer team to combat the flames engulfing the region.

The grandmother saw the father leave the family home - and, she claims, thought Karina was going with him. The father says he had no idea that the grandmother thought he had taken the child. When mother Aitalina returned from the fields, she was surprised to learn that her husband had taken Karina.

It took several days for him to reach her by phone - and all the time little Karina was cuddling up to the dog out in the open, some six kilometres from home, but unable to get back.

"When she reach him by phone on August 2nd, he said Karina was not with him and should be with the grandmother," said Stanislav Platonov, head of the press service of the republics Interior Ministry.

Aitalina called to police. The first team of police and rescuers appeared on the scene on August 3rd and immediately began the search. Later they got more equipment and specialists and luckily found the girl in the end'.

The dog came home after nine days evidently seeking help to rescue Karina.

Here accounts differ: TV reports say that the dog led the rescuers to the girl. Another version is that by returning home, the dog let the rescuers know that Karina was not far away. The republican Investigative Committee, said it was considering whether the family had been negligent and should face legal action.

Investigators are still working on this case. "We need to decide whether to close the criminal case, or was some crime committed, like negligence for example," said spokeswoman Nadezhda Dvoretskaya.

"Why did they let child go to the forest alone? Why she was without adult supervision?"

The mother explained that she did not know that the young child was missing because she was at the hayfield with her husband, before he then left to help with fire-fighting.

Later she came home and asked, "where is the child?" The granny told her that she lay down to sleep and when she woke up, there was no Karina. The granny was sure that Karina was with her father, that he took the girl with him. The mother talked to the father, as soon as she could, due to the bad phone connection and it turned out that girl was not with him.

It is a very remote region, with very difficult phone connections, so there is the  possibility that mother really could not connect with her mother, and with her husband in time and learn that Karina is missing.

                                                               Click on images to enlarge.