TORONTO -- This shaggy dog story comes with a happy ending - and a warning.

Witnesses said they saw a woman leave a small dog in her SUV as she entered a building at 1 p.m. on Thursday - a sunny day on which the temperature reached 31 degrees Celsius.

The dog was left in the car for an hour.

"I have a baby, too, and there's no way in hell that I would ever leave a baby like that," witness Mara Boni said.

She said she saw a man and a woman get out of the champagne-coloured Toyota Highlander in the parking lot.

Eight people were outside at the time, four of them sitting on a picnic bench close to the car.

If it weren't for the dog trying to jump out as the couple opened their doors, witnesses said they wouldn't have been alerted to the canine.

"That's how we saw it," Boni said. "Otherwise we wouldn't have noticed it with the dark tint."

According to her, the witnesses called out to the couple "'Hey, don't leave that dog in the car by himself, it's hot!'"

"They just ignored us," Boni said, baffled. "So we yelled out again 'You can bring the dog inside.'"

The couple continued to walk away. Boni and other witnesses approached the car and saw a window was open by an inch.

"We walk up to the thing and the poor thing is, like, panting," she said. "It needs air."

Another woman, who wished to remain unnamed, stayed with the dog for an hour "as it went crazy running from window to window."

"I would've smashed the window," the woman said. "It broke my heart. I was in tears."

After an hour, one of the owners reportedly returned to the car and retrieved the dog, loudly exclaiming,

"The dog's fine, the dog's fine."

Police were called to the scene and, according to witnesses, searched the building but were unable to find the dog or the couple.

"They don't deserve to be dog owners," Boni said. "Point is: you want to leave him, leave him at home."

Last month, a dog was found dead in a car parked at a mall north of the city. The couple who left the dog behind were arrested and charged with cruelty to animals.