“I told the attendants and the pilot that I wouldn’t get off the plane until the van picked up my pets,” she says. They asked her to disembark anyway. Inside the terminal, Sinclair says she called the PetSafe desk. A supervisor assured her that her animals would get proper attention during the three hours before their next flight.

But when Sinclair boarded the plane for Boston, her pets were already on the tarmac again beneath the wing of the plane—not, as promised, in a climate-controlled van. One video, obtained by Condé Nast Traveler, shows a luggage handler sitting idly nearby, waiting to load bags, while the crates linger on the tarmac. “I have no idea how long they’d been out there,” she says. Distraught, she asked a flight attendant to help get her pets into air-conditioning. She told the pilot there would be animals in his cargo hold, and asked him to be mindful of its temperature and pressure. Unfortunately, nearly an hour after Sedona and Alika were loaded, the crew found problems with the plane’s air conditioning, and both passengers and cargo were removed.

Eventually, Sinclair and her pets were boarded for the third and final time that day. They arrived in Boston after 11 p.m. The PetSafe van retrieved the animals and brought them to the designated pickup area, where Sinclair found them at 12:30 a.m. She couldn’t believe what she saw. Sedona and the interior of her crate were covered in blood, feces, and vomit. Her food pack hadn’t been opened, and the zip ties Sinclair had used to secure her crate that morning were in exactly the same position, suggesting Sedona hadn’t been let out for the entire span of their journey—about 15 hours. The interior of Alika’s crate was also covered in feces and vomit; she was dehydrated, but stable. “When we let Sedona out, she couldn’t get up or walk. She was shaking and panting—it looked like she was dying right in front of me,” says Sinclair. “When we got home, she began to pee blood and I raced her to the vet.” A Boston-area animal hospital diagnosed her with heat stroke and a urinary tract infection—medical problems that were “secondary to hyperthermia that she suffered during her United Airlines flight,” they concluded. Sedona spent the next two days in the vet’s intensive care. Full recovery took months. “She trusted me. … If I’d known how she would be treated, I would never in a million years have traveled on the plane with my dog.”

United’s official response came on August 28, 2013, in the form of a letter disclaiming any wrongdoing. The airline had submitted Sedona’s report to a consulting veterinarian for review; their conclusion was that the greyhound had a “pre-existing medical condition which may have been aggravated during her air transportation.” They didn’t specify what condition; rather, the company offered $1,000 toward Sedona’s treatment, refunded the PetSafe fee of $684.90, and asked Sinclair to sign a non-disclosure agreement. When Sinclair declined, United upped the reimbursement to $2,700—on the condition, again, that she sign the agreement. She refused. On November 1, United sent its final note: “For the sake of clarity, we withdraw our offer and consider the matter closed.”