State Sen. Jake Knotts said Wednesday he'll fight the animal neglect ticket he got after he left his seven-pound Maltese in his black luxury car on a 91-degree day.

Knotts, a former police officer and investigator for prosecutors, challenges a Cayce police report that states he left Boom Boom Mancini, his white Maltese, in the Lincoln Town Car for an hour.

Knotts, 58, said the witnesses who reported the incident are wrong. "It was at most 30 minutes,'' he said.

Furthermore, all four windows were open enough for the dog to get its head out, and it refused water after police and an animal control officer arrived, he said.

The police report says that three of the four windows were merely cracked. One was open about three inches.

"I'm going to bring my people (witnesses) and let them tell the judge,'' Knotts, a Republican from Lexington, said.

He said he has two or three witnesses who were inside the Kingsman restaurant, where he was meeting with a constituent. The Kingsman is in Parkland Plaza shopping center on Knox Abbott Drive.

The trial is set for next Thursday in Cayce city court, the day after Boom Boom turns a year old.

Police said they searched for the car owner in at least two businesses in the shopping center.

The people who complained said they waited about 20 minutes before calling police about 1:15 p.m., the report shows.

Named for a professional boxer, the dog is the senator's constant companion and is well treated, said Knotts, who is known for his assertive style.

"There are a lot of dogs in South Carolina and this nation that would like to be neglected like that," he said.

If Knotts is convicted, the dog would lose, too. His sentence would be: "Boom Boom, you're under house arrest, and you can't run with the big dogs," the senator said

Lt. Frank Ballentine, the policeman who answered the complaint, said Knotts was "argumentative'' when told Boom Boom would be taken by animal control.

Knotts had to pay $40 to get the dog back.

"I advised the subject that he could be taken into custody for the offense,'' wrote Ballentine, a 12-year law enforcement veteran.

"The subject continued to express his dissatisfaction with the officers but turned the dog over'' to animal control.

"I wasn't abusive to the police,'' Knotts said Wednesday. "If questioning a police officer of the truth and veracity of a case, then I guess I was argumentative.''

Knotts made no complaint about Ballentine. "The officer was just doing his job."

Cayce Public Safety Chief Charlie McNair said Ballentine is a good officer and being argumentative "sounds like that might be Jakie. I've been known to be that way, too.

"Evidently, he didn't get too far out of line or we would have put him in jail,'' the chief said lightheartedly.