Dogs and hot weather

Ever wondered why humans are mostly hairless, smart(ish) apes unlike other mammals? Well, pull up your favourite dog bed, get comfy and I’ll tell yah. Millions of years ago in Africa human ancestry stopped spending most if it’s time messing about in trees and took on a more active life style, most likely running away from big beasts, hunting more little beasts and getting quite addicted to this new thing called walking on two legs. This brought on the problem of over heating. Early human ancestors came up with a perfect way to deal with this annoyance. Rather than sitting in the shade not getting anything done, they developed more sweat glads to cool down so they can get on with their busy lives of learning how to be a massive pain in the backside to all other animals. This lead to shedding most of their fur so sweat can evaporate easier

“But why are you telling us this when we wanted to know about dogs and hot weather you strange dog walker!” I hear you say.

Well that’s so you can understand why you don’t take your dog out in the sun or on hot days like we are having. Dogs have two kinds of fur to regulate body temperature. The shorter ground hairs and the longer guard hairs. These are to protect the skin from all kinds of weather. Which is fine but not fine for cooling. But dogs only have their sweat glands on the paws you see, where humans have them all over their smelly body. Dogs can start to struggle and can suffer from heatstroke when the temperature starts going over 20c. You might think that’s low but you’ve evolved a perfect way to deal with the heat, your dog only has four paws to sweat out of and panting remember.

I know, “But the guys need to go out, they need to stretch their legs and not pee in the house”.

My advice in that case is to let them out in the garden for a short period where’s there’s shade, water and keep an eye on them. If you don’t have a garden, then take them out when the temperature is cool, early in the morning or later in the evening, use the trees to make a shade to walk under, don’t go far and keep it local if you can. Take water in a sports bottle and a towel with you. You can spray the little guy to help cool them (soaking the belly is better than on top of the coat as this keeps the internal organs cool where the coat will just evaporate) as well as the towel making it into a cooling blanket or jacket. Use a paw balm to help protect the pads. We have shoes (some people might be in saddles with socks… heaven help them) but you try walking on hot pavement for awhile and tell me how your doing.

Walk on grass, stop more often under shelter to rest. If you have to play, play near where there’s some safe water to splash about in and keep it low activity.

You can also buy cooling bandannas, coats and matts.

Heat stroke can be fatal as quickly as 15 minutes in dogs. Your dogs cares about you with all their heart and will do anything to make you happy, and I know you do the same for them. Enjoy the summer with your furry baby.