With the weather reaching an all time high this July, I thought it might be useful to find a few tips about keeping your dog cool and comfortable in the heat.
1. Don’t leave your dog in a hot car, even just for a few minutes. It’s not worth the risk of harming your dog….
2. Exercise your dog early in the morning and later in the evening when the temperatures are much cooler. There’s nothing worse than dragging a hot panting dog around in the heat.
3. Keep your dog hydrated. Take a bottle of water on your dog walk and encourage it to drink either during or at the end of a dog walk. Try to remember to keep a travel dog bowl in the car – failing that, you can train your dog to drink out of a clean poop bag – it sounds horrible but it does work. My dogs are fine with this! Always have a bowl of fresh water at home as well as outside in the garden.
4. Hot dogs will pant to keep cool, and they will start to drool a lot. Keep an eye out and make sure that your dog doesn’t get dehydrated. You can tell if it is, by pulling the skin away from the dog, if it takes a while to spring back, the chances are your dog is dehydrated. Try and avoid this by taking water on your walks as mentioned before. Darker coated dogs absorb more heat than lighter one’s and this is very evident in my black labs. They seem to soak up the heat and start to pant straight away.
5. Have fun cooling your dog down in the garden by filling a paddling pool with water, or laying damp towels out for your dog and encouraging them to lie on it. If you have a sprinkler system, then you could spray a fine mist into your garden onto the dogs. Finally you could use cold water on a piece of kitchen towel and dampen their paws. This is an effective way to cool your dog.
6. Take your dog for a swim! Find a quiet river or pond, that contains clean water not putrid smelly stuff! Let your dog cool down in the hot weather by swimming. It might be wiser to find somewhere like this when there is less likelihood of it being used by other people. Not everyone likes, wet soggy dogs shaking themselves all over you!
