Summer Walks: Keeping Dogs Safe When Temperatures Climb

Heat causes more walk related emergencies than most owners expect, and a lot of them are avoidable with a bit of planning. Dogs cannot regulate temperature the way people do. They rely mainly on panting rather than sweating, which makes them far more vulnerable to overheating than owners sometimes realize, especially on days that do not even feel that extreme to a person. Why Dogs Overheat Faster Than People Assume A dog’s cooling system is simply less efficient than a human’s. Thick coats, especially on double coated breeds, trap heat close to the body. Flat faced breeds like bulldogs and pugs struggle even more, since their airways are already somewhat restricted before heat becomes a factor at all. Humidity makes this worse. Panting cools a dog by evaporating moisture, and when the air is already saturated with moisture, that evaporation slows down significantly, meaning a humid seventy five degree day can be more dangerous than a dry ninety degree one. The Pavement Problem One detail gets missed constantly, pavement temperature is not the same as air temperature. On a sunny eighty five degree day, asphalt can reach well over one hundred and forty degrees, hot enough to burn paw...