How to Be Cool and Stay Cool
Kemosabe shares a few secrets on keeping dogs cool…
Summer has come quickly to Virginia with temperatures in the high 90’s with high humidity. Since I am double coated, I can overheat very fast. However, I have some excellent tips for keeping a hipster like me very cool in summer.
Dogs don’t sweat the way humans do. Our sweat glands are in our nose and the pads of our feet, which are not the most efficient areas for cooling. Horses and humans sweat all over their bodies which, lets face it, is kind of gross. We canines can’t sweat like that. Of course the good news is we don’t have wet, smelly underarms. Or underlegs. We pant to stay cool, but humidity can make cooling down via panting much more challenging. If our body temperature hits over 104 degrees we are in heatstroke.
Tips for cooling down and staying cool:
- Make sure your human gives you access to all the air-conditioning vents in the house — the ones on the floor. Thunderbear loves fans, so our human puts some of those around as well, so Thunderbear can lie on his back and cool his belly.
- Ice cubes are great for licking and for playing hockey on the kitchen floor with Crockett. They melt quickly, which makes for awesome puddles that the cats hate.
- An overheated dog needs to be cooled on his/her inner thighs, stomach and pads of the feet. Then get your human to put you under a fan and into air conditioning so that the water can evaporate, thus helping to cool you down. Remember: When keeping dogs cool, an overheated canine should not cool down too quickly with cold water, because that can cause the blood vessels to constrict, which slows blood flow and the cooling process.
- When it gets hot outside, our human feeds us cooling foods like chicken, eggs, kefir, and coconut oil. Sometimes she freezes green beans and we munch on those as a cooling snack. We also get Buckaroo’s Cooling Stew, which tastes delicious even though it was named for Buckaroo and not me.
- It’s not a good idea for your human to give you cold water to drink; it’s too great of a shock to the system. Room temperature water is best, especially if you have been active in the heat, or are panting a lot.
- Climbing into horse water troughs, running through the vegetable garden while the sprinkler is on, attacking the hose when the human is trying to fill horse water buckets are all practical paths to keeping dogs cool. Digging a nice cool spot under a tree or bush is also recommended, particularly if you’re already wet from pond-swimming, thus adding a nice cooling layer of red clay and mud to the legs and tummy. Your human may not be enthusiastic about this, but give her or him your best canine smile and a good hind-end wiggle and the human will get over it.
