Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Dog days of summer
Keeping dogs cool in hot weather is a constant challenge for owners. Here, David Tomlinson offers advice on how to cope in a heatwave
IF YOU WANT TO change the weather then the easiest way, it seems, is to write about it. The theme of this article is looking after dogs in hot weather and I started writing it on a scorching day when the temperature was pushing 30°C. Now, however, it has slumped back to 16°C and the sun has been replaced by a vicious wind.
By the time this appears in print, there’s a fair chance that it will be hot once again. Last year, the hottest day of the year was 26 July. I recorded 36.4°C (97°F) in my Suffolk garden, but not far away in Cambridge it peaked at 38.7°C (101.7°F), the highest temperature ever recorded in the UK.
Dogs aren’t good at coping with excess heat, which isn’t really surprising when you consider that they spend their whole lives wearing a fur coat, and the only way they can regulate their heat is by panting. They do sweat through their pads but this doesn’t lead to much heat loss. It’s up to us as dog owners to help them cope with the hot dog days of summer — the period from 3 July to 11 August when the dog star rises at the same time as the sun.
Most of the advice for helping dogs cope with heat is obvious: only exercise them early in the morning before the sun gets up, or again in the evening when the temperature is dropping. The exception to this is if you can take them to water, as most dogs delight in swimming on hot days. Of course, most gundogs will swim at any time of the year, regardless of the temperature of the water, but even dogs that don’t care much for water are drawn to it when it’s really hot.
However, swimming does have its perils, as blue-green algae tends to bloom in static ponds and lakes when the temperature is high and rain hasn’t fallen for a while. It’s not always obvious to the eye but can look like scum on the water, while the presence of dead fish is a sure indicator. If in any doubt don’t let your dog near it as cyanobacteria (the bacteria present in the algae) can be fatal.
“Dogs aren’t good at coping with excess heat, which isn’t surprising... they spend their lives wearing a fur coat”
Introduction to water
There is no antidote and the poisoning is likely to lead to liver failure. If you suspect that your dog has ingested toxic algae (the signs include vomiting, breathing difficulties, even disorientation) try to make it sick in an attempt to flush the poison from the body.
Swimming in the sea avoids such concerns and it adds the option of swimming with your dog. This is also a great time to introduce a puppy to
water. I did just this with my sprocker, Emma, two years ago. She was then only four months old and hadn’t swum before, but warm, shallow water off the North Norfolk coast provided the perfect way to get her venturing confidently out of her depth.
Not all of us have access to water but there are plenty of other ways to keep a dog cool other than tipping a bucket of cold water over it. A relatively new innovation is the cool coat, made of water-retaining fabric that can be soaked before it is put on the dog. I have found cool coats invaluable when taking the dogs out on a hot, sunny day to events like game fairs. Though when it’s really hot, I’d rather leave them at home.
Dogs aren’t daft and they will naturally find somewhere cool, such as a stone or tile floor, to stretch out. Here they use both conduction (through the contact with the cold surface) and convection (the transfer of their heat from hot to cooler molecules) through the skin. As their temperature rises, blood vessels in the skin dilate to increase blood flow. If they then come into contact with a cool surface they can rid themselves of some of that heat.