Your dog could pant the pants off you with no sweat

Just a minute ago the phone rang, and I picked it up and identified myself and this guy said, “Oh, I didn’t think you would answer. I’ll call back when you’re not there.”

You people.

Today’s question comes from a doctor. I only mention it because it’s not that often you come across a doctor who doesn’t already know everything.

When my dog is frightened by a storm or otherwise upset, it pants very hard. If a person panted that hard he would hyperventilate. Why don’t dogs?

If the good doctor had bothered to read the thrilling, action-packed Animal Physiology, Adaptation and Environment by Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, he wouldn’t have had to ask me about this.

In a nutshell, dogs are better at panting than we are. They are panting experts. Any old run-of-the-mill dog could pant the pants off of you or me. They usually pant to cool themselves off, but sometimes, as the doctor noted, when they are scared or otherwise upset.

When you hyperventilate, your gases get all out of kilter and you run out of carbon dioxide. You become alkalotic, which may be worth a million points in Scrabble if you could set it up.

However, when dogs pant it does not involve what we Schmidt-Nielsen groupies refer to as “full alveolar inflation.” Basically, that means they don’t get a lot of lung action going.

Instead, when a dog pants it’s breathing from its trachea and bronchi, an area called the “dead space” where there is no exchange of air.

In other words, they are sort of pulling up and down on this column of air without using their full lung capacity.

So they don’t get short on carbon dioxide, and they don’t hyperventilate.

And dogs don’t necessarily pant steadily for a long period of time. They may pant really hard for a bit, then breathe normally for a bit, and then pant some more.

All that’s kind of neat, don’t you think? It’s nice the way these things work out.