By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
With an Excessive Heat Warning in effect this week, Jon Austin, DVM with Hutchinson Small Animal Hospital asks you to think of your pets and help them beat the heat.
"It's really important for pet owners to realize that, you know, you've got everything from, you know, heat stroke as a possibility," Austin said. "The people who walk their pets you know the pavement gets hot."
Austin often sees burns on the pads of a dog's feet if they are walked during the warmer hours.
"You know that that sunshine hits that pavement I think I've seen a chart where the pavement is roughly 40 to 60 degrees hotter than the outside air temperature," Austin said. "You've got to be thinking about that for your pets as well. If you're a jogger or a walker with your pet, you better do that early in the morning or after the sun's gone down in the evening."
Humidity is also hard on dogs.
"If you think about the the cooling system that God designed them with, they need to breathe in and exchange cool dry air for the hot humid air that's in their lungs," Austin said. "If the air outside is you know 99 or a hundred and ninety nine percent humidity there's no temperature gradient or humidity gradient for them to work with so they work and work and pant and breathe and they don't cool off and then the effort of the panting actually causes them to get hotter and so it spools up and kind of becomes a vicious cycle and they just can't cool off."
This is why having water available is so important. Check on the pet's water three to four times a day to make sure they are drinking enough.