In each issue of Expat Living, DR PAULINE TAYLOR of Pets Central answers readers’ questions about pet care for their furry friends. This time, she looks at how to keep dogs cool in summer, gives us a rundown of precautions we should be taking and some pet safety tips for surviving a Hong Kong summer with dogs and other pets.
What are some pet safety tips we should know for the summer months?
With summer comes a bunch of hazards that can affect or even kill our pets. There are many issues that are commonly seen by our ER vets, including the following:
- Animals coming across and getting bitten by an abundance of wildlife in the form of creatures great and small – snakes and other predators, mosquitoes, ticks, and bees and other flying insects.
- Overheating/heatstroke, which can quickly lead to dehydration and a life-threatening situation or even death. Never go anywhere with your pet without carrying drinking water – and never leave your pet unattended in your car.
- Walking a pet on hot surfaces like pavements, hot sand or hot rocks – it’s very easy to cause burns to their feet.
- Water burns from hoses – the water in hose pipes that have been lying in the sun can be very hot and can burn dogs.
- Drowning – in cases where an animal can jump or fall into a pool and cool off but they cannot get out again.
- A thick manky fur coat – this is not advisable, so ensure it’s clean and well groomed. You should also take care if you cut it off; don’t remove too much as the coat helps to prevent sunburn to the skin.
- Barbecues – these are fun things for us but they can cause many problems in your dog; for example, scavenging and eating too much, or eating fatty foods like ice creams that cause an upset gastrointestinal system; eating hazardous foods like cooked meat bones and sweetcorn that can get stuck in parts of the body, or stone fruits that can lead to choking or foreign bodies in the gut, and meat skewers or toothpicks that can kill if they pierce vital soft areas, especially in the intestine.
Is it bad for animals to drink swimming pool water?
I’m not an expert in swimming pool water but common sense tells me it’s not good for your animals to drink water laden with various chemicals to keep the pool water clean for swimming. I suggest you get a suitable container and fill it daily with fresh tap water for your animals to drink and do not allow them access to drink from your pool.
How do I keep my pet cool during a Hong Kong summer with dogs?
Very simply, during a Hong Kong summer with dogs use common sense. Exercise dogs during the cooler hours of the day, keep their home at a comfortable temperature of around 22 to 26 degrees Celsius (this is breed dependent), always have fresh clean drinking water available (if possible, a source of running water helps), keep their coats clean and groomed at all times, ensure plenty of shade even for indoor dogs and, if possible, let them swim, play and cool off with cold water showers.
My dogs enjoy sleeping outside. With summer approaching how long can they spend in the sun before it’s dangerous?
As long as you have a healthy and alert dog, lying in the sun shouldn’t be a problem for them. Normally, dogs love sunbathing – I know my dogs do – but for how long before it gets dangerous depends on many things. Most important is their in-built temperature control system in an area of their brain called the hypothalamus. This internal thermo-regulating area has the ability to maintain body temperature within certain limits – 38 to 39 degrees Celsius.
I’d need more space to describe this to you in detail, but simply put, this self-regulating system in your dog oversees and controls the dog’s behaviour to mix evaporation (panting), conduction (physically moving to cooler areas), convection (taking advantage of air currents from fans and air-conditioning) and radiation (sending the blood to the surface of the body to heat dissipate).
Problems arise when the surrounding environmental temperature equals the dog’s body temperature and it becomes difficult for the dog to lose heat by any natural method. High humidity exacerbates this.
So, if you see your dog panting, drooling and trying to get a cooler space near a fan, take note. It means they have reached the time that if they don’t move out of the sun’s warm rays, it’s dangerous.
Heat stroke can kill a dog as rapidly as within 10 minutes if there are reasons they cannot thermo regulate. So, if your dog is elderly or ill or has a thick fur coat, I would certainly recommend sunbathing is monitored carefully or restricted to cooler times of the day, if ever.
Sunbathing can also cause sunburn and sun-induced cancers on hairless areas of your dog’s body, so take care about that too.
Pet care advice by Dr Pauline Taylor (BVM&S MACVSc)
After graduating from Edinburgh University, Dr Taylor began practicing in Scotland, working with farm animals, and has accrued over 30 years of experience in caring for animals in various places including the UK, New Zealand and Hong Kong.
Pets Central operates multiple pet care centres, Animal Clinics and Hospitals In Hong Kong.
North Point Hospital | 2811 8907
Mong Kok Hospital | 2309 2139
Tseung Kwan O Hospital | 2244 6684
Sai Kung Hospital | 2792 0833
Park Island Mobile Clinic | 6223 0903
pets-central.com
Looking for more pet care advice? Dr Pauline Taylor has shared lots of pet safety tips with us in our Living in Hong Kong section. Check out her recent article with training tips.
This article about pet care, safety and how to keep dogs cool in summer first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Expat Living magazine. Subscribe now so you never miss an issue!
