JulieSummer fun can turn dangerous quickly for our pets, from hidden hazards to fast-moving emergencies. Here's what every pet parent needs to know before the temperatures climb even more. As we head into the hotter months, a lot of pet parents like myself start worrying about all kinds of warm weather dangers. What are some of the most common issues you're seeing right now? I know you've addressed heat stroke very thoroughly on a previous episode.
Dr. LoSassoSure. Heat stroke is definitely the big one — kind of the granddaddy of emergency medicine, worse than most of our surgical cases. There are a couple of things people don't necessarily think about. One is pavement heat — you're walking your dog in the heat of the day, thinking maybe it's overcast, it's not so hot. Well, if you wouldn't walk barefoot, you probably shouldn't ask them to either. That pavement gets really hot and can actually cause thermal injury to the feet. The other thing you might not think about is that coiled-up hose sitting in the backyard — that water actually gets to scalding temperature if it sits out in the sun, especially down here in Texas, especially with a dark hose. If that's what you're going to bathe the dog with, you have to run all the water out until it turns cool or at least room temperature before bathing. Those are a couple of the less talked about heat dangers. Of course, summer here is also thunderstorm season, so we deal with storms too — more of an anxiety problem than an emergency, but together with fireworks coming up on the Fourth of July, thunderstorms are right up there. More dogs go missing on the Fourth of July than any other day of the year, followed closely by Halloween, because fireworks are really scary — they can feel those mortars going off just like they can feel the pressure change that means a thunderstorm is coming.
JulieDo you see more dogs in the summer because of dehydration — because they got scared, had anxiety, or ran off during fireworks and got lost?
Dr. LoSassoThe strays certainly do. Most people down here keep their dogs inside, so we don't necessarily see a lot of hydration issues in the summer specifically. Spring is really the bigger time for some of these things — but when it's nice and warm outside, animals that need environmental temperature to keep themselves warm, meaning mostly snakes, certainly are a bigger risk, and we see more copperhead bites in the summertime, spring and summer, than we do in winter when those snakes are estivating.
JulieWhat about insect bites — things like ticks? Does that escalate over the summer?
Dr. LoSassoWe definitely see more insects, more wasp and bee stings, and more allergic reactions in spring and into summer — those insects are much more active when it's warm. The curious thing you wouldn't expect is we also see a big uptick in the fall, right after the first freeze. Everybody gets confused seeing a lot of insect bites after a freeze, but wasps don't fly well when it's freezing, so they can't make it back up into the nest, and they end up on the ground crawling around. Dogs really can't help themselves — if it's crawling, they have to put it in their mouth, and that can cause a problem. But during summer, we definitely see tons of stinging insects around, so it's certainly more common in the warm months.
JulieYou mentioned allergic reactions — are a lot of dogs and cats allergic to insect stings?
Dr. LoSassoAllergic reactions show up as facial swelling in dogs and cats — kind of like the movie Hitch, where somebody's lips swell up, which we see in people with nut allergies, almonds, that kind of thing. In dogs we see the same kind of reaction: swelling around the eyes, a swollen muzzle, hives all over the body. Those can happen any time you inject a foreign protein — sometimes that's a vaccine reaction to an adjuvant, which happens fairly rarely, but we more often see it as the result of an insect envenomation, stinging insects like wasps and yellow jackets, less often bees.
JulieGoing back to the hot pavement — how hot is too hot for the pads?
Dr. LoSassoIf you wouldn't want to go barefoot on the street, you shouldn't ask your dog to either. It's hot and it hurts, but they don't have much choice. Those pads are pretty tough, but dog skin is fairly thick, and it stores heat — that heat builds up over time, and you don't recognize the thermal injury until after it's over. It's a similar concept to what used to happen in veterinary hospitals — more so back in the 70s and 80s, we used a lot of electric heating pads to keep surgery patients warm, and sometimes they'd develop a hot spot where the skin got really warm, but you wouldn't see the result for a few days. We don't use electric heat for surgery patients at all anymore — we use circulating warm water blankets and forced air heaters. Walking on hot pavement works the same way: you can incur damage that doesn't show up for a couple of days afterward.
JulieWith heat stroke, could you quickly remind us how it develops and how fast it can happen?
Dr. LoSassoHeat stroke is just an elevation of body temperature, and if it's hot outside — especially for a short-faced, brachycephalic breed, whether that's a Boston, Shar-Pei, Pit Bull, Frenchie, or English Bulldog — anything with a shortened face has a harder time getting rid of that heat, because they remove heat by panting and breathing. So it's very easy for heat to build up inside the body. A few tissues really don't like getting above about 105, 106 degrees core body temperature: the liver, the GI tract, the brain, and the endothelium, the cells lining every blood vessel. You don't want to damage your entire circulatory system at once — and that's exactly what heat stroke does.
JulieWhen you look at dog and cat breeds, are the youngest and most senior the most vulnerable this time of year, or is it really about the flat-faced breeds like you said?
Dr. LoSassoIt's really about architecture and conformation. Even a long-nosed dog — German Shepherds, Collies, Dobermans, Vizslas, dogs with no airway obstruction at all — will still get overheated. It just depends on how hot it is, whether they have shade, whether they have water, whether they have any way to cool off outside. I've got a short-faced dog myself, so she's not casting shade on anybody with that smashed face — she doesn't go outside during summer here in Texas unless she needs to eliminate, and she comes right back in. That's her choice. In spring she'll go out and sunbathe, but not in summer.
JulieA question a lot of pet parents have is how much water to give — should you just let the pet decide, keeping it always available?
Dr. LoSassoIn general I'd always have clean, fresh water available. They do a good job self-regulating for the most part. Sometimes with dogs that have upset stomachs, they'll overdrink, so I'll have people ration that out — not that they can't have what they want, they just aren't allowed to drink it all at once, because sometimes their eyes are bigger than their stomachs, they drink more than fits, and end up bringing it back up. That's really for dogs with upset stomachs specifically, not your average walking-down-the-street pet.
