Overheated, heat stroked Brittanys. Be careful!
It’s that time of year when we must all begin to pay attention to climbing temperatures and how they may affect your Brittany. It is so easy to forget that your dog can overheat so easily. When your dog is down in the grasses running about, it doesn’t feel the cool breeze you feel on your face. Natural cover blocks your Brittanys air movement.
Lets take the dog that lives in upstate New York that has a terrific winter coat. This dog is at risk at temperature levels that you wouldn’t expect. 60 degrees and a lot of running will overheat this animal! When I lived in Maryland, that became apparent to me especially during late season preserve hunts…
A dog that suffers from heat stroke and recovers will never be the athlete it was prior to the stroke. Sorry, it just won’t. I’ve witnessed it in one of my own dogs as well as other dogs that stroked. My own dog was a victim of early season preserve hunting when he stroked. I just didn’t pay close enough attention to my dog. I will never make that mistake ever again. His life was shortened and we had to put him down just a few days before he turned 10.
Heat stroke damages the heart and later in life, it is not uncommon for them to have heart problems and fluid in the lungs (congestive heart failure). That is what happened to my dog.
It is sad and it hurts deeply when you, the caretaker of a dog that is more family than pet, allow this to happen. It causes me great distress to know that I had a hand in my dogs early departure. Don’t make that mistake.
Frequent breaks are mandatory, every 10 or 15 minutes in warmer weather with a lot of cold water on hand. Dip your dog in cold water to cool off if you must. Rubbing cold water on the insides of the ears and on their tummy helps cool them off if there is no pond/stream/trough/ etc available.
My rules are: FIRST, I will NOT forget that my animal could overheat when exercising, no matter the temp and SECOND; No bird, no client, no friend, no trial, no nothing is more important than the safety of my dog.
Take care and when you give your dog a treat, tell ‘em “Dave says good dog!”
Dave
5 comments
Thanks, great advices. I didn’t know about the cold water on the inside ears. I alwas have a cooler for drinks and put a towel in the water and wrap it around Striker
Thanks for the comments. I’ve never tried that but can imagine a cold towel helps as well.
Another ‘technique’, if you can call it that, is I have kicked dirt out with my foot and formed a sort of shallow puddle, then poured water into it. Most dogs will stretch out and let their belly cool in the puddle. A little messy but effective! LOL
I got the idea from watching warm dogs do that on days there are puddles and they get hot.
What are the signs that your dog is overheating and that he/she is not just hot?
That’s the problem with heat stroke, you really don’t know unless you take a rectal temperature. It is insidious and definitely sneaks up on you.
A good rule of thumb is that if your dog is hot, cool ‘em off even if you have to do it every 5 minutes. It is simply not worth the risk.
Many high performance bird dogs will not show signs until it is too late but some obvious signs are they become wobbly on their feet, their gums become white, rapid panting, etc.
Here’s a site with good article:
http://www.thepetcenter.com/gen/hs.html
One old time rule of thumb, that has served me well in avoiding heat-related problems is, “when the combination of relative humidity and temperature are above 150, then you need to be real careful about training your dog hard. My philosophy is definitely “better safe than sorry” when it comes to heat!
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