Keeping Pets Cool Through an Australian Summer

Australian homes are built to shed heat, and for most of the year that works. Then comes the first genuinely hot week, the indoor temperature starts tracking the outdoor one, and the animal asleep on your floor is having a very different afternoon to the one you are having.

Pets cannot sweat it out

People cool themselves by sweating over almost the whole body. Cats and dogs cannot. They shed heat by panting, a little through the pads of their paws, and by finding somewhere cooler to lie down. That last one matters more than most owners realise, because it is the only method that depends entirely on what you have put in the room.

It is also why you will find them on the kitchen tiles, in the bathroom, or pressed against a door frame in the middle of a hot afternoon. They are not being odd. They are using the coldest surface in the house, because that is the tool they have.

Why the bed becomes part of the problem

A thick, stuffed, filled bed is a wonderful thing in July. It insulates. It traps body heat and holds it around the animal, which is precisely what you want in winter and precisely what you do not want in January.

The heat a sleeping animal produces has to go somewhere. On a deep bed with no airflow underneath, it goes into the filling and stays there. By the middle of the night that bed can be warmer than the room, which is why so many dogs start the evening on their bed and end it on the floor.

If your dog has quietly stopped using a bed they loved three months ago, this is usually why. Nothing is wrong with the bed. It is doing its job, in the wrong season.

Which animals feel it most

• Flat-faced breeds. Pugs, bulldogs, boxers, Frenchies, and Persian cats. Panting is the main cooling system and a shortened airway makes it far less effective. These animals have the least margin of all.
• Thick and double-coated breeds. Huskies, malamutes, border collies, golden retrievers, and long-haired cats. Coat insulates in both directions.
• Older animals, who regulate temperature less well and move less readily to somewhere cooler.
• Overweight animals, who carry more insulation and generate more heat moving.
• Very young animals, who regulate poorly and will not think to remove themselves.
• Dark-coated animals in direct sun, which absorb noticeably more radiant heat.

What actually helps

• Give them a cooler surface, on purpose. If the best cool spot in your house is the bathroom floor, they will use the bathroom floor. Putting something better in a room you would rather they slept in is the single most effective change.
• Get air underneath them. Heat trapped between an animal and the floor has nowhere to go. Raising them so air can move under the body removes it continuously, without any power or water.
• Move the bed for the season. The winter spot against the internal wall is often the worst summer spot. Follow the draught.
• Shade beats everything outdoors, and shade moves. A patch that is shaded at ten is in full sun at two.
• Water in more than one place. Animals drink more when water is nearby and cool. More bowls, changed more often.
• Walk early or late. Press the back of your hand to the footpath and hold it there. If you cannot manage seven seconds, it is too hot for paws.

Signs they are too hot

Heavy or frantic panting, drooling more than usual, restlessness and an inability to settle anywhere, seeking out tiles and hard floors, lying flat and splayed out rather than curled, and lethargy. In cats, panting at all is unusual and worth taking seriously.

These are early signs and the answer to them is shade, water, airflow and a cooler place to lie. If you see stumbling, vomiting, confusion, bright red or very pale gums, or collapse, that is not a hot dog — that is an emergency, and it needs a vet immediately.

The simplest version

Cool surface, moving air, shade, water, and walks at the ends of the day. Most of what your pet needs in summer costs nothing at all. The rest is just giving them somewhere better to lie than the bathroom floor.