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Walking Dogs In The Heat


Kirty
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Very short walks for Zamba at the moment. She is confined to her crate much of the time at the moment, while some stitches heal and to stop her from finding new and different ways to scratch at them. She needs quick, closely supervised breaks from that, but they are very very quick at the moment.

We went out late afternoon yesterday (around 5pm) thinking it would be cooler but gave up after a few minutes and came straight back home. It is just too hot, even late in the afternoon. Looks like today will be the same.

So her visits outside will just need to be confined to the back lawn today unfortunately. Luckily we have my daughter's Borzoi pup visiting us to enjoy our air conditioning. They are great together, so this gives Zamba something interesting to do when she is allowed out of the crate for short periods of time.

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I walk the boys really early on hotter days. Itis usually cool enough at the park if you go before 8am.

We also play when it is hot in the backyard but we have the clam shell withnwaterbso the lads lay in it whenever they get hot.

I would never walk or exercise them if it was hot and we had no access to water and shade

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Years ago I nearly killed my 2 whippets. I was up in Albury and had taken my mare to go riding with a friend. I didn't realise how hot it was up there on hard clay gravel roads. We'd gone a little way and it wasn't too bad but then it started to heat up and we had a long way to get back to the float. The poor whippets, I dont know how they made it. Thankfully there was a dam nearby and they just collapsed in it. I took them home and they were really flat for a couple of days. That was about 25 years ago, I'm older and wiser now.

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I always walk early morning or late afternoon. I always step outside and judge whether I think it is too hot to walk. We haven't gone for a walk for a couple of days now but am taking Brennan to swim in an indoor dog pool at her breeders house for 30 minutes later this morning.

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Sydney is pretty mild compared to where some of you are. :eek: It has been getting into the late 20s here lately but Carl is a dog who has never done well in the heat, so if I walk, it's before 10AM and/or after 6PM, unless it's cool or we go to the beach. If I have to go to work, I walk them early. I always have trouble getting out of bed before 6, though. :o I walked all 4 of mine this morning at 7:30 and it was so hot we had to stop for a few breaks! Lucky we have a pool for them to cool off in. But no air con. :(

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We went to the botanical gardens this morning. They only open at 7.30am so we couldn't ho earlier. It was a lot more crises than usual, so everyone must have had the same idea. I always take water when we're walking for more than half a hour. I worked ip a sweat but the dogs are fine.

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Depends on the dog.

We're in the middle of a 40+ degree heat wave, nights are a minimum of 23 degrees. Mine are still getting walked daily.

My pup couldn't give a hoot about the heat. She was out last night in 39 degree heat (around 8pm when the sun had gone down). Walked for 45 mins, ran around in the fountain to cool down and had a ball. Same thing this morning. She doesn't cope without exercise and neither do I!

My 3 year old dog doesn't do so well in the heat and is happier laying around under the aircon. He missed his morning walk yesterday and was taken out for an hour at around 9pm when it was cooler instead, we will do the same again tonight.

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I was a bit worried about walking the dogs this morning, its meant to be 40 today, but they hadn't been walked for two days so were starting to get feral.

We walked in the shade, stopped 3 times for drinks and they had a swim at the park. No worries!

Don't think they mind the heat, now they're doing zoomies in the yard :laugh:

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Common sense should always be exercised, however some dogs handle heat better than others. Dogs acclimatised to hot weather will cope better on really hot days. Dogs bred to work in all weather conditions will cope better. When I was in tamworth the sheepdogs (kelpies) would work in 40 degree heat and barely look that hot.

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