Dr. Lucas Kandefer has some summertime tips for your pet. The weather is getting hot, tomorrow may get up to 90 and for our dogs, they can’t handle that kind of heat. Dr. Kandefer says 90 degrees is tough for anyone and in particular, we are mostly looking at our dogs. He says, “when we are going outside, they can’t handle that kind of heat. It doesn’t matter that they can do okay at 80 degrees, 90 degrees is really tough for anybody. It’s tough for us and we don’t think that much about how that affects them.”
He says, “the other thing is we don’t want them out for extended periods. Make sure they have lots of water when they are inside and in or out, maybe 15 or 20 minutes but be out here with them; you can realize you are getting hot, and they need to come in as well. If they are panting really badly, you have to bring them in and make sure they are safe.”
Dr. Kandefer says, “This blacktop, things like this, is hot on their pads of their paws. We have shoes on, we don’t think about it, but they basically have hard soles on their feet, you know just calluses and they burn very, very quickly. If you are out past 10am and they are walking on blacktop, it only takes a few steps to cause some really severe burns. Just making sure, honestly the blacktop as it is really tough. So, concrete your sidewalks is usually okay but even crossing those driveways are really a tough go for them so, on the days where it’s 90 degrees when the sun has been beating down, you know that between noon and 5pm we shouldn’t be on the blacktop.”
Dr. Kandefer says, “When we first started recording at home for the pandemic, I brought the camera through the garden and showed three, four, five different toxic plants. We didn’t plant the garden but just going through the garden finding these are all toxic to my dog. Things like rhododendrons and lilies for cats. People will cut them and bring them inside and you don’t even think about it. He says lilies are toxic for a cat. Almost every species of lily is very toxic to cats; they can rub up against them and it fatal. It can destroy their kidneys. We really need to make sure that we are keeping that away from them. And in the backyard, you know knowing what you have and making sure that we don’t bring things like foxglove, beautiful flowers but toxic to people and pets.”
When we have cookouts something to keep in mind is giving the dog picnic treats. Dr. Kandefer says Mondays and Tuesdays are the days we get people calling and say for two or three days my dog had really bad GI signs. The first question, we ask is did you give him anything new? Did you have a party or a cookout? It’s very easy to say we probably know what’s going on, and some of those things can be life-threatening as well. So, you know, we think about oh, we ate, too much and that upset your belly, but our dogs eat the same thing every day. It’s like eating nothing but chicken and rice all day and then going out for a chicken finger sub. You wouldn’t even leave the restaurant without your stomach saying I can’t do this.”
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