Heat Stroke in Dogs | Vet Tips

Hey, guys. Dr. Lara here. Today we are going to be talking about heat stroke. This is Ruby. So we're going to tell you what are the signs to watch out for, what you can do to prevent it, and also how we go about treating it and some of the things that can happen afterwards. Stay tuned and we'll get into that momentarily. All right, so heat strokes. Heat strokes are something that are very. You know, we live. I live in South Florida, and so there are a couple of different factors that make South Florida very prone to heat strokes or my patients. The heat strokes. We. One is that we have a very high level of humidity. And so typically when dogs are going ahead and the way that they primarily cool off is by breathing hot air out and cold air in. In South Florida, there ain't any cold air unless you're inside the air conditioning or in your car or something like that. Most people that move here from a dry climate, they almost say that there's so much humidity in the air that it feels like you're drinking a milkshake when you're, when you're breathing. I think it's a little bit dramatic, but whatever. That being said, the other thing is that with heat stroke, if you have a high temperature, obviously that's something else. Now, most of our dogs typically will have short coats and so. Or they're going to have fur coats on and so it's warm. So what I try to do to try and prevent my dog from having a heat stroke is I usually will not take my dogs for walks during the middle of the day. I actually try to take my dogs for walks when it's dusk or dawn or even at night or early in the morning because I typically try to walk my dog. I don't know if you guys have seen her, Raven, on some of our other videos. She's got a very long coat. And so typically I try to walk her anywhere between like 5:30 in the morning to probably no later than 8 o' clock in the morning. And even if I'm walking her at that late in the morning, at 8 o', clock, I'm typically trying to stay in the shade because again, she's gonna have a really hard time cooling off and it's not gonna be something that's gonna be fair to her. The other thing is when I'm taking Raven for a walk, usually I'm trying to get her to walk like two and a half to four miles. And so I do want her to be nice and cool. Now, what are some signs that your dog is potentially having a heat stroke. Your dog could be panting like crazy, drooling, not wanting to move. Just things that you might think that your dog is. My dog's just cooling off really tired from exhausting themselves. And so it's going to be something that's going to be hard for you to notice. You may notice that your dogs might start having bloody diarrhea. They may start vomiting. And so these are some other symptoms that things are starting to take effect. Now. Typically, once the dog's temperature Normal Dog's temperature is 102.5. That's the highest of what we would consider normal for the most part. If your dog's temperature is above that, then you're going to want to go ahead and you're going to want to look at trying to cool your dog off. So what are some things that you can do to cool your dog off? A, you can go ahead and you can give them some water. Obviously, you want to make sure that the water is cooler than the ambient temperature. B, you're going to want to go ahead and wet them. If you can wet them, they'll be able to go ahead and get rid of some, dissipate some of that heat through evaporation. Also, if you go ahead and let's say you have the ability to put your dog in a car after they're wet, putting the air conditioning on while they're wet, just like when we get out of a shower or when we get out of the pool or something like that, and you're wet and it's windy, it gets cold, that same thing that they're dissipating the heat through convection. So that's going to be really important. The other thing that's a possibility is putting them on a surface that is nice and cold. So if you want, you can get a wet towel, lay them on the wet towel, or you can go ahead and put them on a tile floor or something like that. But you definitely want to make sure that they are staying cool. Now, that being said, if you are concerned that your dog is having heat stroke, or you're gonna be putting your dog in a situation where your dog potentially might suffer from heat stroke, you'll wanna get a thermometer so that you can check their temperature just to make sure that their temperature is okay. Now, for anybody who has a dog that has a smashed face, so that's French bulldogs, English bulldogs, American bulldogs, boxers, Shih Tzus, just to name some of the more Lhasa apsos, just to name some of the Most common breeds, Boston terriers. These are dogs that are going to be more prone to getting heat stroke because of their respiratory anatomy. Their respiratory anatomy, because it's all smashed in, is going to make it harder for them to exchange that air easier. And so therefore they're going to be that much more prone to having heat stroke. If you have one of these dogs and you want to try and prevent that, again, same things only take them out when it's nice and cool out, either early, early in the morning, late at night, and even then, if you live in an area where, like South Florida where it's 80 degrees with like 70% humidity at 10 o' clock at night, it's something that you're going to want to consider, hey, maybe I'm not going to take my dog for a 20 minute, you know, 30 minute jog. I'm going to take my dog for a 10 to 15 minute walk so they can go ahead, sniff, get some stuff. And the majority of their exercise or engagement or environmental enrichment or stimulation is going to be done inside. So you might look at, let's say food puzzles, you might look at playing with them inside. Those are going to be some of the things that you're going to look at doing to get some of that energy out. If we have a patient that does end up coming in with a heat stroke, what we will usually end up doing is we will also place them on IV fluids that will usually help to cool them off because the IV fluids, fluids are usually at like 70 degrees. And so that really helps a lot with getting their temperature down. We will go ahead and do everything that I talk to you about, wetting them, putting fans on them. You don't want to drop their temperature too fast, but you do want to get it down relatively quickly so that we can go ahead and try and prevent all those, what we call sequela. So those secondary effects from their temperatures getting too high, we will usually maintain them on fluids for about at least 24 hours, sometimes 48 hours, depending on what's going on with their bladders. And if they're having bloody diarrhea, because we want to protect their kidneys as the body is getting rid of some of those things that may have happened as a result of heat stroke. If their values stay normal and you don't have any, then you won't have any issues with kidney disease. Usually we'll RECHECK probably about seven to 10 days after the event just to make sure that nothing has really changed. And other than that, usually most of the time we're able to go ahead and have a positive outcome with these patients as long as you're paying close attention to your dogs. If you guys found this video helpful, please interact with us, subscribe, follow, do whatever it is that you do to let us know that you appreciate what it is we're doing for you guys. Thanks for watching and have a blessed day. Ra.