Hot pavement can cause skin damage in under a minute at 125°F, but the bigger danger is heatstroke from heat radiation. A dog can overheat even on warm pavement that doesn't burn paws. Skip hot walks entirely and do indoor enrichment instead.
Chapters
All right, so we're in New York City and we're going to be testing the temperature of the pavement. 133 degrees. So at 125 degrees, skin destruction can occur in less than 60 seconds. Why is that important? Well, so many people are walking their dogs without shoes, and that means their paws can burn. So one way to test is to put the back of your palm up against the pavement for at least 7 seconds. If you can't comfortably do that, then your dog's You should not be walking on this with bare paws.
Is the advice in this video flawed? Well, firstly, the information about the skin burning is accurate. But is somebody doing the right thing for their dog, waiting for the pavement to go below that temperature before they take their dog out on the pavement? A few years ago, I remember seeing a post on Facebook, and it was my local Facebook page, where somebody had walked their two dogs down to the park and then back home, completely avoiding the the burning pavement temperatures and the really high temperatures that we had that day. Unfortunately, once she came back downstairs after having a shower, one of the dogs was dead. And this is because heatstroke is no joke. The reason why I don't like this video is because it's only showing you part of the issue. Burning pavements is an issue, but let's say the walk on that pavement is 5 degrees below that burning temperature. You have to keep in mind that the pavement is still warm and radiating heat. So the air down there where the dog is is much warmer than the air where you are. So it's actually the same as if you just went out earlier when the sun was shining. If it's hot, avoid pavements by driving to the walks. If you can't do that, skip the walk and do enrichment at home. It's very simple.
