Heat and Other Hazards: Protecting Pets During the Summer Months

Sidewalks that quietly burn paw pads. A backyard hose that can turn into scalding water. A sunny afternoon that becomes heat stroke in minutes. Summer can be brutal on pets, and we want you to feel prepared before the next walk, bath, storm, or holiday celebration.

We talk through the warm weather emergencies we see most at Frisco Emergency Pet Care and the “hidden hazards” many pet parents never think about. Dr. Mike LoSasso explains why hot pavement injuries can show up after the walk is over, and why you should always run a hose until the water cools before bathing your dog. We also connect the dots on seasonal risks beyond heat, including thunderstorms and Fourth of July fireworks that can trigger panic and escapes, plus increased exposure to snake bites like copperhead bites and more bee and wasp stings that can cause facial swelling, hives, and other allergic reactions.

We wrap with practical guidance on heat stroke warning signs and why short-faced breeds can struggle to cool down, while still reminding you that any dog can overheat without shade, water, and a way to cool off. We also answer a common hydration question, including when it may make sense to limit gulping for pets with upset stomachs. If you found this helpful, subscribe for more emergency vet tips, share this with a fellow pet parent, and leave a quick review so more families can find it.

To learn more about Frisco Emergency Pet Care visit:
https://www.FriscoEmergencyPetCare.com
Frisco Emergency Pet Care 
11201 Preston Road 
Frisco, Texas 75033 
469-287-6767 

Transcript

Welcome To Frisco Emergency Pet Care

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Frisco Emergency Pet Care Podcast, your trusted source for expert insight into emergency veterinary medicine. Hosted by Dr. Mike Lasasso, Chief of Staff at Frisco Emergency Pet Care, this podcast brings you essential information to help protect the health and safety of your dogs and cats. Serving North Dallas with 24-7 emergency and critical care, the team at Frisco Emergency Pet Care is here when every second counts. Now, let's begin.

Summer Hazards Start Fast

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Summer fun can turn dangerous quickly for our pets from hidden hazards to fast-moving emergencies. Here's what every pet parent needs to know before the temperatures climb even more. Welcome everyone. I'm Julie Schwenzer, co-host and producer with the possum, Dr. Mike Lasasso, Chief of Staff at Frisco Emergency Pet Care. Thanks for joining us with your really busy schedule. Um, as we head into the hotter months, you know, a lot of pet parents like myself start worrying about all kinds of warm weather dangers. What are some of the most common issues that you're seeing right now? And we know you've addressed you know heat stroke very thoroughly on a previous episode.

Hot Pavement And Hot Hose Water

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Sure. Well, heat stroke is definitely the big one. It's kind of the granddaddy of really of emergency medicine. It's worse than most of our surgical cases. Uh, there are a couple of things that people don't necessarily think too much about. One of those would be pavement heat, right? You're walking your dogs in the heat of the day and you're thinking, well, maybe it's overcast, or um, you know, the dogs, it's not so hot. Well, if you wouldn't walk barefoot, you probably shouldn't ask them to either. Uh, that pavement gets really hot and it actually can cause thermal injury to the feet. The other thing to be really cognizant of that you might not think about is that coiled up hose that you've got sitting on the in the backyard. Uh that water actually gets to scalding temperature if it sits out in the sun, especially down here in Texas. Uh may not be so bad in in Ohio, but it's probably even worse in Arizona, in terms of the water that is in that uh in that hose gets really hot during the day when it's sitting in the sun, especially if it's a dark hose. And if that's what you're going to bathe the dog with, you just have to be really careful that you actually run all the water out of that hose and you run the water until it turns cool or at least room temperature before before bathing. Those would be a couple of the kind of the less talked about and maybe not quite so obvious heat dangers.

Storms And Fireworks Anxiety Risks

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Uh, of course, here in Texas, summer is thunderstorm season, so we also have to deal with storms. That's that's more of an anxiety problem. That's not really an emergency problem. Although, together with the fireworks coming up on the 4th of July, thunderstorms are right up there with um, you know, as far as an anxiety inducer, more dogs go missing on the 4th of July than any other day of the year, uh, followed closely by Halloween. Uh, because fireworks are really scary. They can feel those mortars going off just like they can feel the pressure change that means that that thunderstorm is coming. So uh it's kind of a similar issue.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Do you see more dogs in the summer because of issues with like dehydration? Because they did run, they got scared, they had anxiety, or they ran, and there's so many fireworks, and there's so many firework events during the summer, and then they're lost.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

The strays certainly do. Most people down here uh keep their dogs inside, so we don't necessarily see a lot of hydration issues during the

Snake Bites In Warm Weather

SPEAKER_02 3:51

summer. Uh, we also tend to see, I mean, spring is really the big time, but but when it's nice and warm outside, animals that require uh environmental temperature in order to keep themselves warm, talking mostly about snakes, uh certainly are a bigger risk. And we see more more copper head bites in the in the summertime, spring and summertime than we do uh certainly in the winter, you know, when those snakes are estimating.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

What about insect bites,

Bee And Wasp Stings Reactions

SPEAKER_01 4:20

things like that? Ticks, does that escalate over the summer?

SPEAKER_02 4:24

We definitely see more insects, more wasp and bee stings, and more allergic reactions in the spring and into the summer. Those insects are definitely um much more active when the weather is warm. The curious thing that that you wouldn't think of is we also see a big uptick actually in the fall after the first freeze, and everybody gets confused about seeing a lot of insect bites, you know, after the first freeze. But wasps don't fly very well when it's freezing outside and they can't make it up into the nest and they end up on the ground and they'll crawl around a little bit, and dogs really can't help themselves. I mean, it's if it's crawling, they have to put it in their mouth. Uh so that can cause a problem. But during the summer, we definitely see tons of stinging insects around, so it certainly is more common in the warm months.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

So you mentioned the allergic reaction. Are a lot of dogs and cats allergic? Have you found that to bites from insects?

SPEAKER_02 5:19

So allergic reactions show up as facial swelling in dogs and cats, kind of like um the movie Hitch is the best example I've got in in the human world where somebody's lips actually swell. And we see this in people with things like uh nut allergy, peanuts, which are not really nut, but almonds, um those kinds of things. Uh, and in dogs, we see those same kind of reactions: the swelling around the eyes, the swollen muzzle, hives all over the body. Those things can certainly occur with any time you inject a foreign protein. So sometimes that's because they were vaccinated, uh, and it's an allergic reaction to one of the adjuvants of the vaccine. That happens fairly rarely, but it does happen. Uh most of the time, we actually will see that as a result of an insect envenimation, insecting, wasp, yellow jacket, less often than the bees.

Delayed Burns From Heat Exposure

SPEAKER_01 6:18

And a couple of the issues you mentioned, the hot pavement and the heat stroke. If we could go back to the hot pavement, how hot is too hot for the pads on there?

SPEAKER_02 6:27

Well, I would suggest that if you wouldn't walk barefoot on the street, that you shouldn't ask your dog to do that either. Um, it's, I mean, it it's hot and it hurts. Um, but and they don't have a whole lot of choice. Now, those those pads are pretty tough, but they can unfortunately dog skin is fairly thick and it stores heat. So that that heat actually builds up over time, and you don't you don't recognize thermal injury until after it's over. So heating pads, now that's not a typically a summer problem, but dogs that will sleep or cats that will sleep on a heating pad. Now, if they're able to move off of them, they'll regulate their own their own temperature. Um, used to be a problem in veteran hospitals. Honestly, back in more so back in the 80s, uh 70s and 80s, when we're using a lot of electric heating pads to keep our surgery patients warm during surgery. Sometimes they develop a hot spot and the skin would get really warm, but you wouldn't see the result of that for a few days. So we don't use electric heat for our surgery patients at all anymore. I don't think very many places would. Uh, we use circulating warm water blankets and we use forced air heaters. So nobody uses electric heaters anymore. But yeah, this is a similar concept that when you're walking on on pavement, you can incur a lot of damage that doesn't show up for a couple of days afterwards.

How Heat Stroke Damages The Body

SPEAKER_01 7:52

And then with the heat stroke, could you quickly remind us how it can develop and how quickly it could happen?

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Sure. Heat stroke is it's just an elevation of the body temperature. And if it's hot outside, especially if they're a short-faced dog, if they're a brachiocephalic breed, whether that's a Boston or a Sharpe or a pit bull or a Frenchie or an English bull, anything that's got kind of a shortened face has got a harder time trying to get rid of that heat because they remove heat from their body by panting and by breathing. Uh, so it's very easy for heat to build up inside the body. And there are a few tissues that are really not very fond of getting up above 100, say 105, 106 uh degrees of core body temperature, and that would be your liver, your GI tract, your intestines, uh, your brain, and your endothelium, which are the cells that line every single one of your blood vessels. So you really don't want to make your entire circulatory system mad. You don't want to damage the whole thing at once, and that's what heat stroke does, is damage all of those tissues at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Yeah, it sounds awful.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Um it is.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

And then in general, is when you look at the the dog breeds and the cat breeds, you generally look at like the youngest ones and the most senior as the most vulnerable this time of year, or is it back to the breeds, like you said, the flat-faced?

SPEAKER_02 9:20

It's it's really back to uh architecture and confirmation. You know, is the anatomy design, even in a long-nosed dog, your German shepherds and your collies, the Dobermans and the Vieslas, um, these dogs that have got nice long snouts that have got no airway obstruction at all, they'll still get overheated. Uh, it just depends on on how hot it is. Do they have shade available? Do they have water available? Do they have any way to cool off if they're outside? I've got a short faced dog, uh, so it's not casting shade on anybody with the smash face, but she does not go outside during the summer here in Texas, um, unless she needs to eliminate and she comes right back inside. That's her choice. You know, in the springtime, she'll go out and sunbathe, but not in the summer.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah. She yeah, she gets that tan prepared for the summer and she goes in and then loses it.

Hydration And When To Limit Water

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Um, and then um a question that a lot of pet parents I know have is how do you know how much water to to give the pet? And I always thought, is it just let the pet drink what they need to drink and they'll they'll decide how hydrated they you know, always keep it available.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Is that I would always have clean fresh water available, yeah. Sure would.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Because they know what they know what they need.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

They do for the most part. Sometimes with my dogs that have got upset stomachs will tend to over drink a little bit, so I will have people kind of ration that out. And it's not so much that they can't have what they want, they just are not allowed to drink it all at one time because sometimes dogs have, yeah, as my grandmother would say, their eyes are bigger than their stomachs, and they drink a whole lot more than they can actually fit in that stomach, and then they end up um bringing it back. That's really for dogs that have got upset stomachs, not your average walking down the street pet.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Okay. Well, thank you, Dr. Lasasso. You brought up some great tips and of course talked about the summer dangers for dogs and cats so clearly. So we always appreciate your insight.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Thank you.

Closing And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Thank you for listening to the Frisco Emergency Pet Care Podcast. To learn more, visit FriscoPetER.com. Call 469-287-6767. Or stop by 11201 Preston Road, Frisco, Texas, 75033. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Frisco Emergency Pet Care is always here when your pet needs us most. Until next time, take care of your pets, and they'll take care of you.