How hot is too hot? - Page 1

So, when it comes to walking your dogs, how hot is too hot? I know here in the south with the humidity as bad as it is, our temps feel a lot hotter than the same temps up in the northern states.  I can't remember the last day we had with a high under 90.  Our heat index the other day got to 114.  Pretty much every night it's still in the low to mid 80s around 8 pm, with very hight humidity.  So my question, those of you in the more humid climates, when do you stop walking?  And if you do walk, how far do you go? Tonight I'll be going out at 8 to attempt just one mile.  Not even sure we will be able to do that considering my guys have two thick coats of fur.  Since we really havent been walking lately I've been doing fun prey games, having them chase a stufffed duck toy that's attached to a long leash, and letting them tug and chase.  Doing obedience as well, but all of this reasonably late, after 7 pm.  What do you guys do for exercise when it is this hot?  This is a time when I wish we had a swimming pool!

im in AZ.  high of 118 and a low of 93 most days.
Exercise at 5am.  If you walk at night....let it be late and not for long.

The thing about exercising you and your dog in the Heat & Humidity is that you must do it either early in the mornings or later in the evenings...And you also have to be careful what kind of surface you walk them on...Many times I'd kneel down and put my hand on the ground...pavement...what have you...just to get a good idea of what's down there and what it feels like to the touch...
The other thing is when exercising or working your dog in the Heat & Humidity is after you're done...It's a great idea to run a hose over top of your dog...I know the water hose water isn't too cool either but it's a very good way to bring your dog's temperature back down...it's good for you too...Remember as a kid when it was so hot out that you could cook an egg on the pavement...Well we used to jump into the sprinkler and get cooled down...
Of course a nice pool would be nice too...Just don't try the lakes...Alligators! CHOMP...Chomp...chomp...!

Ace, wow.... lol.  I couldn't imagine it being that hot.  

Q Man, thankfully if I walk from any time after 7, the subdivision is all nicely shaded with really tall trees.  I think I'll give it a shot and try to go walking around 630 in the morning tomorrow.  That area is shaded in the morning for a couple of hours until the sun gets high enough in the sky.   I'll do what you suggested with the water hose as well.  I did actually do that tonight, after I posted the first comment, I went walking and did maybe a mile and a half.  I did use the water hose on the Husky pup who is 14 weeks old.  I wouldn't do more than a mile and a half when he's walking with them just because of his age and because of his development.  He loves the water though, a little too much. He tries to chase it if you spray it out of the hose, and sometimes he likes to splash it around or jump into it in with his front paws.

It gets hot and humid here, but not for as long (generally a few days or a week at a time, sometimes 2 weeks in Aug).  It's cool here now (no humidity at the moment) but will heat up again this weekend and then our forecast is projected to be hotter than southern Florida next week.  When it is humid, the heat index adds about 10 degrees.  Sucky thing is a lot of people here don't have AC.  We never did until we bought this house a few months ago.  Last summer it was over 90 degrees INside my house.  But, we're usually relieved throughout the summer with cooler spells and it doesn't warm up here until June (snows and freezes through April, we had NO spring this year, one day it was 90 and then it snowed again!).

I don't generally walk dogs when its hot, unless it's after dark and has cooled off.  For one, leash walks don't give them much exercise anyway (they tend to come back even more amped up like it was a warm-up).  If they need to burn energy, I turn the hose on the stream setting and let them chase it around.  One dog attacks it where it hits the grass and another likes to jump through the stream.  I have a dog-proof spinkler that I can leave running for them to play in.  I keep a large water trough on the patio and hose down the patio constantly so the cement stays cool on their feet.  Luckily there is always some part of the yard that is shaded.

Before we had AC, I just gave the dogs constant access to water and put box fans on the floor so they could choose to lie in front.  Our basement was unfinished and a tad cooler so one of my dogs always went down there.

I also brush them frequently and try to get all the unecessary undercoat out.

No decent exercise above 80 degrees F, but that doesn't mean you can skip exercise!

You must find a place to SWIM your dogs in the summer.  If absolutely impossible, soak your dog in cold water with the hose and then jog him for a couple of miles at least 4-5x a week.  Ride a bike alongside him if you must or if you have multiple dogs.





 

I would not have dogs if I could not swim them at least a few times each week in the summer.

MVF I disagree that you MUST find a place for them to swim.  So are you saying I shouldn't own dogs because I don't take mine swimming? That's ridiculous. I did bike ride with mine before it got too hot, but also remember.....I have a 14 week old Husky puppy.....I might take the adults bike riding, but not him.   

VKGSDs,  you can get real exercise if you do leash walks here lol.  I'm in TN, we have hills unlimited in our neighborhood.  Believe me, I went visiting Indiana a lot the past few years where the land was just flat......I could walk 5 miles there and neither I or the dogs were tired.......but a three or four mile walk with the big dogs here and they're worn out.  Most of the hills are very steep, one of them is really steep and is over a quarter mile long, being even more steep the last couple hundred feet.  That's the hill that wears you out no matter how many times you walk it, and its always the hill that I finish my walk going up.  If we go straight down our road, well, no hills...so we usually go into the subdivisions which are full of hills.  One of them we use to go back up and down numerous times to drain energy.  Thankfully we do have AC here as well, and our basement is very cool, and spacey so they usually stay in there with half the basement to themselves.  

SW Ontario can get hot (not AZ hot) but it's the humidity that's awful. I get up at 4:50 AM every day during the week to run Senta on the grass track at the public school near me. We start out with some type of fetch game (eg. two ball) and then when she's settled down, we RACE around the 400 m track three or four times. I can only make the final lap by thinking of all the junk food that I like to eat: donuts, icecream, chips, hamburgers, etc. I hate getting up early and I hate running even more but it's what she needs.

We take her swimming every weekend to a conservation area since she loves to swim. She also has a kiddie pool that she likes to play in. I bought two so that I could double them up since she likes to dig in the pool (she's put holes in the first pool but not the second).