What do you recommend? - Page 1

When you get your dog from his kennel out  to ambient cold temperature during winter time for exercising, do you take any measures to protect him from catching a cold due to temperature variations?

I always suffer from this problem with my dogs, what should I do to avoid this?

Regards

Tarek

Dogs don't catch human colds.

There was a study done, that we humans don't catch a cold from actually being cold, but from other factors such as low immunity, dry nose/throat and believe it or not, from lack of exercise...and from the ever present behavior of touching our hands to our face.

I think for comfort, you should cool your dogs down after exercising outside in the cold, before bringing them back into a warm temp.

The problem is from in to out (warm to cold)

Tarek,
It can be hard on a dog to take them from one extreme to the other.
By that I mean from the inside of a heated home at say 72 degrees, to outdoors like here in winter time below freezing.  
Not due to catching a cold but because it is stressful to the dog to adjust to the temperature change on a constant basis.

A cold is a virus, if you catch colds because of in and out during cold weather it is because of the stress to your system, and coming into contact with this virus through another human.

I've never seen a dog with a cold.
My dogs love cold weather.

And I drink a lot of Orange juice....:)


Two Moons.

If the dog lives indoors it won't do as well in cold weather over long periods until it has time to acclimate to those conditions.
If the dog lives outdoors it should not be brought into a warm house for more than just a short time and not often.

Tarek, are your dogs getting ill from this or you are just concerned?

Moons- Nice to hear from you. The good people over hear were missing you.

May be the symptoms of what my dogs suffer from when they are subjected to variation of temperature is not a cold & it is stress as you say.

My dogs love cold weather too. However the fluctuation of temperature effects them badly. So what should I do.

Some say to rub their heads & bodies with a wet cloth & / or let them drink some water before to getting them out of kennels etc... Do you have any better suggestions?

By the way do you add anything to your orange juice?

My kennels are outside with cement floors. They have good metal roof that keeps them dry. Their dog houses are made of 3/4" plywood with insulated floors. In the winter I use saw dust and put about 1" thick on floor. The saw dust makes it easier to clean floor when water washing would just freeze on floor. I use about 6" of cedar shavings in their dog houses, not saw dust as it is to dusty. My dogs always put on a good winter coat of fur. It gets usually below zero here where I live in the winter and above 100 in the summer. I can't remember ever having a dog with a cold. It can be zero out and if the sun is shinning they are jumping, running, playing like it is 70. I think the whole thing is I feed good, always have a dry place for them and they get acclamated to the climate. In the winter my dogs don't like staying in the house to long as they start getting to warm.    Hank

ShadyLady- I have a female who is very sensitive to this, most probably she has a poor immunity.

What sort of symptoms?

If they are used to being in the warm indoors and then they exercise outdoors in the cold, they should be fine, as long as they aren't brought back in, still hot...as that would defintely stress their bodies out.