Notes From The Field
Cold water
Can you put an overheated dog in cold water? Yes. The advice telling you not to has been overtaken.
Notes From The Field
Can you put an overheated dog in cold water? Yes. The advice telling you not to has been overtaken.
For years the warning was that cold water constricts the blood vessels near the skin and traps heat in the core. That concern has more recently been argued to be insignificant, and cold water or ice brings a dog's core temperature down more effectively than tepid water or air movement does alone. Currently, ice water immersion is the first line of defense in human heatstroke. Put the water where the hair is thinnest, and get air moving across the dog.
Co-authored by P.J. Rose, NAVHDA judge, and Charles Ellithorpe, DVM, sporting dog veterinarian
If you have run dogs for any length of time you have heard it: don't use cold water on an overheated dog, you'll shock him, you'll trap the heat inside. Use cool water, not cold. Lukewarm is safest.
The reasoning behind it is not crazy and it was widely accepted and repeated for decades. Cold on the skin does cause the surface blood vessels to narrow, and in theory that could slow the movement of heat from the core out to the surface where it can be shed.
The problem is that the constriction-slowing effect appears to be small, and the cooling you get from cold water far outweighs any downside constriction could present. More recent thinking has largely set the old warning aside. What matters far more is how fast you can bring the temperature down, and cold water does that better than tepid water.
A critical care veterinarian put it to us this way: once the body's cells are cooked, they cannot be made raw again.
That is the reason to stop arguing about water temperature and start cooling. The damage from heat injury is not waiting for you to settle a debate, and the minutes you spend before the truck moves matter more than the drive itself.
Not evenly over the dog. Target the places where the hair is thinnest and the blood runs closest to the surface.
The common mistake isn't water that is too cold. It is leaving a wet towel on the dog.
A soaked towel draped over a dog and left there stops evaporation and becomes an insulating blanket. It holds heat against him. Towels can do real work on a short-coated dog, but only with cold water and only if you are recharging them constantly rather than laying them on and walking away.
The same trap catches thick-coated dogs. Soaking a dense coat without moving air through it can insulate rather than cool. If you are going to soak a heavy coat, use cold water and get a fan on him. In a hospital, long-coated dogs are sometimes shaved for exactly this reason.
Water cools first by conduction, then by evaporation. Evaporation is where most of the work happens, and evaporation needs moving air.
This is why a fan matters more than shade, why a moving vehicle with the windows down is a real tool, and why a shaded crate with still air inside it can still be dangerous. Charles has used helicopter rotor wash on overheated elk during research work. The principle scales down from big game to canines.
Stop cooling when his rectal temperature reaches 103 degrees. Past that you are heading toward the opposite problem, and overshooting into hypothermia is a real risk in a dog who has been cooled aggressively.
Without a thermometer you have no way of knowing when you get there. That is the best argument we know of for carrying one. If he starts shivering, stop regardless.
Yes. For years handlers were told that cold water constricts surface blood vessels and traps heat in the core. That effect has more recently been argued to be insignificant, and cold water or ice brings core temperature down more effectively than tepid water. Ice water immersion is first-line treatment in human heatstroke. Apply cold water where the hair is thinnest, and get air moving across the dog.
Where the hair is thinnest and the blood runs closest to the surface: the armpits, the groin, the inside of the ear flaps and the belly. Cold water or isopropyl alcohol on the feet also helps. Air moving across a wet dog does more cooling work than the water alone.
Not if you leave them in place. A wet towel draped over a dog and left there stops evaporation and becomes an insulating blanket that holds heat in. Towels can work on a short-coated dog, but only with cold water and only if they are recharged constantly.
Stop cooling when rectal temperature reaches 103 degrees Fahrenheit, to avoid overshooting into hypothermia. If the dog starts shivering, stop. Without a thermometer there is no way to know when that point arrives, which is the best argument for carrying one.
None of this makes field cooling a substitute for a veterinarian. If your dog has severe heat injury you are buying him time, not treating him. Get him to a clinic, call on the way, and understand that the outcome can stay undetermined for days.
It also does not change the order the warning signs appear in, which is the thing most likely to let you avoid all of this. Heat injury is a sequence, and the early signs are the easy ones to talk yourself out of.
That is what the guide covers: how a dog actually sheds heat, the warning signs in the order they show up, the full cooling protocol, and what to say on the phone to the clinic if it comes to that.
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More from Notes From The Field → How hot is too hot to run a dog?
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Too Hot to Run. A field guide to working dogs in the heat: understanding how a dog reacts to heat, the warning signs in the order they appear, and what to do in the first five minutes. Written with a sporting dog vet.