This post is for the future me to look back on next time we have a heat wave to contend with.

Some strategies for keeping the dog cool:

  • reduce her to one walk a day, and make it an early one in the morning. We did manage one later evening walk, but it takes a while for the pavements to lose their heat enough so she doesn’t burn her paws
  • make sure she has plenty of cold, fresh water - she wasn’t eating as much as normal, and she wasn’t even interested in a frozen dog food-filled kong toy, but she was drinking water
  • let her decide where she wants to be - leaving the back door open meant she could find her own space
  • she will tolerate a cold, damp towel - when she insisted on laying outside in the sun, I laid a towel over her fully expecting it to be rejected. Instead, she lay with it over her cooling her down
  • a freezer block wrapped in a towel works as well - she laid against it in her basket, or laid on it with her chest on it