How to Keep Your Dog Safe in a Houston Summer

You step out into Texas heat and your attitude goes short in about thirty seconds flat. We've all seen the memes. Dogs feel it too. I'm sweaty within seconds of stepping outside, and I can only imagine what it's like wearing a full fur coat you can never take off. Heat stroke in dogs is a serious issue, and it can happen fast. In Houston, the heat and humidity is no joke.

The pavement test

Before a dog's paws touch the ground, do the hand test: press the back of your hand flat to the concrete and hold it there for seven seconds. Can't hold it there? Too hot for paws. Good sources differ on the count, UK emergency vets say seven and the AKC's chief vet says ten, so I use the shorter one and give the dog the benefit of the doubt. If a route can't be avoided at that hour, dog booties↗(affiliate link) are what stands between your dog and a burn.

Do it every time, not only on days that feel bad, because the number on your phone is the air temperature and that's the one that lies to you. Asphalt soaks up heat and holds onto it, so the ground runs far hotter than the air above it. These are the figures that get passed around, and they're worth knowing as ballpark rather than gospel: they all trace back to one 1970 study of contact burns on human skin, and the real number shifts with the surface, its color, and how long the sun has been sitting on it.

Around 125 degrees, skin can burn in about a minute. That's a 77 degree morning, which in Houston barely counts as summer, and it's the reason I start checking the ground once the air is in the 70s. Artificial turf is the worst offender of the lot: in one university experiment across two summer days, it came out hotter than asphalt, brick, concrete and running track every single time, with natural grass the coolest of the six. If your yard or your neighbor's is turfed, check it the way you'd check the road.

I try to avoid the hottest points of the day entirely, and I keep an eye on air quality too. When I'm picking a route, I look for shade and grass over a straight shot of bare concrete, every time.

Flat faces have less to work with

A dog sheds heat by panting, which only works if they can move a lot of air. A flat-faced dog can't. French bulldogs, English bulldogs, pugs, boxers, boston terriers, shih tzus: the airway is shortened and crowded, so the cooling system they've got is running at a fraction of what a longer-nosed dog gets for free. A large study of dogs in primary vet care compared them against medium-muzzled dogs and found them a bit over twice as likely to get heat illness from simply being out in the heat, and about a third more likely to get it from exercise. That was UK dogs in a UK summer, so take the direction of it rather than the exact figure. Here, they can start showing real signs on a day other dogs are handling fine.

So in a Houston summer, a flat-faced dog doesn't get outdoor exercise. Potty breaks, and back inside. I know that's a hard line to read if you have a Frenchie who lights up at the sight of the leash, and I would still rather you hear it from me than learn it in an emergency clinic waiting room. Overweight dogs, seniors, puppies, dogs with heart or airway trouble, and the thick-coated northern breeds all sit further up that same risk list.

None of that means the dog goes without. A dog can go a long stretch with no real walk and be perfectly well, provided their nose and their brain are getting worked instead: a scatter feed, a frozen stuffed toy, five minutes of trick training. The enrichment library is the whole list of what to do with them indoors, and Houston in August is exactly what it's for.

Sips, not gulps

Don't let a hot dog chug a whole bowl at once, that can make them sick just as fast as not drinking enough will. Pace it. I carry a collapsible water bowl↗(affiliate link) on every summer walk so a sip is always available.

Every time I take a sip, they get a sip.

When it's not just hot anymore

A dog sits around 100 to 102.5 degrees when everything's normal. Above that, four good sources put the heatstrokeA medical emergency in which a dog's body temperature rises beyond the point at which they can cool themselves back down.Read more → line in three different places: AAHA says usually above 104, Cornell says 105, and both the AKC and VCA hold the word back until 106, with VCA calling anything over 103 abnormal on the way there. The AKC's version shows why they aren't really fighting, because it's a ladder: over 104 is heat stress, over 105 is heat exhaustion, over 106 is heatstroke. Either way, you don't have to referee it, and standing in a parking lot with a panting dog is a terrible place to try. The signs are the thing to act on, and you will have those in front of you long before you'd have a temperature.

Stop the walk and start cooling them for any of these:

• Panting that won't quit, even once they've stopped moving
• Heavy, thick, ropey drooling
• Pacing, restlessness, hunting out a cool surface to lie on
• Gums and tongue gone bright red
• Lagging behind when they normally don't

Go to a vet now for any of these:

• Wobbly, stumbling, disoriented
• Vomiting or diarrhea, especially with blood in it
• Gums gone pale, gray or bluish
• Collapse, seizures, or not answering to you at all

None of that is a wait-and-see. That's an emergency.

1. Get them somewhere cool and air-conditioned right away
2. Take off any harness or gear
3. Let them cool down slowly, don't shock the system
4. Offer sips of cool water, never cold, and never ice
5. Wet the neck, chest, belly, armpits and groin with cool water, and get a fan moving over them
6. Pat them down with a cool, not cold, towel
7. Call the clinic on the way so they're expecting you

Don't lay a wet towel on them and leave it, that traps heat underneath and makes things worse. Ice packs and ice water belong in the same bin, both shock a system that's already struggling. If you own a rectal thermometer and you're actually using it, ease off the active cooling once they're back around 103, because overshooting is its own problem. And even once they seem fine again, get them checked by a vet anyway. Heat stress can do damage you won't see for hours.

Your dog gets crabby too

So when your dog's dragging on the leash, distracted, fighting you a little more than usual: that's not defiance, and it's not them suddenly hating you. They're short-fused too, same as you'd be.

Heat adds its own weight to the tank before a real trigger ever shows up, the same way trigger stackingThe build-up that happens when stressful events land close enough together that a dog has not recovered from one before the next arrives.Read more → does on any other day (more on that in what threshold actually means). So the same walk that's a non-event at 7am can go worse at 2pm, and that's not your training falling apart. The tank just started full.

So the next time you're standing outside sweating in thirty seconds flat, remember your dog's right there with you, minus the ability to say so.

Written by

Kourtenay Dolmos

Founder, Hearth & Hounds · LIMA-Informed · Houston, TX

Kourtenay is the trainer behind Hearth & Hounds, working hands-on with reactive, anxious, and rescue dogs across Houston. These notes come straight from that everyday work.

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