As summer temperatures soar, it becomes essential to take precautions to ensure you and your pets stay safe.
LA CROSSE, Wis. (WXOW) – As summer temperatures soar, it becomes essential to take precautions to ensure you and your pets stay safe.
Prolonged exposure to high temperatures can lead to heat-related illnesses, which can be severe or even fatal.
“Heat can affect people's bodies by increasing the core body temperature, ability to sweat, and cause dehydration that's causing further medical problems and ensuing issues, and eventually can lead to heat exhaustion — in some cases, severe heat illness, known as heatstroke”, says Jesse Bracamonte, D.O. with Mayo Clinic Health System.
Heat stroke symptoms include disorientation, confusion, the inability to cool yourself, as well as nausea and vomiting.
When an individual has signs of heat-related illness, it's important that they seek care quickly. That includes getting cooled quickly, drinking cool fluids and staying out of the heat.
Pets are equally vulnerable to the dangers of heat. Ensuring they stay hydrated is crucial, so provide multiple water bowls around the house and outside. Adding ice cubes to their water can help keep it cool and refreshing.
“They don’t have a way of sweating like we do so the only way to cool themselves down is by panting or through their paw pads”, says Kathy Kasakaitas, Animal Control Supervisor with the Coulee Region Humane Society. “So if you’re leaving them outside on the hot pavement or the hot ground at all anywhere like gravel, they just don’t have a way of getting away from that heat like we can.”
They say about 85 degrees is the hottest temperature that dogs should be outside. Cats can handle the heat a little better.
No matter what animal you have, keeping them in a locked vehicle is unacceptable as it can lead to serious health issues and even death as the heat can quickly rise inside an enclosed vehicle under the summer sun.