Summer is here, Boerboel Buddies, and I am going to keep it real with you. Every year, good dogs die from heat, and most of those deaths were preventable. The owners were not bad people. They just did not know the warning signs, and by the time they saw trouble it was already too late. This is one of those situations where knowledge is not just power. It is a sword and a shield. So let me school you.
This is a long one on purpose. Save it, bookmark it, and come back to it when the temperature climbs. By the time you finish reading you will know why dogs overheat so fast, who is most at risk, how to read your dog before he goes down, and exactly what to do if he does. Let us get into it.
Why This Hits Big Dogs So Hard
A Boerboel is a lot of dog. That mass is a beautiful thing when you are talking about presence and protection, but it works against you in the heat. A big, heavily muscled body generates and holds more heat than a small one, and it takes longer to shed it. Add a broad chest, a heavy head, and a dog that will run through a wall for you, and you have an animal that can push himself into danger before he ever shows you he is struggling.
Dogs also do not cool the way we do. We sweat across the whole body. A dog cools mostly through panting and through a little bit of sweat in the pads of the feet. That is a much smaller cooling system trying to manage a much larger furnace. When the air is hot and heavy, panting stops working, and the heat has nowhere to go. That is the trap.
Your Dog Gets Hit With Heat From Both Sides
One of the reasons a dog suffers from heat stroke much faster than a human has nothing to do with the fur coat. The truth is that your dog is getting heated up from both directions at once. The sun beats down from the top, and the ground radiates heat from the bottom. The sun pounds the concrete, the concrete heats up, and then that same concrete cooks your dog’s feet and belly.
Think about how close your dog is to the pavement. You are standing five or six feet up in a little breeze. Your dog is right down on a surface that can run twenty or thirty degrees hotter than the air. Asphalt, concrete, metal truck beds, sand at the beach. If you cannot hold the back of your hand on that surface for seven seconds, it is too hot for your dog to stand on, walk on, or lay on.
You cannot win against Mother Nature. You are not going to defeat the sun. Your job is to work around it, and that starts with timing. Predators in the wild rest during the hottest part of the day. Wolves and lions hunt at night and in the early morning when the temperature is cooler. Your dog is built the same way. Exercise early in the morning or late in the evening. Never work your dog during the peak heat of the day.
Who Is Most At Risk
This is for every dog owner, not just the bully breeds. But some dogs carry extra risk, and you need to know if yours is one of them.
- Flat faced breeds. Any dog with a pushed in nose has difficulty breathing, and difficulty breathing means difficulty cooling. The shorter the airway, the less able that dog is to move air and dump heat.
- Overweight and oversized dogs. The majority of dogs in this country are carrying extra weight, and every extra pound raises the risk. Fat is insulation. It traps heat inside the body and makes the cooling job even harder.
- Deconditioned house dogs. A dog that lives in the air conditioning all day, eating as much as it likes, is one of the most vulnerable dogs there is. The body never gets a chance to adapt to heat, so the first hot afternoon hits it like a freight train.
- Puppies and seniors. The very young and the very old do not regulate temperature as well. Give them extra margin.
- High drive working dogs. Here is the part that most people miss. Your dog loves you so much that he will follow you anywhere. Your dog is not going to stop just because he is at risk. Your dog will not stop until you stop. The intensity that makes a working dog great is the same intensity that can take him past his limit. That is why the responsibility lives with you, not with him.
The Warning Signs: Heat Stress Comes Before Heat Stroke
Dog ownership is about observation. Your dog cannot look up at you and say he is hot and needs to stop. That is on you. Heat stress and heat stroke are two different things, and the space between them is where you save your dog’s life. Heat stress is the warning. Heat stroke is the emergency. Catch it at the warning stage and your dog walks away fine. Miss it, and you are fighting for his life.
Signs of heat stress, the early warning stage:
- Heavy panting that goes beyond normal. Watch for the whole body breath, where the entire body expands and contracts with every breath. That is your first big warning.
- Labored, noisy breathing that does not settle when the dog rests.
- The tongue curling into a spoon shape at the edges. That is a sign your dog cannot cool himself properly.
- Thick, sticky, ropey saliva. That tells you dehydration is setting in.
- A dog that starts looking for shade, slowing down, or lagging behind when he is normally right at your side.
Signs it is turning into heat stroke, the emergency stage:
- Your dog becomes woozy, dizzy, unbalanced, or uncoordinated.
- The gums change color, from healthy pink toward brick red, then blue, then pale.
- Vomiting or diarrhea, sometimes with blood.
- A blank, glassy stare, or a dog that stops responding to you.
- Your dog falls and cannot get back up, or collapses.
A dog’s normal body temperature sits around 101 to 102.5 degrees. Once internal temperature climbs past 105 to 106 degrees, you are in organ damage territory. The brain, the kidneys, the liver, the heart. Damage at that level can be permanent, and it can be fatal. This is why the early signs matter so much. You do not want to be reacting to a collapse. You want to catch it at the first whole body breath.
What To Do: Cool First, Then The Vet
If you catch heat stress early, stop everything. Get your dog into shade, give him a chance to recover, offer small amounts of cool water, and do not resume until the panting has fully settled and his breathing looks normal again. Do not push through it. Do not tell yourself he will shake it off. Stop.
If you believe your dog is tipping into heat stroke, modern veterinary guidance is clear. Cool your dog down first, before you transport him to the vet. Those minutes you spend driving are critical minutes, and if the body is still cooking during the ride, you are risking irreversible organ damage. Here is the order of operations:
- Get him out of the heat immediately. Shade, indoors, anywhere cooler.
- Start cooling with cool water, not ice cold water. The fastest and most effective method is cool water immersion. When you put the dog in cool water, the heat transfers out of the body and into the water. A hose, a tub, a kiddie pool, a lake. Keep the water moving over him.
- Focus on the belly, the armpits, the groin, and the pads of the feet, where the blood runs close to the surface.
- Get air moving. A fan or an open window over the wet coat speeds up the cooling.
- Offer cool water to drink, but never force it down his throat.
- Call your vet and head there once he starts to stabilize. Internal damage is not always visible from the outside, so a dog that looks recovered still needs to be checked.
One important note. Stop the active cooling once he is back near normal. Cooling a dog too far and too long can swing him the other way into hypothermia. The goal is to bring him back to safe, not to freeze him.
The Rubbing Alcohol Myth
You will see people online suggesting rubbing alcohol on the paw pads to cool a dog down. Here is the honest breakdown. It does cool better than nothing at all. But alcohol carries real downsides, including raising the dog’s heart rate, and it is toxic if the dog licks it. If you have access to cool water, water wins every single time. Do not reach for a gimmick when the proven method is sitting right there in the tub or the hose.
A Few More Myths To Put Down
- The fur coat is the problem. No. Shaving a double coated dog does not make him cooler, and it can actually make sunburn and overheating worse by removing the coat’s insulation against heat. The coat is not the enemy. The heat from both sides is.
- A little panting means he is fine. Panting is normal, but the whole body breath is not. Learn the difference and respect it.
- He will stop when he needs to. He will not. Your dog will run himself into the ground to stay with you. That is the whole point of this article.
- The windows were cracked so the car was fine. A cracked window does almost nothing. A parked car becomes an oven in minutes, even on a mild day, even in the shade.
Water And Hydration
Fresh, cool water should be available at all times, inside and outside. In the heat, put out more bowls than you think you need, and check them often because a big dog can empty one fast. When you are on the move, carry water and a collapsible bowl. If your dog is working or traveling, offer water in small amounts frequently rather than letting him gulp a huge bowl all at once. Hydration is not something you fix after the fact. It is something you stay ahead of.
Special Situations: Trucks, Cars, And Travel
A lot of my people live on the road or take their dogs everywhere they go. Love that. But the vehicle is where a lot of heat tragedies happen. Never leave your dog in a parked vehicle in warm weather, not for five minutes, not with the windows cracked. The inside of a cab or a car climbs to deadly temperatures faster than most people believe. If you are hauling your dog, keep the air moving on him, keep water in reach, and plan your stops around shade and cool ground. A metal truck bed in the sun is a griddle. Treat it like one.
Prevention Is The Whole Game
Everything above is what you do when things go wrong. This is how you keep them from going wrong in the first place.
- Exercise early morning or late evening only. Stay off the hot part of the day.
- Fresh water available at all times, inside and outside.
- Shaded, cool places to lay down whenever your dog is outdoors.
- Test the pavement with the back of your hand before you walk. Too hot for you is too hot for him.
- Know your dog’s baseline. His normal breathing, his normal energy, his normal gum color. You can only spot a change if you know what normal looks like.
- Condition gradually. A dog that never leaves the air conditioning cannot handle a July afternoon, so build his tolerance slowly over time.
- Keep a cool down plan ready. Know where your water source is before you need it.
The Bottom Line
Your dog trusts you with his life every single day. In the heat, that trust is not a feeling, it is a job. He will not tap out. He will not ask for a break. He will follow you into a hot afternoon with his whole heart and never complain, right up until his body quits on him. You are the safeguard. You are the one who has to watch, read the signs, and make the call to stop.
Watch the video version of this lesson right here:
And if you want to go deeper with a community of serious big dog owners, come join us in the Exotic Boerboel Club. We grow together. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
Class is in session.
This article is educational and is not a substitute for veterinary care. If you believe your dog is experiencing heat stroke, begin cooling him down and get to a veterinarian immediately.