Today was a great day for the pooches!

We had a great day today despite the warmth in San Diego, CA. There are three dogs in our house; two Standard Poodles and an Italian Greyhound.

For the Greyhound the warm weather is easy on her because she has very short hair and minimal body fat. For the two BIG Poodles, the story is much different. One poodle, David, has trimmed fur 1" in length. The other, Edward, has a show cut which is in some areas upward 12" long! Both poodles have extremely dense hair which adds to the body heat. Another factor is that a dog's normal body temperature is approximately 102 degrees. We humans think it is hot in the summer and our body temperature is only a meek 98.6 degrees on average! Poor pooches.

A few things that help with keeping the big dogs cool are ice cubes in their filtered water, instead of their raw diet thawed I prefer to feed it to them frozen, and also I make sure to give them an area in the house which has a fan with air conditioning. In the winter and fall I take the dogs to the park or on walks in the morning and afternoon. This is not practical during the summer and spring months for the poodles. If I am unable to go to the park early enough in the morning I will make a point to go on a walk around the block or to the local lighted dog park at dusk or later. This allows for the weather to be bearable for the boys to play and not get exhausted. Despite going later in the day I still make sure to bring my own water with ice cubes. This keeps the boys cool and hydrated... and not to mention happy pooches!

If you have any tips or information on ways to keep summer fun for the dogs please let me know!