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Heat exhaustion?


ellenca
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My family adopted a wonderful, 1 1/2 y/o border collie from our local shelter in June. He is fabulous! There is just one thing that concerns me. We have noticed on three different occassions that he gets a glazed look in his eyes, wobbles, and collapses. He gets up again to continue playing only to collapse again. The weather has been warm when this happens. We bring him water, hose him off and make him relax in the shade or in the house. In a few moments he's fine again. :rolleyes: Mind you he always has fresh water available, and we are talking about easy playing --fetch on the front lawn, a slow walk to the park (1/2 a mile). Other days he can exercise, even take long runs and be just fine. Is this inability to regulate his body temp common among borders? Or maybe it's his young age? We aren't certain of his age--We are going by the vet's best guess.

 

Any thoughts or comments are most appreciated.

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It's been one of the hottest summers on record. If the dog is otherwise fine, you need to start calling his limits before he has a problem. Dogs are not good hot weather animals, and a driven playful dog like a BC (or any other breed) can't be expected to have forethought about what "might" happen if he keeps going at the rate he is.

 

The fact that he has no problem with other exercise and that he responds immediately to cooling off makes me 90% certain it's just as management issue. When he starts to be "off", his tongue is curling on the edges and dark red...you are already in dangerous territory. Periodic cooling breaks for prevention are best.

 

How to make a dog more heat tolerant: keep him thin, avoid high carbohydrate foods, build up to the heat tolerance and fitness fo the activity in question, and remember that brain strain/excitement makes the body burn even hotter.

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I will also be taking my bc in to be checked for things that could be causing her heat intolerance. With Tempe, the heat exhaustion seems aggrivated by over stimulation (dog walker gets to play for first time in a week, a new frisbee, etc...) because her episodes have actually happened on the coolest, low humidity days - go figure but these are the days something new/different has occurred.

 

I would check with your vet and make sure there is not something else going on.

 

And yes it does seem some breed of dogs are more prone to heat exhaustion but I am not sure if that is truly the case or not.

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Always good advise about a vet look at your dog. Our dog is a year and a half and I used to think she was very heat intolerant, but she does about three times what other dogs do in the same amount of time. Border Collies are over-doers, it's scary sometimes!

 

Our vet thinks it's a management issue and that's she's completely heathly otherwise. The heat's been extreme around here as well and we've been very careful to limit her activity during the day. Early mornings and late evenings, she's good to go and flys like the wind.

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I will also be taking my bc in to be checked for things that could be causing her heat intolerance. With Tempe, the heat exhaustion seems aggrivated by over stimulation (dog walker gets to play for first time in a week, a new frisbee, etc...) because her episodes have actually happened on the coolest, low humidity days - go figure but these are the days something new/different has occurred.

 

I would check with your vet and make sure there is not something else going on.

 

And yes it does seem some breed of dogs are more prone to heat exhaustion but I am not sure if that is truly the case or not.

 

I think you're right about stress being a contributing factor. It's only happened to my dog once - and n on a not terribly hot day - but she was trying to work 300 weaners for her first time on them (and one of their first times as a mob, even though they had some dry ewes with them). It was on hilly ground, and she was struggling to control them (she's not working bred, but became quite handy as a farm dog.) She stopped listening to me, then started wobbling - luckily - from these boards, I figured what was happening and got her to me trainer's truck for a cool off.

 

Strangely enough, on the same day, one of my trainer's dogs had the same thing happen - she was working a mob in the yards - which she wasn't used to, and therefore found stressful. Again, luckily, my trainer picked it and there was a nice tepid stock tank nearby to cool her off.

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I think you're right about stress being a contributing factor. It's only happened to my dog once - and n on a not terribly hot day - but she was trying to work 300 weaners for her first time on them (and one of their first times as a mob, even though they had some dry ewes with them).

 

That sounds scarily familiar. The most frightening episode I've had was working a dog in November, about 70F. The dog was moving yearlings and I never thought about how little wind and air was moving in that low field. The sun was reflecting off the wet ground too, doubling the issue. The dog nearly went down before I realized why he was "sluggish" to commands. It took 2 years to get him back to his normal heat tolerance. He would never had quit me unless he died. I'm so glad that didn't happen...I get soggy eyed to this day thinking how close it came.

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