Yep Heat and humidity is a constant battle here and my dogs are always number one over a hog.Heat tolerant breeds help a ton when I was fooling with the Cambell dogs from ga (bird/bull) they simply couldn't handle the heat and humidity here although every dog has their limits these ones I feed now handle it much better.
That’s my Ben dog’s biggest downfall is his heat tolerance, and I attribute that to his longer coat, he’s been bred, born, and raised right here in the south, about 45 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico, so I can’t say it’s acclimation related, this isn’t the first time I’ve had this happen and that’s why I started carrying lactated ringers but had forgotten them at home, but this was the worst, he was panting so hard he sounded like he was just sucking for air, and wouldn’t drink any water, I pulled him outa the box and took him to some shade and flipped his ears inside out to get the breeze on them and held his front feet in the water bowl, the water was ambient temperature so I wasn’t afraid of putting him in shock, I dripped water out of a rag slowly onto his ears, and kept wiping down his a$$,nuts, pecker and insides of his back legs with a wet rag, it seemed of as if it was going to get bad for a few minutes, I was only about 4 miles from the house and had all the drip bags and IVs there I needed, or there was a seasonal creek bottom that had water flowing about a mile up the road, the rest of the pack was pouring coal in a TERRIBLE 5 year old planted pine cutover out in front of us, I got hot and light headed myself belly crawling for 50 yds in there, so I can only imagine how hard them dogs were having to push themselves, just as I was about to throw in the towel and head to the house and leave dad, billy and Ashton to the hunt, he stopped panting so hard and started drinking, I kept him in the shade in the breeze while we went and caught the hog, the baydogs were just about laying down baying they were so hot, this is the absolute worst time of the year for southern hunting dogs, this heat is a different kinda beast and even more so for dogs, we always carry water with us this time of year, we’ll have two or 3’different trucks with tanks, I urge everyone who cares enough to research, heat strokes and symptoms in dogs and what can be done in the field for if and when the time comes...
