Curious where you guys draw the line that it is to hot to train your dog? Its 90 degrees here are most likely will wait until after sundown. Not much time after that though before its to dark.
Anyway, just curious as to your opinions on temp and your dogs.
It gets up to 110 here in the summer. Some of the things I do to keep my dogs from overheating. Keep their coats brushed, less time working the dog about 15mins maximum. plenty of water for them. I will put my dog in a shaded area not stick them back in a kennel for cool down. More water. When my first dog cools down another 15 minutes. Find moving water it tends to be cooler then standing water in a pond or lake.
In the summer months, i do a lot of my training early morning or just before sunset. I think the real key is paying close attention to the dog, thier behavior, tongue, breathing pattern, etc. Take a lot of precautions to prevent them from over heating as mentioned above with short work sessions, lots of shade and dont put a wet dog in a box. I cant put an exact number on the temperature, but it really comes down to commons sense, we had some days last summer that were pushing past 115F here, my only real option was to take my girls for a walk well after dark and even then the heat felt almost suffocating.
I am particularly careful this time of year. It has been a cool spring and the while 80s is great weather in the Summer, when they are not used to the warm weather it can be bad.
I've trained in some mighty hot weather but what concerned me about yesterday and today in the north east was the sudden temperature change. The dogs haven't had any chance to acclimate to the weather here yet and it's only two days of light training, so no sense pushing your luck. In fact, as an amateur there's no sense in pushing your luck anyway. Pros being paid to get a job done or prepare dogs to run in places where it gets hot have another kettle of fish to deal with, but they should be qualified to do so.
There were a few warm days in Minnesota last summer but overall it beat the daylights out of trying to train in GA. There is just something about a 39-40 degree morning in August that is really cool, pun intended.
Not generally for the dogs. They are happy and eager to train in below zero temps, I however, am not. My personal record is -23 F. Dog enjoyed getting out even if it was only for about 10 minutes of TT. It had been so cold that I hadn't been out training and after 2 days of not doing the TT, I didn't want to have to start all over. So I trained. Whistles absolutely hurt your lips when they are below 0.
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