3 summer grooming tips to keep your dog cool

Summers can be challenging for your four-legged friend. The sun’s heat hampers your dog’s ability to go out and play, which can induce mental stress. Plus, high temperatures can have adverse effects on their physical health.

Studies show dogs experience risks of dehydration, foot pad burn, heat stroke, and sunburn in high temperatures. Moreover, heat stroke can lead to seizures, organ failure, brain damage, convulsions, blindness, and even death. And be warned, heat stroke creeps up slowly, with few warnings, which endangers your dog’s life.

You cannot fight it, but you can prevent it, and the best way to do so is to groom your dog properly.

Below, we’ve listed three summer grooming tips to help your dog stay cool and safe. 

Hopefully, these tips will help protect your dog from summer’s heat. 

Brush your dog’s coat often

In general, it’s a good idea to brush your dog every other day. That helps get rid of excessive hair and keeps your pup healthy. Regular brushing reduces the chances of flea or tick infestation.

However, for summer grooming, we recommend brushing your dog’s coat daily during the summer. 

Dogs with thick coats are at greater risk for overheating in the summer. Spending time outside, especially if they try to roll in the grass or muddy puddles to cool off, can cause their coats to knot and clump. Those clumps retain moisture and heat, making them even warmer for your dog. Therefore, it’s best to brush your dog’s coat every day or even twice a day to help your dog stay clean, healthy, and cool. Brushing also improves circulation in the outer layer of your dog’s skin.

Brushing your dog’s coat often helps remove loose hair, which helps reduce shedding and limits the mess in your home. To help clean up hair, we recommend equipping yourself with necessary tools like a DELOMO pet hair remover roller and a powerful vacuum cleaner. 

Give your dog a haircut

It’s a common misconception that shaving your dog’s hair helps keep it cool during the summer. While eliminating a heavy coat might appear to keep your dog cooler, it also exposes your dog and its sensitive skin to other health hazards.

Therefore, we recommend trimming or cutting your dog’s hair for summer grooming instead of shaving it. Shortening the hair reduces the heat it traps against your dog’s skin. Reducing the length will help your dog stay cool.

Schedule monthly baths

Most of us use a cool bath or shower when we get hot. So, it’s not surprising that we think it’s an excellent summer grooming tip for our dogs. So it’s unsurprising that people want to use that idea as a summer grooming option for their dogs. 

Most dogs like water and monthly baths are healthy for them. 

But don’t overdo it. Daily or weekly baths could make your dog severely ill.

Bathing too often removes your dog’s natural skin oils, which exposes your dog to the risk of skin infections or harmful microorganisms. Over bathing can make your dog’s skin dangerously dry.

Final thoughts on summer grooming tips

Apart from these grooming tips, we recommend feeding your dog a healthy diet during the summer. 

Ensure that your dog consumes at least one ounce of water for each pound of their weight. Or even better, drink three of four ounces of water for each pound. That may sound like a lot of water, but your dog needs water daily, and summer’s heat makes drinking water imperative.

Another option, treat your dog to dog-friendly popsicles. Make your own by blending your dog’s favorite fruit with plain, unsweetened yogurt, and then freeze it. You can use an ice tray or a popsicle mold. 

If you don’t want to make popsicles, freeze banana slices, strawberries or blueberries and give them to your dog.

Avoid giving your dog commercially-made popsicles because they can contain dangerous ingredients like Xylitol, also known as birch sugar, which is toxic for dogs. 

Shawn Mack is a content writer who offers ghostwriting, copywriting, and blogging services. His educational background in the business and technical fields has given him a broad base to approach many topics. He is also fond of writing engaging articles on technology & digital marketing-related topics.