How Does One Survive the Heat??
 

We have broken 118 year old records here in Washington with the extreme heat...I only use my pc when its early morning or the temp comes down to at least 85 inside, and I have a fan going to move the air around it. We are in a metal mobile home, the last 2 - 3 days its gotten to 102 in here, more of the same today I suspect.

We're working on keeping the dogs cool, I have gallon jugs in the freezer full of water.....when the temp reaches 90 inside I set a jug of frozen water in their crate....its an open wire crate, so very open on all 4 sides and top, they are a few feet from a fan, have lots of fresh water and food and I check their ears and foot pads a couple times in a 30 minutes space of time, if they are cool, or about MY body temp, they they are fine, if they get much warmer than that, a barely warm shower...the water can't be too cool or they'll go into shock....
never lay a wet towel on your animals, it'll make them hotter...I let them air dry and it helps cool them. I also have a spray bottle that I keep nothing but water in and its set on a fine mist and I spray that a couple feet over them and as the mist settles, it cools them and the air around them...but it doesn't soak them. Surprisingly they have done very little panting.

I use it on me as well....that and a fan help a lot!

Very few homes here have AC because it normally doesn't get this hot!! We lucked out and when someone removed their window unit here, it was given to us....we just got it kind of set up yesterday....its about 85 in here right now. I will be shutting down soon and spending the day in the living room. Drapes are closed and windows as well, except one bedroom window and the kitchen window to help move the air from the AC...we set it on a couple crates in front of the open front door.....we have no way of window mounting it here....hopefully we'll only need it a few days as temps will start falling again in the next week or so.

Wish us luck in this heat.....

CrystalSword, I heard about the Washington heat on the news, WOW 106*F. I was going to say use spray bottles then as I read more I see you are doing that. I'm not sure what all you can do. For you, you can take showers then dry off infront of wind (fan or A/C). Put some sort of large sun reflector on your roof or windows???? We have reflector 'blankets' we put on the 2 areas of our pop-up camper, that you pull out (do u no what I mean). The 'blankets' are a foil-like fabric on outside & white fabric on the other side. I was thinking....maybe you can put foil on the windows on the outside as a sun reflector then put light colored blankets on the windows on the inside so that heat doesn't get in????? (if you just pull the drapes perhaps the heat will seep in? I'm not sure but you might want to try it.)

At the county fair in other hot yrs, they had frozen water bottles in the cages for the smaller animals to lay against. {rabbits , chickens etc}
should work for dogs too... and people LOL
and lots of fans too.
and mist

We're going thru the same temps too.

Bless your heart......I really sympathize with you having to endure these kinds of temps especially without A/C. And your little dogs are so cute......so sweet of you to tend to them so carefully. I hope the heat eases up for you as I know your area isn't used to these kind of temps.

My MS makes me so heat intolerant that I'm not sure I could survive in that kind of heat. Not sure what I'd do! :eek: Hopefully it's coming to an end for you soon and you can get back to more normal temperatures. :hug:

Temps To Drop This Week-end
 

Our temps are supposed to come down about 10 degrees starting tomorrow, it was 95 in here today.....outside as well.

I have an outside craft sale tomorrow and Saturday and Sunday...am hoping that I can handle a full day outside. My black dog will go with me and if hubby stays home....I'll leave the little blonde with him. Bearbear is a big customer magnet and he loves the sales!

It's so much nicer tonight.....

ahhh delightful :cool:

I've never had it that hot inside my house - thank goodness! - but here's a couple things I do for my pets...

Give them frozen treats just like little kids. The birds will eat frozed veggies - corn mostly, or some peas/mixed. Some of the dogs will eat that too. Regular old popsicles are okay, just not too much. They don't need all that sugar.

At the zoo, they help the animals cool off by making *meat*sicles. Maybe you could try that. A little dogfood in water, freeze in ice cube trays. Give them one or two at a time.


The little birds get misted, the bigger one gets a bath in the sink. The dogs can get a bath or a dunk in the pool . Our old dog had his own wading pool, but he also liked to play in the sprinkler if any kids were doing so.