Beautiful Spring Weather Can Turn Deadly

Yesterday was beautiful here in the high 70's. A nice day to walk the dog, not so for my 4pm patient. I was in the back laying to rest one of our good clients pets when I hear Hey we have a dog having an asthma attack here. First instinct I race to turn on the oxygen tanks, while my co-worker grabs the anesthesia machine to deliver O2 to the doggie. I look over my shoulder to see a very obese pug in respiratory distress and grab an endotracheal tube that I believe will fit him and run over to help. The Dr. is already examining him. His tongue is a little bluish which tells us he is not oxygenating himself well so we start him on oxygen therapy. The doctor says grab a temperature please. I go to grab his tail to insert the thermometer he felt really hot. He was in fact 104.7. Normal for a dog is 100 to 102. This pug is suffering from heatstroke. his owners had just returned home from walking him and he started breathing heavy. These owners had recently adopted this dog and since he weighs 28 lbs (normal for a pug is well under 20) they were trying to get him more fit by exercise. However this guy's weight, breed , and facial conformation proved to be too much for the temperatures outside today. His nose has very small holes even for a pug and his nose is recessed behind a fold of skin also making it more difficult for him to get air. Brachiocephalic or pushed in faced breeds like pugs and bostons have all the same anatomy as regular nosed breeds, but it is condensed into a small face making for lots of folds of skin in the back of the throat. Dogs can only cool themselves by panting or sweating. The only place they are able to sweat from is the pads of their feet, they do not have sweat glands anywhere else. So when this pug got too hot he started to pant really hard, all this panting caused the tissue in the back of his throat to swell. Since there are so many swollen folds it stared to obstruct his breathing and he could not get enough oxygen. So for this little guy we used O2 therapy, cold packs from the fridge, NOT THE FREEZER, under his armpits and inguinal area. You do not want to use things to cold or immerse the animal in cold water because they will cool down too quickly then you have whole new set of problems on your hands. Then we gave some steroids IV to decrease he swelling in his throat. We added a fan and sprayed his foot pads with alcohol. As the alcohol evaporates it cools the feet down faster, remember that is where they sweat from. We also gave this guy some SQ fluids to help cool him some and help hydration. Had his temperature been higher we would have given those fluids IV. Luckily this little guy got to us quickly and we were able to stabilize his breathing and temperature in a fairly quick amount of time, but this little guy certainly could have died. We did stop cooling him when his temperature got to 103 degrees, because after we remove all of our cooling devices the body temp continues to drop about another degree so we do not want to risk getting them below normal body temperature. It was an exciting afternoon and I am glad our little pug will suffer no ill effects.If the body temp gets too high the intestinal tract can actually slough and the you get nasty bloody stool and vomiting.