'Pupsicles' a cool way to help Fido beat the heat

Every summer, as the temperature starts to rise, all of us at the shelter are forced to come up with new ways to keep the animals cool and comfortable. Our 130-year-old former piggery of a building doesn’t allow us the luxury of keeping the building comfortably air conditioned, so, in addition to the many fans we keep running, we’re often searching for simple, homemade methods to help our shelter animals beat the heat. Many of us have taken these ideas home to our own pets, as well. If you’re looking for an easy way to keep your pet cool this summer, consider these two ideas from the shelter!

Homemade Air Conditioning

As soon as spring rolls around, our shelter bunnies make the move from our indoor rabbit room to our outdoor rabbit enclosure. This screened in structure gives them plenty of fresh air and a comfortable mix of shade and sunshine. The rabbits love being outside 24/7, but it can get a bit uncomfortable on hot summer days. And so came about homemade air conditioning!

Using empty water and soda bottles from staff members, we clean the bottles out and remove any labels. The bottles are filled with tap water and placed in the freezer overnight. Once they are frozen solid, they are put into the bunny pens. The bunnies love to snuggle up to the frozen bottles to keep cool and even like nudging them around with their heads. Because they are frozen solid, they’re pretty much indestructible. As the water bottles melt, they are put back in the freezer and replaced with fresh frozen ones. We keep a special freezer at the shelter stocked with frozen water bottles and keep an endless rotation of them going throughout the entire summer.

Frozen water bottles can also be used to help keep your other pets cool. My own dogs didn’t like the water bottles by themselves, so I made a simple pouch, much like a pillowcase, out of some scraps of fabric (an old towel works, too) and put the water bottles inside.  While still cold, the barrier between them and the frozen bottle made my girls much happier. The pouch is also great for keeping your house dry as the bottle begins to sweat in the heat.  I’ve even been known to toss a pouch in bed at night for the dogs during the midst of those summer heat waves when even the air conditioning can’t cool you down.

Frozen Pup-sicles

While we want to spoil the shelter dogs as much as possible while they’re in our care, we also want to be careful we’re not giving them an unhealthy amount of treats throughout the day. While we love letting them indulge in the occasional frozen pet treat, we’ve found an easy alternative that uses their regular afternoon meal instead of loading them down with extra treats.

Using the dog’s regular metal food bowls, we make a mixture of dry dog food, wet dog food, and water and fill the bowls with each dog’s normal portion of food. We place the bowls in the freezer for the day and then pass them out to the dogs for their afternoon feeding. Now frozen solid, the mixture has become a giant ice block. Many of the dogs enjoy knocking the ice block out of the dish and eating it in large chunks while others dig away at it in the bowl. Either way, the frozen pup-sicles are a great way to turn a regular bowl of dog food into a special cool-down treat.

At home, putting dog bowls in the freezer isn’t practical. Instead, I use small, lidded plastic containers that hold about a cup of water (truthfully, the ones I use once held soup or duck sauce from Chinese takeout). My dogs don’t receive extra treats from visitors all day long like the shelter dogs do, so, rather than use the frozen pup-sicles as a replacement meal, I use them as a special evening treat. That being said, my dachshunds are already slightly plump, so I like to trick them by making their pup-sicles primarily water with a few healthy goodies mixed in. They don’t know any better and think they’re getting a wonderfully decadent treat.

Your pup-sicle concoction is only limited by your imagination! You can use your pet’s regular food or mix in extras like globs of peanut butter or pieces of dog treats. I like to use foods like pureed carrots, pumpkin, bananas, and sweet potatoes. Because I have little dogs, I don’t let them eat the entire frozen treat in one night, which is where the lidded containers come in handy. I let my dogs gnaw away at the frozen contents of the container for a while (they’re really slow to make a dent), then pop the lid back on, wipe down the container (it has been on the floor, after all), then toss the containers back into the freezer for another day. Depending on your dog’s size and personality (not every dog will let you take a food dish away), you might find it easier to make portioned out pup-sicles in ice cube or muffin trays.

With these two simple homemade tricks, you can help Fido keep cool during the hot summer months!

Alaina Goodnough is the Promotions Coordinator at Cocheco Valley Humane Society in Dover, NH. She lives in Sanford, ME with three parrots, two cats, and two dachshunds. She can be reached at CVHS at devassist@cvhsonline.org