Dogs and cats in the cold.
Apparently someone (Probably a Nazi) did a study to figure out how cold it could be before animals were threatened.
They took some dogs and they took some cats and they put them at +10°F. They did not give them a break from air movement (1 wall), they did not give them water, and they did not give them food and they all perished. I would not want to be those people’s kids at Career Day:
“So Bailey, What does your daddy do?”
“He thinks of ways to kill dogs and cats.”
They repeated the study, and they gave the dogs and cats nothing but a wall (a board actually) to get up against. Their survival time quadrupled, but they still perished.*
* (OK I don’t know if they actually let them die. Chances are, they just removed them from the study when it was apparent that they were going to.)
Finally, they gave them one board, AND they gave them food, and they gave them unfrozen water. They all survived down to -10°F, *and* probably would’ve continued indefinitely.
I learned this like, 35 years ago in vet school. We were learning about something I think they called “heat increment“ and as I recall it seems to be the ability for animals to eat as many calories as they need to stay warm. And they threw that study out there.
I was talking about it with a customer yesterday, and I was telling them, that sometimes (lots of times) you can’t bring a pet in. (Might not be your pet, you know?) But you can make sure that it has food. And if all you gave it was a break from the wind, it makes a huge difference. Food practically cinches it.
If you think about a dog on a chain with no wall, no food and no water, even at +10°, it’s quickly in very serious trouble.
Same dog, with a board to lay up against, with good food and unfrozen water, can handle it.
Putting myself in the dog’s shoes however, I would bite that Owner the next time I saw him. Really hard, right in the zipper.
