Summer has now arrived in the UK and it is always a struggle. I won’t repeat the usual stories you hear about the UK heat, but in summary is it humid, heavy and airless. And I am not even covered in fur to make it so much hotter! Over the years, I have worked out some quick ways to keep companion animals cool in the hotter weather, that do not rely on you needing to buy a particular electric fan or any expensive and high tech cooling mat for them.
Rocks
I found this worked wonders for my gerbils when we had them. As they are a dessert animal, the heat wasn’t really an issue for them, but my husband and I still made sure to put something cooling into their cage on the very hot and humid days over summer.
You can buy aquarium decorative rocks, but we mostly just used a few rocks that we found outside. They do not need to be huge – no bigger than the size of your palm is a good rule to follow – but obviously make sure to properly clean them beforehand so you aren’t putting any nasty germs into your animal’s enclosure. I had about 5 rocks that I would keep in the freezer and would rotate these into my gerbil’s enclosure as needed to help keep their bedding and the enclosure as a whole a little bit cooler. My gerbils for the most part paid no real attention to the rocks – they may climb on them or give them a little scratch, but they never tried to chew them.
Kitchen tiles
This trick helped my husband and I loads with our rabbits. We have laminate flooring throughout most of our house, so luckily the floors were quite cool even in summer, but for those very hot days we bought a few different size floor tiles. We kept them in the fridge and again rotated them out as needed. Our rabbits mostly liked to dig at these, either because they didn’t like where they were placed or because they liked the cool feeling on their paws, but either way these worked great to keep them cool. We also found that placing the cold tiles under their favourite sleeping spots on our rug also helped to keep them cool. No doubt this tactic would also work to place the cold tile underneath your dog or cat’s bed so they had somewhere slightly cooler to lay.
Frozen water bottles
This worked well for our rabbits and no doubt would work for your cat, dog, or other companion animal. Fill a water bottle with water, leave it in the freezer to freeze solid, and then wrap it in a small towel or a sock before leaving for your pet to find. We found that the rabbits liked to lay alongside it, although we did notice that as the ice started to melt and the condensation when through the sock, our rabbits would occasionally have a wet back. I found this was best in small doses, and would always watch our bunnies when using these to make sure that the bottles weren’t left out for so long that wet patches would be left, either on our rabbits or on our floor.
Taylor Talks Vegan 