Cooling mats and cooling coats are now common items with a large number of brands to choose from.
These can work in two ways to cool a dog. Firstly, if the mat or coat is soaked in water cooler than the dog’s coat surface temperature, then heat will be transferred from the dog to the coat or mat by the process of conduction. However, this effect won’t last very long. However, the mat or coat can continue to keep a dog cool if the water evaporates. This will be fastest in warm, dry air with a breeze and in sunlight.
On warm and very humid days with little natural air movement, the cooling benefit of evaporative coats or mats will be significantly less, and it’s important to keep a close eye on dogs for overheating due to the insulation of the coat. In these situations, the dog may be better off with no cooling coat and being sprayed with water.
Some coats and mats hold more water than others and, therefore, have the potential to cool for longer. The difference between coats and mats is that water can evaporate all over from a coat, whereas it can only evaporate from the parts of the mat that the dog is not lying on.
Where the dog is lying on the mat, very limited evaporation will take place as the moisture will be “trapped” between the dog’s coat and the mat itself. Whilst if a mat dries out, it’s not a serious issue, although it will no longer provide any cooling, this is a potentially serious issue that could lead to heatstroke when a dog is wearing an evaporative cooling coat as a dry coat becomes like a blanket and can lead to rapid overheating.
Neither evaporative cooling coats nor mats should be used for emergency cooling of dogs that have become overheated, as they are designed to provide comfort, not rapid cooling.
