Swamp Cooler, life saver?


There is some coincidence in this story. I had planned to write a blog today about the Ruffwear Swamp Cooler and to post some lovely photos of Luca wearing his, we took them yesterday and one of them was used to make our latest slider on the homepage. Luca is currently doing some testing and we were going to make a video and sing the praises of the Swamp Cooler as we really like them. Last night changed all that!

This isn't a fabrication and it has shaken us up a little.

Last night I was woken up at 02:10am by a noise, this is unusual in it's self as the bedroom has thick walls and a heavy door, normally we don't hear anything. It took me a little while to figure out what the noise was, it was repetitive and like a rumbling, after a couple of minutes I realised one of the dogs was panting, loudly, very loudly. I got up and went upstairs, Cocoa and Luca always sleep on the sofa, and they never move, however they were both on the floor and Spike was laying on the sofa on his side, he was panting so heavily that he could hardly breathe.

We have had a run of very warm days, it doesn't drop much below 40 degrees and it hasn't been below 35 for several weeks, the house has meter thick walls and stays pretty well insulated but it still gets a little warm. We like things natural, so we don't have air con, we rely on the old ways, the house is 200yrs old and was designed with the climate in mind, but it does get a little warm for old, excitable dogs like Spike.

Our house is upside down, the bedrooms are downstairs as it is cooler downstairs, so I carried Spike downstairs and put him in our bedroom, I brought his bed down and put him on it, but he was still panting very heavily and struggling to breathe. I thought I needed to get his temperature down, so I thought I would soak an old t-shirt and wrap him in it, but while I was doing that I thought why don't I get his Swamp Cooler and put that on, at least it will stay on him, and at the end of the day, that is what it is designed to do. I soaked it, wrung it out and put it on him.

 

After about 15 minutes he was breathing normally, after another 10 minutes he was snoring!

Spike is 13 in 2 months time, he is an old Bulldog, and Bulldogs have small nasal passages, they can really struggle to breathe at times and he had me worried. If I hadn't of heard him panting he may well have stopped breathing, if I hadn't managed to get his temperature down he may well have stopped breathing.

5 hours later I woke to heavy snoring and horrendously loud, smelly farting, and I was very happy to do so!

I'm sure there are plenty of other methods that could have been used to bring Spike's temperature down and his breathing back to normal, but I didn't use them, I used his Ruffwear Swamp Cooler, and it may well have saved his life!