Cooling Mats for Dogs: Everything You Need to Know, Is It Worth Your Money?

This summer season has shown that a cooling mat for dogs is definitely useful on warm or hot days as not every dog ​​owner has the opportunity to drive their four-legged friend to the lake or to provide the necessary space for a dog to cool off.

Summer, sun, warmth: we sure love the fantastic weather here in Canada the United States. But warm weather or heat can be very stressful for our fur noses. Therefore, there are many good reasons to treat your paw hero to a cooling mat dog.

However, you should pay particular attention to a few points when buying a cooling mat dog.

Why is a Cooling Mat Important for Dogs?

Dogs suffer more than humans in summer. At high temperatures, humans start to sweat. Sweat and a lot of drinking regulate our body temperature. Dogs can’t do that. In order to compensate for high temperatures, dogs pant as much as possible and try their best to cool down by breathing.

They exhale the warm air through the snout and inhale the cooler air through the nose. Heat can only be extracted from the body through evaporation through the surface of the tongue. Besides, the sweat glands in the paws help to equalize the body temperature. For this reason, it is so often recommended to let your four-legged friend run through water, a watercourse or a stream.

When it is warm, our dogs instinctively lie in the shade. In the house or apartment, fur noses try to find relief on tiles that are as cool as possible. But in metropolitan areas, where the heat really builds up in the apartments or in the attic apartments, it becomes difficult for our furry friends to get the necessary cooling.

Older dogs and four-legged friends in particular, with thick and dense fur, can only cope with the necessary temperature equalization with difficulty. In these cases, a good cooling mat for dogs can help and make life much easier for our four-legged friends.

How Does the Cooling Mat for Dogs Work?

Most of the cooling mats have a non-toxic cooling gel. The cooling effect of the mat is activated by body contact and body weight.

Depending on the manufacturer, the cooling gel cools 3-8° C below body temperature. Also, the cooling mat is ready for use again approximately 15 minutes after use.

There is no need for electricity, batteries or water. Simple, easy and economical!

Care and Cleaning of Cooling Mats for Dogs With a Gel Core

Care and cleaning of cooling mats are very easy. All recommended cooling mats can easily be wiped off with a damp cloth or a mild cleaning agent due to their robust, smooth surface.

Sharp cleaning agents, scouring milk or sharp objects should not be used.

Advantages and disadvantages of the dog cooling mat

Advantages:

• Self-cooling with no dependency on additional cooling agents
• Responds to body contact and body weight
• No electricity, water or batteries required
• Does not have to be pre-cooled
• Depending on the manufacturer, a cooling mat lowers the body temperature by 3-8 ° C
• Pleasant cooling effect
• After use, quickly ready for use again
• Durable
• Can be used on sensitive floors (parquet, carpet)
• Available in different sizes
• Easily foldable
• Easy to transport
• Ideal for apartment, house, garden, car, on excursions, on vacation, hotel
• Easy to clean
• Cheap to buy

While there is hardly any disadvantage of buying a cooling mat, what you MUST do is ensure buying a good quality product and do your research before buying. This is because a poor quality cooling matter has its own fair share of disadvantages, including the following:

• Less durability
• Use of cheap, toxic substances
• Poor compactness of the gel core
• soft, non-compact gel cores that slip more easily

Finding the Right Size for Your Dog

First of all, you orientate yourself on the size of your dog. However, the place of use plays a major role!

If the mat is simply to lie in a room, you are free to choose any size. However, if you want to use it in a dog crate, for example, you should see which size is best suited for it. Under no circumstances should the cooling take up the entire lying area. The mat should take up a maximum of half of the lying surface. Please let your fur nose choose between a “normal” lying surface and the cooling surface. Most dogs only want to cool off for a brief moment and then move back to their usual place. This also applies to the usual retreat, regardless of whether it is a dog bed or a dog mattress.

Also, note that the dog crate may have a different size than the transport box in the car.

In order to cover all eventualities, it is best to pay attention to the foldability of the cooling mats when making your choice. Some mats can be folded once, while others can be folded twice or even multiple times.

In addition, pay attention to the height of the gel core. With the cooling mats with a height of only one centimeter, your four-legged friend lies on the floor. If you want to use the cooling pad on a dog bed, on the couch, i.e. on a soft surface, that’s no problem. For all other floors, you should go for a thicker gel core, especially for big dogs.

It’s better to choose the cooling mat one size too small than too big.

Tips for using the dog cooling mat

Every dog ​​is different, every dog ​​is an individual. Therefore our fur noses react very differently to the unfamiliar plastic surface. One four-legged friend is a daredevil, the other paw hero is curious but careful.

Please do not force your fur nose to be happy!

You can try the following tips to make your dog comfortable with cooling mats:

• You put a thin cloth on the plastic surface.
• Alternatively, you can place the cooling mat in one pass so that your darling can get to walk over it.
• You may be able to motivate your dog to run over the mat with signals.
• Place the mat on a small area of their favorite spot so that your furry friend can try it out. Or you can put it completely on your favorite spot so that it lays on it out of habit.
• A treat as a reward usually works wonders, but you should NEVER lure your dog with a treat!

Why are most cooling mats BLUE?

You may have noticed that most dog cooling mats are blue.

There is a simple explanation for this. Dogs can recognize the color BLUE very well!

Dogs recognize colors in a similar way to people who suffer from red-green color blindness. Therefore, dogs primarily recognize colors in the areas of blue and yellow.

For this reason, it is recommended, for example, to use a blue bath mat or a blue towel as an aid to bathing. In dog sports, too, we often work with blue aids.

Support your fur nose by not experimenting with colors that you particularly like.

Conclusion: Cooling Mat Dog

Very clear purchase recommendation for hot summer days! The cooling effect makes the summer easier for our dogs.

Due to the availability in different sizes, the dog cooling mats are suitable for all dogs.

Yes, it is definitely worth your money!