Feeding & Nutrition

The heatwave broke records and broke my dog's appetite with them. Forty degrees, no breeze worth the name, and a collie who looked at his full bowl like it had personally wronged him. Dogs don't cool the way we do, they pant and they flop and they radiate what little they can through their paws, and on a day like that they stop caring about food entirely because eating generates heat they can't spare.

I wasn't worried about hunger yet. I was worried about water, because a dog that won't eat in the heat is normal and a dog that won't drink is a problem with a short clock. So I stopped offering dinner and started offering something colder, something that solved the real issue instead of the one I'd assumed mattered.

I'd made a plain chicken broth that morning, no salt, no onion, nothing a dog can't have, the kind you'd make for a sick child if you still had the instinct. Instead of a bowl, I poured it into an ice tray and let it set in the freezer I'd been leaning on all afternoon. Come the worst part of the day I dropped two cubes into his water and watched him lap at the melting puddle like it was the best thing he'd been offered all summer, which, honestly, it was.

He ate the cubes straight off the tray after that, licking them round and refusing to let them melt unchewed. Hydration disguised as a treat, and a dog too hot to chew suddenly had a reason to swallow something cold. The broth carried a little salt-free flavour his dry food had lost in the heat, a reminder that food is partly smell and he couldn't smell anything worth the effort. It wasn't a meal. It was a bridge until the sun gave up and the tiles cooled enough to think about real food.

What I keep in the freezer now

The tray became permanent, a row of small comforts I reach for without thinking. Broth cubes for hot days, plain yoghurt cubes for an upset stomach, the occasional bit of mashed pumpkin frozen into a slow snack that takes him twenty minutes to finish. None of it replaces food, all of it keeps a dog drinking when drinking is the only thing that matters and the bowl has lost its appeal.

By evening he'd eaten a proper meal on his own, once the house had finally exhaled and the fan had done its quiet job. The cubes were a trick to get him through the worst eight hours, not a diet and not a solution, just a way to keep water moving through him when his brain had decided food was off the table. But on the day the temperature wouldn't blink, they were the difference between a dog who drank and a dog I'd have been watching far too closely.

I still smile at that tray of frozen broth, the laziest piece of dog care I've ever done and one of the few that actually worked when nothing else would. A heatwave strips away the fancy routines and leaves you with the basics, water, shade, and a reason to swallow, and the cubes covered two of the three while the shade covered the last. I keep a spare tray now, because the first one cracked in the freezer and I'd rather not learn that lesson twice in one summer.

If your dog goes off his food in the heat, look at his water first and his bowl second. Offer something cold, something he has to lick rather than chew, and sit with him where it's coolest. The appetite returns on its own once the temperature drops. The danger is in the hours before that, and a frozen cube is a small, stupid, perfect answer to a very large problem.

The vet said something that stuck, that heat kills more dogs than most owners admit because the signs are quiet until they aren't, a little lethargy, a little panting, and then a crisis on a day you thought was ordinary. The cubes kept my collie's water moving when his instinct said skip it, and that's the whole game in a heatwave, keep the water going when the dog would rather not bother. A frozen thing turns a chore into a game he'll actually play.

I've started keeping two trays now, one of broth and one of plain water, because the water cubes are the ones he goes for first when it's truly brutal, the broth saved for the evening when he's cooled enough to want flavour. It's a tiny system, born of one awful day, and it's kept him safe through two summers since. The heatwave that started it is long gone, but the trays stay, a small permanent answer to a large recurring problem, sitting in the freezer like a quiet promise to do better next time.