You Should Know This Before Taking Your Dog Into Saltwater
Be careful when taking your dog into saltwater or seawater.
Swimming has a ton of benefits for dogs. From improvements to joint health, a great form of cardiovascular exercise to improve heart health, a great way to toning their muscles, and more. However, you should be careful when taking your dog into saltwater pools or seawater because of this little known complication.
A little bit of saltwater isn’t too bad, but too much can be fatal.
A few gulps of saltwater will likely cause your dog to have diarrhea or loose stools. We have seen it ourselves when taking Jax into our saltwater pool; his stools are quite soft afterwards.
Drinking large amounts of saltwater can cause salt poisoning and lead to high sodium levels in your dog’s blood – this causes hypernatremia. At toxic levels, salt poisoning has a mortality rate of 50% in dogs – that’s way too high for our comfort. There are major side effects as well; kidney damage, brain damage, etc.
Seawater has about 2 teaspoons of salt per cup, and it takes 2.2 teaspoons per pound of body weight to reach toxic levels.
Just because it would require a lot to be ingested to be fatal, doesn’t mean damage can’t happen.
If your dog is playing in the heat, is tired, or just loves water, you’d be surprised how easily and quickly they can slurp up the stuff. If your dog is swimming and their mouth is open, a lot of saltwater actually gets into their system unintentionally as well.
The good news is that saltwater pools have significantly less salt content than seawater, however, they still can cause your dogs to get sick regardless. It would just take more drinking to get to toxic levels. There are also other chemicals in saltwater pools and chlorinated pools that you don’t want your dog drinking.
Symptoms to watch for include:
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea/loose stools
- Loss of appetite
- Seeming to lose coordination
- Seizures/convulsions
If you see any of these or suspect your dog has salt poisoning, take them to a vet right away. There is no immediate treatment or medication they can give, but electrolytes and fluids will be administered for a few days and your dog will be monitored closely as the sodium levels come down.
How Can You Prevent It?
We speak from experience here as owners of a lab/shepherd mix who loves water – this is hard. The best tips we can give are to:
- Keep fresh water handy and keep an eye on your dog. If you see them getting thirsty or ingesting saltwater, make sure you get them fresh water to drink (squirt it in their mouth if you have to). The goal is to dilute the sodium intake and to make sure they get frequent breaks from drinking.
- If your dog is ball obsessed like ours, one tip is to give them a large ball or toy (that can’t be ingested) that they can keep in their mouth as they swim around. This has been a game-changer for us with Jax, as we give him a deflated football that he loves to carry around as he swims. This reduces the amount of water he tries to gulp as a result.
- Some recommend muzzles as this can limit the ability for your dog to drink while swimming. We haven’t tried this one and it would only work well if your dog is ok with being muzzled, but it’s something to consider.
Happy Swimming! Let us know if your dog likes to drink water he or she shouldn’t and what you do to prevent it!
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