By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Triple digit temperatures may bring misery to your average Manhattan man, woman or child, but city dwellers on four legs are suffering too.
“It breaks my heart. I treat him like a little person,” said Rachel Ehrlich, 21, while cradling her three-month old pug, Vinny.
Ehrlich, a hostess who lives on the Lower East Side, did not venture outside with Vinny during Tuesday’s 103 degree heat, but decided by Wednesday that he needed some exercise.
“You can tell he’s panting, and I know exactly when he can’t go anymore. So we stop, I give him a little water, and we try and pick it up again.”
Some of the methods for keeping Manhattan pooches cool are well known — “hydrate, hydrate, hydrate,” said dog walker and Chelsea resident Marianne O’Rourke, 31.
It’s also best to stick to evenings and mornings for walks, avoiding the midday heat.
But other tips are less known. At Le Petit Puppy, a West Village pet store at 18 Christopher St., owner Dana Derraugh, 52, said that sunscreen — the same brands marketed for humans — is necessary for dogs with shaved or closely cropped hair.
Le Petit Puppy also sells booties and salves to protect paws from burning pavement, as well as water bottles specially designed for dogs.
Leaving a dog in a car, at any time of year, is the cardinal sin, according to Derraugh. In general, she said, if it's the weather is too hot or cold for you, it's probably too much for your dog too.
“People say, ‘well, but in nature…’ But they don’t live in nature,” Derraugh said. “They’ve been bred in homes, they live in homes, so they’re not used to it, and they don’t have that type of a coat. They don’t have that type of resistance. Dogs today live longer because we are protecting them.”
To keep her four dogs cool, Janet Wolfman, 66, spent Tuesday night filling the bathtub and dunking Bella, Chuck, Junior and Finn. Wolfman, a retiree, does not have air conditioning in her West Village apartment because it is prohibitively expensive.
“For my dogs, I feel bad,” Wolfman said. “Especially the two young ones, they’re looking at me like, ‘what’s going on?’ I feel in a way like I’ve failed them.”
