Summer Prep for Vet Clinics: Heatstroke, Parasites, and the Holiday Surge

Summer Is the Season Your Protocols Get Tested

Every May, the same thing happens. The weather flips. The waiting room fills with itchy dogs, panting brachycephalics, and clients asking about boarding before the holiday weekend.

And every May, the gap between clinics that have their summer protocols written down and clinics that are improvising — that gap shows up in patient outcomes, OSHA logs, and Yelp reviews.

This isn't a "tips for summer" listicle. It's the short list of protocols that need to be sitting on your team's phones before the first 90°F day. Each one is anchored to a source, not folk wisdom.

1. The Heatstroke Protocol Most Clinics Have Wrong

Start with a fact your senior vets may not have learned in school: the cold-water rule has flipped.

The conventional advice for the last 30 years was to avoid cold water on a hyperthermic dog because of vasoconstriction risk. That advice is outdated. The current evidence — Hall et al., Veterinary Sciences, 2023 — supports cold-water immersion (35–59°F) for previously healthy dogs as the fastest, safest cooling method. The Royal Veterinary College now runs a campaign on this exact point called "Cool First, Transport Second."

Here's what your written heatstroke SOP needs to cover:

Diagnosis threshold

• Normal canine rectal temp: 101–102.5°F
• Heatstroke: core temp >105.8°F with systemic signs (Bruchim et al., Temperature, 2017)
• Note: a dog presenting normothermic after owner cooling can still be in active heatstroke — don't anchor on temperature alone

Cooling method by patient profile

• Young, healthy, no comorbidities → cold-water immersion is now the gold standard
• Senior, brachycephalic with airway compromise, or cardiac patient → evaporative cooling (cool water + fan + AC airflow)
• Stop active cooling at ~103.5°F to avoid overshoot into hypothermia

Risk stratification

• Brachycephalic breeds have roughly double the heat-illness risk of mesocephalic dogs (odds ratio 2.10; Hall et al., "Incidence and risk factors for heat-related illness," Scientific Reports, 2020)
• Mortality in primary care: 14.18% (same Hall et al. Scientific Reports 2020 cohort). Mortality in severe/hospitalized cases: closer to 50% (Bruchim 2006 retrospective).

If your current heatstroke SOP still says "avoid cold water," it's a 2010 document. Update it before June.

2. The Hot Car and Hot Pavement Handout

You're going to get the phone call. It's June, it's 85°F, a client left a dog in the car for "five minutes" while they ran into the post office.

Have the data ready, in writing, in the file your front desk hands out:

• Car interior temperatures rise ~19°F in 10 minutes, ~29°F in 20 minutes, ~34°F in 30 minutes above ambient — regardless of whether the windows are cracked (McLaren, Null & Quinn, Pediatrics, 2005; cited by AVMA)
• 77°F air = ~125°F asphalt — hot enough to cause contact burns in 60 seconds
• 87°F air = ~143°F asphalt (Berens, JAMA, 1970; corroborated by Harrington et al., Annals of Emergency Medicine, 1995)

This isn't just a client education piece. It's a liability shield. When a client argues their dog "couldn't have gotten heatstroke that fast," you want a printed handout with peer-reviewed citations sitting on the counter.

3. The Tick-Borne Disease Map Has Changed

If your Lyme conversation with clients still sounds like 2015, you're behind.

CAPC's 2025 forecast and Little et al.'s 2021 multi-pathogen surveillance both confirm what your tech team is already seeing in idexx panels:

• Canine seroprevalence for Borrelia burgdorferi, Anaplasma, and Ehrlichia all rose between 2013 and 2019
• Anaplasmosis is now spreading south and west — in Maine and Vermont, roughly 1 in 3 dogs test positive
• Ehrlichiosis remains concentrated in the Southeast; Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever risk is year-round in southern states
• Milder winters mean tick activity is no longer strictly seasonal in much of the US

What this means for your protocols:

• The "endemic area" map your team uses for Lyme vaccine recommendations should be re-checked against the CAPC live prevalence maps every spring
• Your tick-pull SOP should specify identification photo, removal technique, and which pathogens to PCR for based on geography
• Restock 4DX/Accuplex tests before Memorial Day, not after the first positive

4. Leptospirosis: Now a Core-ish Vaccine

The 2023 ACVIM consensus statement on leptospirosis (Sykes et al., JVIM) made the biggest shift in the document explicit: annual lepto vaccination is now recommended for all dogs — regardless of size, breed, geography, or lifestyle. The old "outdoor exposure" hedge is gone.

Why this matters for summer prep:

• Lepto is transmitted through wildlife urine in standing water — risk spikes after summer rainfall and flooding
• The small-breed and urban-dog carve-outs are gone in the new guidance
• Initial protocol is a two-dose series 2–4 weeks apart, then annual boosters

If your clinic still has clients on a "lepto only if they hike a lot" policy, this is the spring to send the update letter.

5. The July 4th Reality Check

This one isn't about medicine. It's about operations.

July 4th is the single highest pet-loss day on the US calendar. Shelter Animals Count data (2021–2024) formally confirms July 5th as the busiest stray-intake day of the year. That means:

• Your phones will ring with microchip lookups, lost-pet posts, and "my dog escaped during fireworks" calls starting July 3rd
• Your boarding facility will be at capacity — and your boarding intake protocol needs to actually be written down, not living in the receptionist's head
• Anxious-dog medication requests (trazodone, gabapentin, Sileo) spike the week before — get the workflow for short-notice scripts dialed in by mid-June

Note: The widely-repeated claim that "summer is the busiest season for boarding" isn't supported by hard published data. It's likely true at your clinic — but treat it as an operational expectation, not a statistic.

What your SOP library should include before July 1st:

• Microchip lookup workflow (who answers the phone, what database)
• Anxious-dog short-notice prescription protocol
• Boarding intake checklist (vaccines, medications, feeding schedule, emergency contact)
• After-hours emergency referral list — updated, not the one from 2023

The Summer Prep Checklist — Built for SOPs

If you're using paper or shared docs, this is the part where things break. Summer prep means roughly 40–60 discrete tasks across cleaning, restocking, training, and client communication — and most of them need to happen in a specific order between mid-May and June 30th.

Here's the short list that should be assigned, dated, and signed off:

Medical protocols (update before June 1)

• [ ] Heatstroke SOP — verify cold-water immersion is the primary method
• [ ] Hot car / pavement client handout — printed and at the front desk
• [ ] Tick removal and disease testing SOP — refreshed against CAPC 2025 map
• [ ] Lepto vaccine recommendation script — updated per 2023 ACVIM consensus

Restocking (complete by Memorial Day)

• [ ] Cooling supplies: IV fluids, ice packs, fans, rectal thermometers
• [ ] Tick removal kits in every exam room
• [ ] 4DX / heartworm antigen tests (audit expiration dates)
• [ ] Anxious-dog medications (trazodone, gabapentin, Sileo) — 30-day buffer

Operations (complete by June 15)

• [ ] Boarding intake checklist reviewed with front desk
• [ ] Microchip lookup script
• [ ] After-hours referral list verified — call each number, don't just check the doc
• [ ] July 4th week staffing locked in

Staff training (rolling)

• [ ] Every staff member reviews updated heatstroke SOP with sign-off
• [ ] New hires walk through brachycephalic risk assessment with a senior tech
• [ ] Front desk trained on the hot car / pavement handout

What "Documented" Actually Means

You can write all of this down and still have nothing if it lives in a Google Doc nobody opens.

The clinics that handle summer well aren't the ones with the prettiest SOPs. They're the ones where:

• Every recurring summer task has a due date and an assignee
• Completion is signed off with a timestamp, not a verbal "yeah I did that"
• Missed tasks generate an alert before the dog with heatstroke walks in
• The manager can see, in one view, what's done and what's still open

That's the workflow Vet-ly was built around. A summer prep template gets dropped in, tasks assign themselves to the right job titles, and the manager dashboard tells you on June 1st whether you're ready — not on July 5th when you're not.

The Bottom Line

Summer is the season your written protocols either pay for themselves or get exposed. The cost of getting this wrong shows up as a heatstroke that didn't need to be fatal, a missed tick-borne diagnosis, or a July 4th boarding intake that gets the wrong dog the wrong medication.

The cost of getting it right is a few hours in May.

Start with the heatstroke SOP. Then the client handouts. Then the restock list. By the time the first 90°F day hits, your team should be running a written playbook — not a group text.

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Sources cited in this post:

• Bruchim Y, Horowitz M, Aroch I. "Pathophysiology of heatstroke in dogs – revisited." Temperature 2017;4(4):356–370.
• Hall EJ, Carter AJ, O'Neill DG. "Cooling Methods Used to Manage Heat-Related Illness in Dogs Presented to Primary Care Veterinary Practices during 2016–2018 in the UK." Veterinary Sciences 2023;10(7):465.
• Hall EJ, Carter AJ, O'Neill DG. "Incidence and risk factors for heat-related illness (heatstroke) in UK dogs under primary veterinary care in 2016." Scientific Reports 2020;10:9128.
• Hall EJ, Carter AJ, O'Neill DG. "Dogs Don't Die Just in Hot Cars — Exertional Heat-Related Illness (Heatstroke) Is a Greater Threat to UK Dogs." Animals 2020;10(8):1324.
• McLaren C, Null J, Quinn J. "Heat Stress From Enclosed Vehicles." Pediatrics 2005;116(1):e109–e112.
• Berens JJ. "Thermal Contact Burns From Streets and Highways." JAMA 1970;214(11):2025–2027.
• Harrington WZ et al. "Pavement Temperature and Burns: Streets of Fire." Annals of Emergency Medicine 1995;26(5):563–568.
• Little SE et al. "Canine infection with Dirofilaria immitis, Borrelia burgdorferi, Anaplasma spp., and Ehrlichia spp. in the United States, 2013–2019." Parasites & Vectors 2021;14:10.
• Sykes JE et al. "Updated ACVIM consensus statement on leptospirosis in dogs." JVIM 2023;37(6):1966–1982.
• Companion Animal Parasite Council 2025 Pet Parasite Forecast.
• Shelter Animals Count — July 4th stray dog intake data (2021–2024).