BBQ Pug... I hope not!

July 12, 2006 5:43 PM

When you place a T-bone steak on the BBQ it starts to cook from the outside. But what about my dog?

This might sound a little strange.... and yes it is a genuine question!

I woke up this morning and found my dog asleep on the heating duct in the floor. The duct gets too hot for me to stand on in a short amount of time and he'd obviously been asleep there for a while because he was extremely hot to touch.

I have 2 questions really:

1. Is this bad for him?

2. Does this actually start to "cook" him? And if it doesn't, then why not? If I put a steak on the duct, that would surely begin to cook.... Wouldn't it?

posted by paterg to pets & animals (26 comments total)

When I was a kid, I used to put a blanket over the heater duct and then put my bare feet over it to get extra-toasy warm in the winter, and I don't recall ever getting cooked. If your ducts are getting so hot you can't touch them, you've got a much more powerful furnace than I've ever seen.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:45 PM on July 12, 2006

If your dog was cooking, he would move. The same idea with standing on the blanket that crash is talking about applies to dogs all over. They are very insulated.
posted by chrisroberts at 5:53 PM on July 12, 2006

I imagine dog fur is a decent insulator, I doubt your dog is doing anything harmful to himself. If it was harmful, it would probably cause him pain, since pain is nature's way of saying "don't do that."
posted by borkencode at 5:55 PM on July 12, 2006

You think your dog would sleep through being cooked? Not likely.

Those vents can get hot, though. We used to cook hot dogs on ours in college.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 5:59 PM on July 12, 2006

"When you place a T-bone steak on the BBQ it starts to cook [...] But what about my dog?"

I imagine that, if you put a T-Bone steak on your dog, not only would it not cook very quickly at all, it would also get dog hair all over it, which doesn't sound very appetizing.

Less snarkily, if you put your dog on the BBQ, I imagine he'd cook up just as nicely as the steak would.

Least snarkily, I highly doubt that your home's heating puts out temperatues between 250-350 degrees.
posted by CrayDrygu at 6:03 PM on July 12, 2006

Unless you're doing something very strange and wrong, the flesh you put on your barbecue doesn't have blood still circulating through it to regulate heat. Unless he's dead, your dog does.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 6:13 PM on July 12, 2006

Like the others, I'm doubting your heating duct is getting hot enough for your dog to get cooked. Even if the temperature around the dog is higher than optimal, being a warm-blooded animal, his body will fight to maintain a healthy internal environment-- this is thermoregulation. If the temperature gets too hot, and this process starts to break down, you'll start to see signs: panting, rapid heart-rate, often vomiting. I think at the point your dog starts to experience these sorts of symptoms, unless he is severely retarded, he will move to a cooler area.

Less reassuringly, I have heard of animals cooking themselves accidentally. My mother had a guinea pig as a child in Argentina who apparently baked itself to death in front of a fire. But I think a pug is probably a bit smarter, and more likely to move when it gets too hot.

If you're really worried, take your dog's temperature (rectally...) Optimally, it should be around 102.
posted by bookish at 6:25 PM on July 12, 2006

One of the many functions of our blood system is to move heat around. It's extremely good at it, too. As Ambrose Chapel says, that's the big difference here.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 6:40 PM on July 12, 2006

My grandma's cat used to sleep on the heating ducts all the time, though I didn't think they got quite that hot. Nonetheless, there are many differences between animals and bits of meat.
posted by dagnyscott at 6:46 PM on July 12, 2006

I think dogs & cats can stand ridiculously warm temperatures, and that if it was seriously hot enough to cook them they would move.

However, my aunt used to have a white cat that would sleep under the water boiler or furnace and come out with singed fur on his back. So maybe all animals aren't that bright.
posted by tastybrains at 7:18 PM on July 12, 2006

I agree with the above, but if your dog goes to sleep when the duct is cool and it heats up slowly (more like a radiator), then I could see a potential for him getting burned. I have a friend who slept with his bed next to a radiator and woke up with second degree burns on his arm. It apparently kicked on in the night. Cooking's pretty unlikely though, methinks.
posted by dsword at 8:58 PM on July 12, 2006

I think the reason the dog is sleeping on the vent is that he likes it.
posted by frogan at 10:03 PM on July 12, 2006

I don't think you cooked your dog, but I would be concerned about the long-term impact of him doing this often. It probably wouldn't hurt to see if there was a way to prevent him from getting too close to the vent, without blocking the heat from coming through.

OT: Reading just the first two sentences that were displayed in your question, there was no doubt in my mind that you were asking us whether you could place your dog on the grill alongside your T-bone steak.
posted by fogster at 10:04 PM on July 12, 2006

OT: Reading just the first two sentences that were displayed in your question, there was no doubt in my mind that you were asking us whether you could place your dog on the grill alongside your T-bone steak.

I thought he meant his hot dog and I wondered why this was going to be a meaningful question...
posted by artifarce at 10:28 PM on July 12, 2006

I doubt the steak would cook at all: certain energy thresholds must be crossed, you know, to induce those chemical reactions in the tissue. You would probably just end up with hot, raw meat. Your body has no interest in coming within shouting distance of cooking temperature thus gives you the unbearable hotfoot well before the cooking temperature, plus if it is a metal vent it might well be the metal that is burning you - it transmits heat so much better than air so will burn worse at the same temperature, whereas your dog as others noted has that coat of hair as an insulator.

At some point it's heat loss would even out due to cooling by radiation and evaporation and reach some equilibrium temperature as long as the heat ran - a temperature probably not hot enough to cook meat. It'd dry out eventually.

Also as others have noted your dog has the capacity to regulate his temperature (mainly by panting) and likely is better at cooling himself than a slab of steak. It is not a "boiling a frog" situation where his temperature steadily increases to a danger level.

Honestly, I don't know how hot your vents get, the only way to know for sure whether they could cook a steak is to try it. Please post a follow-up with links to photos.
posted by nanojath at 10:55 PM on July 12, 2006

I realize in the second paragraph its ambiguous that I'm saying the steak would dry out eventually. I mean, your dog theoretically would too, but he'd just get up and have a drink.
posted by nanojath at 11:03 PM on July 12, 2006

A friend of mine had a Rat Terrier that we used to joke about having to turn so she'd cook evenly. Some shortfurred doggies like hot places, but they don't get hurt usually.

Can't the fuzzy pug keep warm by sleeping next to you?

reg
posted by legotech at 11:19 PM on July 12, 2006

Ha! Thank you all, some most amusing responses. I think I can conclude that there is no "real" damage going on here.

As for sleeping next to a pug.... well Barney snores like a trooper - it's hard enough letting him sleep in the next room...

Will consider the steak experiment - watch this space!
posted by paterg at 11:40 PM on July 12, 2006

Where do you live? Assuming you're in the northern hemisphere, wtf are you doing with the heater on?

If you're not in the northern hemisphere, feel free to ridicule me for being an ignorant American.
posted by subclub at 11:49 PM on July 12, 2006

My cat confortably lounges on a hot radiator in winter. It freaks me out sometimes, and I pick her up because I fear she'll be cooked, but the rational part of me knows that she's fine. I think the fur is a pretty good insulator.
posted by easternblot at 11:58 PM on July 12, 2006

Assuming... hmm, therein lies the problem...

I don't do ridicule, well, not on Thursdays...

(yep, it's Thursday here too....)

I'm in Melbourne, Australia where at the moment it's
getting down to about 6 degress celsius overnight.

That's about 42 for you fahrenheit-ians.......
posted by paterg at 11:59 PM on July 12, 2006

Ah, it all makes sense now! As a fellow pug-parent, I hope you won't give me a hard time.
posted by subclub at 12:07 AM on July 13, 2006

I used to have a cat who would lay, happily, against an oil heater that was wayyyy too hot to touch. She never seemed to pick up any damage from it.

I think if you're going to try putting some meat there, you should marinate it and slice it finely first. Mmmm, jerky.
posted by tomble at 12:51 AM on July 13, 2006

I should note that it might not be good for his nads, if he still has any (and if you intend on breeding him). Same way that it's supposedly not good for guys to go hot tubbing every day. If he has no nads or you have no intention of putting him out to stud, never mind. :)
posted by antifuse at 1:51 AM on July 13, 2006

Whether there's any damage to your dog depends on two things, how much heat he can take before being damaged and how good his body is at taking in heat and then passing it on into the rest of his surroundings i.e. the bits not parked on the vent. If he can lose the heat fast enough it won't hurt him. If it does hurt he'll move anyway. My parents' dog used to sit in front of their fire until her fur felt ridiculously hot but she loved it, she would move as soon as it became uncomfortable, but then go back again within 30 minutes.
posted by biffa at 2:10 AM on July 13, 2006

Please also consider that dogs have a higher normal temp than people do, and the smaller the dog, the higher that temp is. Your dog is much more comfortable at higher temps than you are.

42F? That's not cold enough to run a heater! That's barely enough to add a blanket!
posted by kc0dxh at 9:17 AM on July 13, 2006