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This guide helps you decide and prevent; it does not replace a veterinary exam. A pet who has been outside and is not doing well is not a pet you watch and wait on: call us at 514 223-1197.
Call us now if you see even one of these
One is enough: you do not have to work out which one matters most, and you do not have to wait for a second one.
- He was shivering, and he has stopped shivering while he is still cold. He is limp, slow, hard to rouse, not reacting the way he normally does.
- He is cold to the touch on his body, not just on the ears and paws. His gums are pale or greyish, his breathing is slow.
- He is wobbling, sagging, no longer able to stand.
- A patch of skin is white, grey, bluish or waxy, hard or cold to the touch: ear tips, tail tip, paw pads, between the toes, scrotum, nipples.
- A patch turns bright red, swollen and very painful as it warms, or it goes blue or black, it blisters, it weeps.
- He will not put a paw down at all after an outing, a pad is bleeding, or a toe is swelling.
- He lapped at a puddle or licked a shiny patch off the ground, in a garage, an entryway or a parking lot: antifreeze kills, and you do not wait for symptoms.
- He was left outside, or shut into a garage, a shed, a balcony or a car. Or he went into the water, or through the ice.
- He is a puppy, a kitten, a very small dog, or an older, thin, unwell or recently operated animal, and he was outside or he has slowed down: you do not watch and wait, you call.
- You started your car and you heard a cat. Cut the engine before anything else.
Outside our opening hours we do not run an emergency service: go to a veterinary emergency centre.
And in the meantime
Bring him in, dry him, wrap him in a dry blanket, and put him in a warm room. Do not rub. Never massage with snow. Keep away the hair dryer, the heating pad, the hot water bottle, the radiator and hot water. If his whole body is cold, you warm the room, not the skin. If one specific patch is frozen, the frostbite section says what to do once you are in for good.
How cold is too cold?
It is the question everyone types, and the honest answer is that there is no number. Not because nobody has looked for one, but because the same minus fifteen is a completely different event for a 3 kg chihuahua six inches off the ground, for a six-year-old husky, for a ten-week-old puppy, and for a dog who had surgery last week. Publishing a temperature would quietly authorize every outing above it, and that is exactly where things go wrong. So here is the other answer, the one that works.
The basic rule, and its one limit
Start with the one we already publish in our puppy housetraining guide: if it is too cold for you, it is too cold for him. That is a good floor, and it holds. Its limit is that it does not run in the other direction. If you are comfortable in a winter coat, a hat and boots, that tells you nothing about a small short-coated dog six inches off the ground, on a street where the wind funnels between two buildings. You are judging the temperature; he is living the wind, the wet, the ground and the clock.
Six things that change the answer
- Size. A small animal loses heat much faster than a big one, because it has a lot of surface for very little volume. It is the most underestimated factor of the six, and good intentions do not make up for it.
- The coat. A thick double coat has nothing in common with a single short one. And above all: a wet coat barely insulates at all. Wet snow, freezing rain, slush, or simply a bath the night before, and the insulation is gone.
- Age. A puppy or a kitten regulates temperature poorly and has almost no body fat. An older animal regulates less well than it used to, moves less, and cools down faster standing still.
- Health and weight. A thin, unwell, cardiac, diabetic or hypothyroid animal, or one recently shaved and operated on, has less margin. A poorly controlled hypothyroid dog in particular often tolerates cold badly: that is a sign worth mentioning, not a life sentence.
- Wind and damp. The wind chill published with the forecast is calculated for a bare human face: it is not your pet's number, and it is not a real temperature either. What it does tell you is that wind strips heat away far faster than the air temperature suggests, and that holds for him too. Damp and slush speed everything up, because they soak the coat.
- Time and movement. A dog trotting is not a dog sitting on the ice while you talk to a neighbor. A ten-minute outing that becomes forty is not the same outing, and the walk home counts too.
Being used to the cold counts
A dog who spends his whole winter outdoors is not your dog, who goes from a 21 °C apartment to the sidewalk in thirty seconds. An animal poorly adapted to the cold is more vulnerable to it, and that is one of the conditions that keeps coming up when frostbite happens. A dog who has not been out for a week, or who is back from two weeks in Florida, is not as used to it as when he left: the first outings get shortened, and you watch how he takes them.
The instrument you want is him
Stop watching the thermometer and watch him. He tells you, and usually well before it matters:
- He lifts one paw, then another, for no obvious reason.
- He hunches, tucks his tail, makes himself small.
- He slows down, stops, turns toward home, pulls the other way.
- He shivers.
- He whines, presses against you, asks to be picked up.
- In cats: hiding, hunting for a heat source, refusing to go out when he went out yesterday.
An animal asking to go home is asking to go home. It is not fussiness, and there is nothing to be won by finishing the block.
The trap: shivering that stops
This is the one to remember, because it reads backwards. Shivering is a defense: it is the body generating heat, and it is a reasonably good sign. When the shivering stops while the animal is still cold, that is not improvement, that is the defense giving out. An animal who has stopped shivering and is going limp, slow and sleepy is past discomfort: call us.
Turning all that into a walk
In hard cold, split the outing into its two jobs. Bathroom: short, targeted, a cleared and shovelled spot, then back in. Exercise: less of it outside, more often, with the real workout moving indoors into play, scatter feeding and thinking games. Two or three short outings beat one long one, for the same total minutes.
Under the paws: ice, salt, pads
A Montreal winter puts two different problems under those paws, and they do not show up at the same moment. Ice starts partway through the walk. Salt shows up at home, on the way in, and often the next day.
Ice balls: you prevent them, you do not pull them out
What happens is simple. Snow packs into the hair growing between the pads and between the toes. Body heat melts it a little, the cold takes it back, and within minutes there is a hard marble of ice welded to the hair and stuck to the skin. It spreads the toes, it presses, and it hurts. It is a common cause of a limp that starts in the middle of a winter walk, and it disappears completely once the ice melts.
Prevention is where this is won
- Keep the hair between the pads and between the toes trimmed level with the pad. This is by far the most effective single thing, and it is a grooming detail almost nobody thinks about. With no hair, snow has nothing to grab. Ask your groomer, or raise it with us at the next visit, and have it redone through the winter.
- Boots, if your dog accepts them. Well fitted, they solve ice and salt in one move. Badly fitted, they rotate, they slide, and they become the problem. Plan several days of short indoor practice before the first real outing, and take them off on the way in: a boot left on wet keeps in exactly the moisture you are trying to avoid.
- A barrier wax or balm before you go out. It may cut down on snow packing, though that has not been demonstrated. It does not make salt harmless and it does not replace the rinse: it is help, not protection.
- Avoid the deepest, most trampled snow when you have the choice. That is where balls form fastest.
And if a ball has already formed
- Do not pull, do not pick at it with your nails, do not take scissors between the toes. The ice is welded to the hair and to the skin: what comes away is hair, sometimes skin, and scissors between the toes of an animal in pain end in a cut.
- Melt it. Lukewarm water, never hot: a small basin to rest the foot in, or a warm damp cloth held in place until it lets go on its own.
- If he still will not let you touch that foot once the ice is gone, that is not stubbornness: something hurts. Look at the underside, and call us.
Salt and de-icers: a chemical burn, not just irritation
In Montreal, sidewalks, stairs, building entrances and parking lots are treated all winter, and what matters is not what you put down at your place: it is what the neighbor put down in front of theirs.
Table salt, sodium chloride, pulls water out of skin and dries it. Calcium chloride, potassium chloride and magnesium chloride are more irritating still, to skin and to the gut alike. Calcium chloride has one property on top of that: it gives off heat as it meets moisture, and it is the one that can leave a genuine chemical burn on a pad, in the web between two toes, and on the belly.
A bag marked "pet safe" meets no standard: nothing regulates that wording. In practice these products are often urea or magnesium chloride based, and they less often cause severe signs. They are not harmless, and they excuse nothing: the rinse on the way in stays exactly the same.
What you see, and when
- He licks at his feet insistently once he is inside, often always the same one.
- The skin between the toes is red, sometimes shiny or raw.
- The pad looks scoured, dry, dull, or oddly smooth in patches.
- Small cracks open when he flexes the foot.
- He walked fine outside and limps at home. That pattern is very typical of salt: cold numbs during the walk, and the pain arrives with the warming up.
Cracked pads
Winter dries them out: cold, salt, dry indoor heating, and the wet, dry, wet cycle of every outing. A dry pad becomes a cracked pad, and a crack can run deep enough to bleed and to get infected.
A limp that appears in winter
it deserves the same triage as any other. See our dog limping guide for the rest of the signals. A nail broken on an ice patch: that is our guide to stopping a bleeding nail.
No home medications
A paw that hurts after a walk, a crack that bleeds, an ear tip that turns painful as it warms: at each of those moments, the temptation is to ease him with whatever is in the medicine cabinet. That is the move that turns a winter discomfort into an emergency, and it holds for both species.
Acetaminophen (Tylenol)
Fatal to cats, even a single tablet. There is no safe dose. In dogs it is dangerous too, and it is not a painkiller for them. If your pet swallowed any, it is an immediate emergency.
Ibuprofen (Advil), naproxen (Aleve), aspirin
Toxic to dogs and cats alike: digestive ulcers, kidney damage. Cats are even more sensitive to them than dogs. Never a human anti-inflammatory, for any reason, and least of all "just for tonight" because he is limping.
Human creams and products on the skin
Hand cream, lip balm, an antiseptic picked at random, an alcohol wipe: on a cracked pad or skin damaged by salt, they burn, they delay, and they get licked off. A paw that hurts does not get treated blind.
Leftover prescriptions and another animal's medication
Same apparent problem, same weight, same household: none of that is ever enough. What relieves a dog can kill a cat, and a dose calculated for another patient is not a dose. A pet "settled" blindly is a cause still advancing while everyone relaxes.
If he is in pain, do not medicate him yourself
Call us: we will tell you what to do tonight, and whether it can wait until tomorrow. A paw that hurts does far better with advice than with a medicine cabinet.
The coming-home routine
One minute at the door, every outing, all winter. It is the one piece of this page that, on its own, prevents most of what comes before it. This is not about tidiness: it is salt taken off before it burns, and taken off before it gets swallowed.
Rinse rather than wipe
Wiping spreads salt around; rinsing takes it off. Lukewarm water, never hot. A small basin of lukewarm water by the door is enough: one foot at a time, a few seconds each. If rinsing is genuinely impossible, a properly soaked warm cloth beats a dry wipe.
Do not skip the belly, chest, groin and inner thighs
This is the part nearly everyone forgets, and after the paws it is the part that matters most.
Dry properly
Especially between the toes. A foot left damp cracks and macerates. A towel, without hard rubbing.
Look while you dry
Between each pair of toes, under the pads, around the nails, in the fold of skin. Ten seconds. That is how you find the crack, the cut, the redness, the ice ball you missed. Always compare with the paw on the other side.
Why the belly, really
Three reasons, and they stack.
- That is where the slush lands. Salt and brine splash upward with every step, and a small or short-legged dog drags his belly straight through it.
- It is the least protected skin on the body. Little hair, thin skin: salt acts on it directly, with no barrier, while on the back it mostly meets coat.
- It is the easiest place for him to lick. A skin problem becomes a swallowing problem, and that is how road salt goes from irritation to poisoning.
We cover swallowed salt in our guide to toxic foods and products.
Cats too, and more so
A cat who steps out on the balcony, into the alley, or simply across a salted landing brings all of it back on his feet. And a cat grooms far more thoroughly than a dog licks: within minutes, what was under his paws is in his mouth. So the rinse matters more for him, not less. In practice, you do not dunk a cat's paws. A warm damp cloth, one foot at a time, calmly, while he is on your lap or in his usual spot. And the belly, with the same cloth, if he has been through slush.
What you do not do on the way in
- No hot water. A foot numbed by cold does not register heat properly: you burn it without the animal reacting. And hot water on a cracked pad hurts.
- No hair dryer up close, no radiator, no heating pad to speed things along.
- No vigorous rubbing, especially on an area that has stayed cold.
- No alcohol wipes, no human antiseptic, no scented soap. Lukewarm water is what removes salt best, and it is all you need.
And if you cannot rinse
A fifth floor, an elevator, a dog who hates it, a rushed morning: the imperfect version done daily beats the perfect version done on Saturdays. Keep a basin, a bottle of lukewarm water and a towel by the door, and do at least the four paws and the belly with a cloth. The goal is not cleanliness, it is getting the salt off before it works and before it is licked.
Frostbite and hypothermia: what does not show the same evening
Two different injuries, often together, and they are not handled the same way. Hypothermia is the whole body: core temperature drops. Frostbite is one specific place: an ear tip, a tail tip, a pad. Both share the flaw that makes this section necessary: they hide, and they do not make an animal cry out while they are setting in.
Hypothermia: shivering that stops
What you see, in order:
- He shivers, looks for shelter, curls up, tucks his paws under him. At this stage, coming in and drying off is almost always enough.
- He stops shivering while he is still cold. He gets stiff, slow, sleepy. He answers badly when you speak to him. Breathing and heartbeat slow down.
- He stops responding.
The step from the first to the second is the only one you truly need to hold on to, because it reads backwards. Shivering that stops is not an improvement.
What you do
Bring him in. Take off the coat, the harness, the boots, anything wet. Dry him. Wrap him in dry blankets and put him in a warm room, out of drafts. Your own body heat, next to him, helps. Then call us. You are warming the room and the air around him, not the skin directly.
What you do not do
No hair dryer, no heating pad against skin, no hot water bottle in direct contact, no radiator, no hot bath, no alcohol. And nothing to eat or drink until he is fully awake and alert. Two reasons. Chilled skin does not feel a burn, and a direct heat source burns without the animal pulling away. And warming the surface too fast sends still-cold blood back toward the core, which makes things worse rather than better.
Who has the least margin
Puppies and kittens, very small breeds, older animals, thin animals, unwell animals, animals recently operated on or shaved over an area, and animals sedated or just out of an anesthetic. For them, you do not wait and see: you call sooner.
Frostbite declares itself over days
Put plainly: "it looks fine" on the evening of the exposure is not good news. It is not information at all. It is too early for information, and that is exactly why a suspected frostbite gets looked at even when it visibly bothers nobody.
What you do
Come inside, and come inside for good. Dry gently by blotting. Once you are indoors, you can gently rewarm the area with lukewarm water, never hot: a small basin to rest the paw in, or a warm damp cloth held in place, until the skin turns soft again. Water barely warmer than your hand, no more than that. Then protect the area from rubbing and licking, wrap loosely without pressure, and call us.
The condition, and it is not negotiable
Only if you are in for good. Tissue that thaws and refreezes is worse off than tissue that stayed frozen. If you still have ground to cover outside, rewarm nothing: protect the area and wait until you are indoors. If you are still fifteen minutes from home in the middle of January, get home first.
What you never do
- Do not rub. Never massage with snow. This is the old reflex that still circulates everywhere, and it is the exact opposite of what helps: rubbing frozen tissue tears it from the inside.
- Nothing hot and nothing dry: no hair dryer, no heating pad, no hot water bottle, no radiator, no hot bath, no hot water. Lukewarm water, and nothing stronger. Numb skin does not feel a burn and will not pull away.
- Do not open blisters, do not cut and do not pull at anything that looks dead.
- Do not thaw a frozen area and then head back out into the cold.
Careful: this is not the same instruction for the whole body
A frozen patch gets gently rewarmed with lukewarm water, once you are in for good. An animal cold over his whole body does not: you wrap him and you warm the room, because warming the surface too fast sends still-cold blood back toward the core. When in doubt, take the more cautious of the two, wrap him, and call us: that is exactly the kind of question we answer on the phone.
Keeping this in proportion
Frostbite is not the ordinary winter injury of a dog who gets walked. It shows up mostly in animals left outside, wet, immobile, trapped, or already weakened by something else. The real daily content of a Montreal winter is the sidewalk, the salt and the ice between the toes. This section exists so you can recognize frostbite, not so that every February outing becomes a worry.
A cat's winter, indoors and out
Cats rarely announce a winter problem. And the most specifically Montreal winter danger for a cat has nothing to do with walks: it plays out in parking lots and alleys, between November and the thaw.
Under the hood
An engine that has just run stays warm long after you park. The engine bay is warm, dry, dark and sheltered: for an alley cat, a neighborhood cat, or an indoor cat who just slipped out the basement door, it is the best spot for blocks around. They climb up from underneath, settle against the engine block or into a wheel well, and fall asleep. When the key turns, the belt, the fan and the pulleys start up around them.
The move, three seconds, every time, all winter
- Bang the flat of your hand on the hood two or three times. Or give the horn a tap.
- Wait two or three seconds before turning the key.
- In an outdoor lot or an alley, also look under the car and into the wheel wells.
If you hear a cat after starting the engine
Cut the engine immediately, before anything else. Do not try to pull the animal out by whatever you can reach. Open the hood, and call us or a 24/7 centre. These injuries are serious, and they are usually far more extensive than what shows from the outside.
And the neighborhood cat is not necessarily a lost cat. Plenty of alley cats have lived there for years, and plenty of healthy-looking cats have a home two doors down. If you find one and you wonder whose it is, a microchip reads in seconds: that is our microchip service.
Cats who go out, and cats who get out
- The margin is shorter than people think. A cat outside in winter quickly ends up behind a door that closed on him: a shed, a garage, a storage room, a balcony, an outdoor stairwell. He does not call out, he hides, and he waits.
- The garage means antifreeze. A shiny puddle on concrete kills a cat in a very small amount. We do not re-explain it here: it is all in our guides to toxic products and to a safe home.
- He wears no boots, and he grooms. Salt from the landing, the steps and the building entrance is in his mouth within minutes. See the coming-home routine, section 4.
- Ear tips and tail tip are the classic frostbite sites in cats. A very short-coated or fine-coated cat has even less to work with.
- If he does not come home on a bitter night, search close and low, not far and high. Under the balcony, under the porch, under the shed, under cars, in the recycling shelter.
The indoor cat: winter concerns him too
- Drafts and cold floors. An arthritic cat stops using his usual spots once they turn cold or slippery, and that change gets read as "he is getting old".
- Less light, less movement. Cats eat more in winter than in summer, and everyone moves less from November to March: the weight goes on without anyone noticing. A cat who has filled out over the winter is a cat worth weighing.
- Dry indoor air. Heating on full, humidity low: dry skin, dandruff, sometimes more scratching. If the scratching becomes a real thing, it is no longer dry air, and our itching guide takes over.
- Heat sources. A cat presses against a baseboard heater, climbs onto a radiator, lies right in front of a space heater. Singed fur and contact burns do happen, especially in older cats who move less.
- Water. Outside, a bowl freezes. Inside, the water bowl often ends up pushed into the coldest corner of the house for the winter. Keep it accessible and at room temperature, particularly if your cat is followed for his kidneys or his urinary tract.
Setting up the winter routine
None of this is complicated. It is a small set of habits you install once in November and stop thinking about until the thaw.
Before you go out
- Hair between the pads, trimmed level. The number one move against ice balls, and it holds all winter if it gets redone regularly.
- The coat: who it is for, and how it should sit. It genuinely helps small formats, short or fine coats, puppies, and animals that are older, thin, unwell, shaved or recently operated on, plus any dog who stands still while you shovel. Cut matters more than fabric: it has to cover the chest and belly, not slide backwards, not rub under the armpits. And it has to be dry. A wet coat is worse than no coat.
- Boots, if they stay on. They are the most complete protection against salt and ice when they stay put, and also the thing that fails most often. They should stay on without pinching, they get worked on indoors before they get used outdoors, and they come off as soon as you are in.
- A barrier wax or balm, applied before the outing. Possible help against snow packing, no substitute for the rinse.
- Visibility. It is dark by late afternoon, snowbanks hide a small dog, and the streets are narrow. A reflective collar or harness, and a short leash rather than a retractable one on ice.
During the outing
- Watch the animal, not the thermometer. Section 1.
- Steer around building entrances, stairs and stretches visibly white with salt when another route exists.
- Do not let him drink from puddles or eat dirty snow, colored snow, or roadside snow. That is where antifreeze and salt are.
- Frozen water is not a surface. The river and the canal are not a surface. Dogs go through the ice, and so do the people who go in after them.
- Never alone in the car, winter or summer. Our travel guide explains why a parked cabin is a trap in both directions.
On the way in
The routine from section 4, every time. A basin, a towel, one minute.
Winter and joints
This conversation comes back every January, so let us be clear about it.
What is certain is that winter changes how an arthritic animal moves. Ice removes traction, so every step becomes an act of stabilizing. Walks get shorter, so muscle goes and weight comes on, and both make arthritis worse. Wet paws make the entryway floor slippery. The days get short, so the dog goes out less. That is four mechanisms, and none of them is up for debate.
What gets said a great deal and is less settled is that cold and damp themselves increase joint pain. Owners report it constantly, we hear it every winter, and our senior pet guide already recommends a warm bed away from drafts. Whether it is the cold itself or the drop in movement it causes, what you should do is the same, so we do not need to settle it in order to act.
What you do
- Keep him moving, shorter and more often, rather than suspending outings.
- A handled harness for icy stairs, and a hand on the steps.
- Non-slip mats where wet paws land, at the door and in the hallway.
- A ramp or a step for the couch, the bed and the car.
- A warm, thick bed on the floor and out of drafts.
- And tell us in January. A management plan built in July does not necessarily hold in January: this is the right moment to reopen it, not next spring.
See our fiches on osteoarthritis in dogs and arthritis in cats, our guide to helping a pet get up, and our range-of-motion exercises.
Three things to set up this week
- A basin, a bottle of lukewarm water and a towel by the front door.
- A grooming appointment, or a request at the next visit, for the trim line between the pads.
- The hood-knocking reflex, before every start, until the thaw.
Your questions, our answers
What owners ask us most once winter settles in.
What temperature means I should stop taking my dog out?
I took him out in hard cold and he limped all evening. Did I hurt him?
Partway through a walk he lifts a paw and refuses to move. What do I do right now?
Do I really have to rinse the paws every single time? And why the belly?
He licked his salty paws, or he ate dirty snow. Is that dangerous?
His ear tip is pale and hard, but he does not seem to be in pain. Can it wait?
My cat never goes outside. Does winter concern him at all?
Also worth reading
Watch the animal, rinse on the way in, knock on the hood
There is no temperature below which you stop going out: there is an animal telling you he is cold, and he is what you should be watching instead of the thermometer. There is one minute at the door on the way in, which takes the salt off before it burns and before it gets licked, from the paws and from the belly. There is a frostbite injury that does not declare itself the same evening, and that therefore gets looked at even when it looks like nothing. And there are three seconds on a car hood, from November to the thaw. He will get through the rest of the winter just fine.
Damaged pads, or a doubt after an outing in hard cold?
A crack that will not heal, a paw he licks non-stop, an ear tip that has changed color: these get looked at, and they resolve far better early. Our team is here.