CoolPaws: Dog weather

Your dog walks barefoot on whatever you walk on in shoes — hot asphalt in summer, salt and ice in winter.

On a summer afternoon asphalt runs well above the air temperature. At 25°C in the forecast the pavement can reach 50°C — and at that point paw pads burn in minutes, with nothing to see until the evening.

CoolPaws works out what a thermometer never shows you: the temperature of the ground you are actually walking on.

• Estimates the surface temperature from the forecast, the sun, the wind and how long the asphalt has had to soak up the heat
• Says plainly whether it is safe right now or worth waiting
• Points to the next safe window for a walk
• Lays the day out hour by hour, so you can see the dangerous stretch coming

WINTER MODE

In winter the pavement hurts in a different way. Road salt dries and cracks the pads, ice balls up between the toes, and a short-coated dog feels the cold long before you do. When it gets cold, CoolPaws switches to winter by itself:

• Feels-like temperature for your dog — wind and wet included, not just the thermometer
• Jumper or coat? Advice matched to your dog's coat and size
• Warnings for frost, ice, road salt and snow on the pavements
• A quick paw check for after the walk, so salt does not hurt the pads

Every dog copes differently!

A pug gives up in the heat sooner than a husky, and a greyhound feels the cold long before it does. A puppy copes with less than a grown dog, and a dark coat heats up faster than a light one. Tell CoolPaws about yours once — breed, age, coat, size, condition of the pads — and the heat and cold thresholds adjust to that dog. Short-muzzled breeds get a heat threshold up to 15% lower.

THE 7-SECOND TEST

CoolPaws keeps reminding you of the one thing no forecast replaces: put the back of your hand on the pavement and hold it for seven seconds. If you have to pull away sooner, it is too hot for paws.

CoolPaws Pro:
• up to 3 dog profiles, each with its own thresholds,
• a home-screen widget — the reading without opening the app, summer and winter,
• notifications: before the pavement gets too hot for your dog, the evening before a frosty or icy morning, when the cold turns dangerous — and when it is safe to go out again.

The subscription renews automatically and you can cancel it any time in Google Play.

PRIVACY

Dog profiles stay on your phone. Your location leaves the device only as coordinates inside a weather request. No ads, no analytics, no account to create.

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The reading is an estimate for your area, not a measurement of one particular pavement. It does not replace testing the surface by hand, nor the advice of a vet.