A Simple Solution to a Dangerous Problem

From AKC.ORG:

Dr. Cynthia Otto: Finalist for the 2025 Canine Health Discovery of the Year Award!

If you’ve been following the AKC Canine Health Foundation (CHF), you may already recognize this breakthrough research and the scientist behind it. If not – and that’s okay – what you’re about to discover is a canine-health study that is as elegantly simple as it is powerful, with direct implications for the hard-working dogs we depend on.

Dr. Cynthia M. Otto, Executive Director of the PennVet Working Dog Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and a board-certified specialist in both Emergency and Critical Care as well as Canine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, has been a leader in working-dog health research for decades. 

One of the most pressing issues in caring for active dogs, especially working dogs with heavy physical demands, is treating overheating, which can quickly turn into heat stroke. When a dog’s body temperature surges to 105°F (≈40.6°C) or higher, the risk of serious complications, including organ damage and death, becomes very real.

“Some of our dogs don’t know when to stop. We’ve got crazy working dogs who just go, go, go until all of a sudden they’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve gone too far,” Dr. Otto explains. “We need to be the ones that are stopping that.”

With that in mind, Dr. Otto and her team asked two fundamental questions:

1. What is the best method to cool an overheated dog?

2. Could a simple behavior be leveraged for cooling an overheated dog?

From those questions emerged the research. At the PennVet Working Dog Center, the team tested six cooling techniques head-to-head in working dogs under heat stress:

• Stand in shallow water

• Stand on alcohol-treated pads

• Place an ice pack on the neck

• Place a wet towel on the neck

• Place wet towels in the armpits

• Voluntarily dunk head in ~70°F water

And the winner? The voluntary head dunk delivered the fastest and most sustained reduction in body temperature.

“This result blew our minds,” said Dr. Otto. “But it also made perfect sense. Dogs pant to regulate heat, which increases blood flow to the head. Cool the head, and you cool the dog faster.”

The power of this discovery lies not in complexity but in its simplicity: a behavior dogs can perform, a method handlers can use, and a physiologically measurable benefit that can save lives and support performance.

CHF is proud to honor this work as a finalist for our inaugural 2025 Canine Health Discovery of the Year Award, and excited to continue supporting research that translates from the lab to the field, from hypothesis to handler to working dog.

Join us in celebrating Dr. Otto’s breakthrough, and stay tuned for the announcement of our winner — because every finalist in this category is a major advancement in canine health.

Think of the Impact

A handler in the field, seeing a working dog showing the first signs of overheating, now has a research-backed, practical cooling strategy that’s simple, low-cost, and wasn’t widely used before. That’s the kind of practical science we champion at CHF.

Thank you, Dr. Otto, for bringing discovery to transform a pressing problem into a practical, life-saving solution. And thank you to our community of donors, researchers, veterinarians, and handlers who make this work possible. Together, we’re elevating the health and performance of dogs who give so much.