Wildfire smoke may mean trouble for your furry friends — what a vet says pet owners should know
More days of wildfire smoke may mean more trouble for your pets, as veterinarians say they're seeing an increase in respiratory illness in dogs, cats and even birds.
"As an emergency vet, we do see a lot of pets affected by air quality, especially wildfires that contain a lot of particles," Dr. Colette Friedenson at Southview Animal Hospital said. "Pets can be even more affected because they're so little and they breathe fast and low to the ground where the pollutants are more concentrated."
The air quality index (AQI) in the Twin Cities again reached the red level on Thursday, which correlates to a warning to all individuals.
According to Friedenson, an AQI over 150 is also unhealthy for animals.
"Dogs we can see coughing, excessive panting, runny and watery eyes. Sometimes real stress if they have underlying heart disease," she said. "Especially cats who are outdoors who have asthma, we see cats who we require to open their mouth to breathe who are breathing rapidly and might collapse or might develop fluid around the lungs."
The alert will remain in effect through 5 p.m. on Saturday, with smoke from Canadian wildfires keeping air quality index levels in the unhealthy categories. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has the latest AQI forecasts on its website.
According to IQAir, Minneapolis' air quality was third-worst among the world's major cities on Thursday afternoon. Only Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chicago had worse AQI levels.
This is one of the longest air quality alerts on record, tying with those issued for St. Louis County during the Greenwood fire in 2021, according to the agency.
"For dogs, for the most part, if you take them outside a few minutes at a time, you won't see any issues unless they have a preexisting condition," Friedenson said. "For cats with asthma, even indoor only, we're seeing issues with breathing inside. If your pet is coughing, having trouble sleeping without panting, decreased appetite or gum color looks not like a normal bubble gum pink, but pale or gray. For cats, if they're breathing with their mouth open, those are reasons you'd want to go to a vet pretty quickly."