TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - We get it that it gets hot in Arizona but you can still become complacent about how dangerous it can be.
In just a few minutes our closed car reached a temp close to 120. We measured the heat on the pavement as at least that hot. That’s hot enough to burn the bare paws on your dog’s feet.
Gary Nusinow loves running with his friend Sadie and says she loves running with him but he's careful to make sure she has plenty of water...
"Every fifteen minutes I make sure I'm near a water fountain and I fill it (Sadie’s portable water bowl) full of water and she gobbles it up."
And he is careful to make sure hot pavement doesn't hurt her bare paws.
"I put my hand down on the concrete or the asphalt and I feel what it feels like to my hand and I know based on how much heat I can feel if it's okay for her to run or not."
Walking around with shoes on you don't appreciate just how warm the ground can be under your feet. Right here we measured it as 92.7 in the shade and in a damp spot. On open sand we got 128.8" and on pavement that's not even solid black we got 150.2.
The American Medical Association found even moderate temperatures can bring on blistering pavement.
The AMA found air temps of just 77 degrees can create pavement as hot as 125.
86 degrees can lead to 135 degree pavement and just 87 degrees can bring pavement to 143.
You can buy your dog booties but only a few owners we met tried them with and got mixed results.
Julian Silvestre looked at his dog Wylie and told us, “He hates them and chews them up so I can't use them on him but they are a good idea. I have another dog at home and she uses them pretty frequently."
In Reid Park owners were giving dogs lots of shade and left a puddle of water to cool their paws.
Eva McAdams told us, "Last time we were here she got burned on her foot.”
KGUN9 reporter Craig Smith asked: “Just from the sand?”
“So I poured water down," she said.
Pima Animal Care will be on special alert to respond to dogs in hot cars of in other danger like being left out without shade or water.
Enforcement manager Adam Ricci says scientist have not even studied the effects of temperatures as high as we expect.
"All the data only goes up to 100 degrees. So when it's 100 degrees outside it's 140 inside a car in a short period of time so there's really no data even to support when it's going to be 115 degrees how hot it truly is going to be inside the vehicle."
