Red Rover gave us quite a scare today!  My family was cleaning up some property in Convent LA (middle of nowhere, very rural), so I decided to bring the dogs and let them run around.   Both dogs were running and running, Sniper chasing wildlife and Red running in circles like a nut.  I caught the dogs about every half hour and made them drink some water, since it was about 100 degrees and 100% humidity out.

At one point I looked over at Red and saw him limping, then collapse into laying sternal, or on his chest.  I thought he had injured a leg, so I tried to get him to stand up and limp so I could see what was hurt.  But he couldn't stand up.  He was not unconscious, but he was very very weak.  Heatstroke.  I poured the rest of my water bottles into his mouth and all over him, the put him in the car with A/C running full blast and brought him home.  We have a small pool in our back yard, so I just climbed in with Red and held him in the water completely submerged except his head for about an hour.  When I took him out he was aware of his surroundings and able to walk again. 

He looked pretty good at this point, but heatstroke can cause life threatening things to happen inside a dog's body that you can't see, like DIC or organ failure.  So I brought Red to the vet school and had all the students on the emergency rotation look at him.  We all agreed that he looked ok.  I didn't bring him to the back for the vet to look at because I would have had to pay the 85$(!) emergency fee, but after the second opions from the other students I decided I felt comfortable taking him home and watching him.  I'll take him to work with me tomorrow and have Dr. Slay, the vet I'm working for, make sure he's healthy.