u/serendipiteathyme

Hey everyone- I live in an area that has been getting into the mid-90s every single day for months now, and I’m owner to two large dogs that I think could use more outings for community stimuli exposure (i.e. not a quiet 5am walk, ideally some mild to moderate activity going on).

My concern is for their paws. Neither tolerate booties very well at all, and can resist so much it causes muscle strain/a slight limp in the gait after attempting to use them. I’ve read that 120°F surface temperature is the more or less agreed to be the point at which it is no longer safe for paw pads, but I’ve also read guidelines saying that a good test is whether or not you can comfortably rest your hand on the walking surface for five seconds straight.

My question is what the reality here is, because I have a laser surface temp thermometer that’s given readings of 130-140°F and higher before, which by the first rule should be unsafe, but at which I can still comfortably rest my hand on it. I’m not sure if this is a personal pain tolerance or desensitization thing, but it also strikes me as odd that a dog’s rough/thick paw pads would have the same tolerance as some of the most nerve-dense, thin skin on a human.

What surface temperature is actually safe for dogs’ paws, especially when the rules/guidelines diverge like this? TIA.

Hey folks. Hope this post finds everyone with cool pillows and calm nervous systems.

Coming up against some major heavy lifting and it made me wonder about ways other people manage anxious avoidance. After long stretches of decline, some awful habits build up while trying to survive, and soon you find yourself in the eye of like, an every possible category of life hurricane. At least, that's what has happened in stretches for me, and I find in my late 20s it's getting worse and of course, the stakes of missing tasks and procrastination are higher, and the work needed to fix them immediately is heavier.

I'm having the hardest time with two categories. 1) daily, basic stuff that I really need to be doing as a "load bearing" habit, like properly walking the dogs, flossing and brushing, showers that don't take hours to scroll before actually getting into, etc. 2) large tasks that have been put off for a long time and increasingly loom over you more and more- an incomplete college course, a big application, scheduling a physical/dental exam, etc. The stuff that's been on the to-do list and keeps getting rewritten every time you rewrite and try to consolidate the items.

How do y'all break through the absolute worst of the paralysis?? On my top 10 percent of days, I break through and stay productive in one way or another (even if I have to resign myself to being productive in like, the second most important thing knowing it's a distraction from the most important item). On most days lately, I struggle to even have a few minutes of snapping out of the nonproductive zoned out motions of the bare minimum immediate requirements, and go right back even once I've taken the proverbial first step that is supposedly the hardest.

I hate anxious avoidance. It used to be relatively simple to decide, executively, what I want my body to be doing and my brain to latch onto, even if it took necessary therapeutic tactics like opposite-to-emotion action. But lately it's like layers and layers of brick walls are getting put up beyond what was formerly just the one big breakthrough I needed/first step taken to finally get the ball rolling. Hope I'm making sense. TIA <3