Field Note #50: By the Third Visit, Your Judgment Changes
When the Jobsite Is an SUV and a Leash
We had our first real heat wave here in Ohio this past week. If you have never spent time near one of the Great Lakes once summer humidity settles in, you may not fully understand what 83°F with a “Real Feel” temperature of 95°F actually means. This is not dry desert heat. This is air you can wear. Thick humidity. Heat that settles into pavement, car seats, steering wheels, sidewalks, and your lungs.
I checked my NIOSH Heat Safety Tool app that morning and was not surprised to see conditions land squarely in the DANGER zone.
By the time I finished my last morning cat visit around 10:30 a.m., I opened my car door and stepped into what felt like a microwave oven. The kind of heat where your vehicle air conditioning does not “catch up” in five minutes. During the 25-minute drive home, the car barely cooled down before I pulled into my driveway.
And yes, my AC was functioning exactly as designed. LOL. Although it sure had me flagging a few questions.
This is what cumulative heat load looks like.
Ironically, even professional soccer players visiting the United States this week, for the World Cup, have openly struggled with the heat and humidity conditions despite organized acclimatization periods, medical oversight, hydration teams, and conditioning staff. Fans from the UK have been complaining online about the match conditions.
That should probably tell us something.
Heat stress is not simply about “being tough enough” or “used to summer.” Even highly conditioned athletes with support systems are being affected by cumulative heat exposure.
Now compare that to a pet sitter running solo mobile routes for eight or ten hours a day. Not one dramatic event. Not someone collapsing on asphalt. Not a sensational emergency headline. Just repeated exposure layered throughout the day:
house to house,
sun to shade,
humidity,
vehicle heat,
drive time,
parking lots,
warm client homes,
route pressure,
and very little true recovery time between visits.
And I do not even walk dogs anymore.
As I drove home that morning, I thought about all the years I did.
Summer sidewalks. Full sun trails. Back seats baking in parking lots.
Dogs that still needed exercise. Cars that never fully cooled down between stops.
We spend a lot of time in this industry talking about heat safety for the pets:
the brachiocephalics,
the puppies,
the senior dogs,
the hot pavement,
the paw protection,
the hydration reminders.
And we should.
But caring about heat safety for pets is not automatically the same thing as protecting your workers from occupational heat exposure. That is an entirely different conversation.
We break car windows to rescue dogs from heat exposure. Meanwhile, some pet sitters are climbing back into superheated vehicles ten or twelve times a day during summer route work.
OSHA National Emphasis Program for Outdoor and Indoor Heat-Related Hazards
Where is your business currently at with the OSHA National Emphasis Program for Outdoor and Indoor Heat-Related Hazards? Oh, did you notice something in that headline, outdoor and indoor.
Are you logging heat-risk days this summer? Do you realize that is even an expectation?
Are your supervisors trained to recognize cumulative heat exposure and early heat illness symptoms? Are your dog walkers think their GPS tracked walks look like ice cream cones yet?
Do you know which routes place workers in the highest exposure conditions?
Does someone on your team spend hours moving between homes where the thermostat is set at 80°F while outside humidity remains dangerously high?
Have you considered what repeated entry into heat-soaked vehicles does physiologically over the course of a full shift?
And perhaps the harder question:
At what point does “they’re used to it” become normalized occupational exposure? Because for all the acclimitization efforts of the UK team…they are still struggling with the heat.
Heat illness prevention is no longer just a construction industry discussion. If you employ pet sitters working mobile routes during summer conditions, this is part of your workplace too.
The pet care industry is changing. More businesses now operate with employees, route coverage, lead sitters, administrative teams, and layered scheduling systems. Yet many still think about summer heat primarily through the lens of pet safety rather than worker exposure.
But OSHA does not care whether your employee is carrying roofing materials or walking a doodle down a subdivision sidewalk.
Heat stress is heat stress.
And cumulative exposure matters.
Earlier this spring, shortly after OSHA expanded the National Emphasis Program for Heat Injury and Illness prevention, I hosted a webinar discussion on what these changes may mean for pet care employers and mobile pet sitting operations.
At the time, I think many people still viewed heat illness prevention primarily as a construction or warehouse industry issue.
But summer route work is occupational exposure too. You can find the full webinar right here on Substack at OSHA Starts Acting at 80F.
I also later developed a downloadable Heat Illness & Injury Prevention resource for pet care businesses looking to begin documenting and evaluating summer heat exposure risks within their operations.
Heat Illness & Injury Prevention Program
Download the OSHA/NIOSH APP for Heat Illness