The Cooling Mat My Chow Chow Claimed on the First Hot Day

The first truly hot day in June, I set a folded mat down on the kitchen tile by the patio door and went back to the sink. Ten minutes later Bruno was on it, flat out, chin on his paws, eyes half shut. Nobody invited him. In seven years I have never seen that dog lie down on anything new without a week of suspicion first. The mat is a MARUNDA cooling mat, the 36 by 24 inch size, and it took him about as long to accept as it takes to fill a water bowl.

Bruno is 7, a cinnamon red rough-coat Chow, 64 pounds, and he has opinions. Once it passes about 80 degrees he pants hard, and Fort Collins hands us plenty of afternoons in the 90s. He is my first Chow, so I will not pretend I had this figured out. What I did know was that a heavy double coat and a hot patio are a bad combination, and that my dog is far too dignified to lie in a sprinkler like a normal animal.

In the summer of 2025 I bought one of those elevated cots for the patio. He sniffed it, walked around it twice, and went and lay on the concrete under the lilac. I gave the cot away. I tried a wet towel once and he looked at me as though I had suggested a bath. Shade, cold water, and walking him early and late did the real work then, and they still do. But between two and five in the afternoon, the worst hours, he had nothing to lie on that was cooler than the tile.

The MARUNDA mat works differently from a frozen pad. No gel, no water, no time in the freezer, no cord. The surface is a cool-touch fabric over a soft filling, so it feels like a thin cushion that happens to be cool rather than something icy against his skin. I am not going to explain the fabric science on the label because I would be guessing. What I can tell you is what my own hand found on a 94 degree afternoon: cool, not cold, closer to the shaded side of a pillow.

It arrived in May. He ignored it for a week, which is Bruno, and then the first hot spell came through and something clicked. He gets off the tile to lie on it now. If that does not sound like much, you have not met my dog, who once refused a brand new bed for eleven months because it sat in the wrong corner of the room.

He gets off cool tile to lie on it. That is the whole review, really.

About the fit. At 64 pounds he curls up on the 36 by 24 with room to spare. When he stretches out flat, which he does when he is properly hot, his back legs hang off the end. He does not seem to mind, but if your Chow is bigger than mine, go up a size. The mat itself weighs very little, so I move it from the kitchen out to the garage on bath day and back again without thinking about it.

It stays by the patio door from June through September, and it went away in October with the rest of the summer things. It has not replaced his bed. He still sleeps on his bed in the bedroom at night, and he still chooses plain tile on the days the mat is in the wash.

Washing is about once a month, gentle cycle, air dry. A Chow coat sheds into everything and this is no different, but it wipes down and the fabric has not gone stiff or pilled on me. That was my main worry, since his ruff collects half the yard and I did not want to be washing a mat every week.

What it does not do: it does not replace shade, water, or skipping the midday walk. It feels cool rather than cold, and on the worst afternoons he still pants. It is one more thing on the list, not a fix for a hot climate. I would also keep it away from a dog who chews, because the filling is soft and Bruno would have had it open in an afternoon if he were that sort of dog. He is not. He is the sort who claims things and then guards them from the mailman.

Two summers from now I will know more. One summer in, it earned its spot by the door.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to brush the coat first, because a mat is no help to a dog carrying last week's undercoat around in July. I would tell you to put water down in two places and check it in the afternoon, to walk him before eight and after seven, and to watch his breathing rather than the thermometer on the wall. I would tell you not to shave him, whatever the neighbor says, and to call your vet if the panting does not settle once he is in the shade. And then I would tell you that for a dog who cannot cool down by lying on hot concrete, a mat like this is a small piece of relief that costs less than a groomer visit. Bruno claimed his before I finished setting it down. That is the best endorsement he gives anything.