Our dogs diet.

Dalmatian

Did you know your dogs diet can affect their behaviour?

Just like kids with blue smarties the food we give our dogs can have a major effect on their behaviour, causing them to have excess energy, make them sluggish and grumpy. Imagine if we had McDonald's or KFC every single day of our lives, most of us as kids would have seen the super size me documentary at school and seen the effect that had on him. It would make us feel sick, and sluggish, unhealthy and lacking energy.

Did you know the giving your dog puppy food for too long can also play into their behaviour? Due to the fact puppy food is specifically made to help a growing puppy, there are extra calories in this food which can cause an adult dog to experience excess levels of energy by eating it.

What about breed specifics? Let's talk about my Dalmatian, so dalmatians are purine intolerant, due to their make up they are unable to break purines down and this can cause bladder stones. Which in the end can be life threatening. Unfortunately purines are in every food stuff, so as an owner I have to ensure that the food I give my dogs is low purine. Now the main common offenders for this are yeast (any type), offal (organ meats), and oily fish. This means dalmatians CANNOT eat these food items without it potentially causing bladder stones to form. But did you also know it's not just Dalmatians who suffer from this? This condition is called hyperuricosuria, and other breeds like English bulldogs can also be affected by this.

So do you know if your dogs breed are intolerant or allergic to things as a whole? Some examples are Shiba Inu's cannot have garlic, and Collies cannot have the wormer ivermectin. It is so important we do lots of research into our breeds before be purchase them.

Now I'm not here to vet bash, as vets do a wonderful job, however for me if I want advice on my dogs nutrition, then I will find a qualified canine nutritionist to give me advice. Unfortunately a lot of vet practices are contracted to push prescription diets like purina, hills or royal canin. This is due to being owned and sponsored by companies like MARS who make these feeds, so the vets are required to push them. There is also the fact that during the vets time at university they cover a HUGE range of subjects, and they do unfortunately learn a minimal amount of knowledge on canine nutrition. Which is to be expected when they have to learn as much information as they do. So if you are having trouble with your dogs diet, seek out a qualified canine nutritionist, and do your own research.

Now as I have previously mentioned on my social media's I raw feed my dog.I am not someone who will force raw feeding onto people as I understand it isn't suitable for everyone's lives, and it also isn't always suitable for every dog. So if you need to feed your dog kibble or wet food then that's no problem, however what I do try to push is that you do your research and find a good quality kibble and wet food. Ideally a good kibble with be a minimum of 50% meat, meat should always be the first ingredient on the list. When looking at an ingredients list, the first item is the main ingredient in that food. So we need this to be meat, ideally we need to steer away from meat meal and derivatives. Why you ask? Meat meal is the ground up parts of animals, including bones. This will never specify what part of the animal. Meat derivatives will be all the nasty stuff that we would not class as suitable for human consumption here in the UK. It should just label the meat protein, e.g LAMB and then a percentage, this will likely be the muscle meat. Some great companies (in a Dalmatian owners eyes) will list whether this is muscle meat, or if it contains offal. Then if you're reallly not sure just pop a message and email over to the company!

As a human race we are always so concerned about what we put into our bodies, and thriving to be healthier, so why shouldn't we do the same for our dogs?