Just like human beings, the phrase “you are what you eat” must also applies to the dog world. Your dog also has nutritional requirements and they may not be getting what they need from diet alone.

What are you feeding your dog? A can of meat and filler, possibly with some corn or oatmeal or other dry food that probably is not enough. Like humans too, dogs are effected by our modern life with factors like stress, lack of exercise and environmental pollution taking a burden on thier overall health and wellbeing. Now please don’t think that you can just feed your dog some of the vitamin and mineral pills that you take yourself. Each animal has unique nutritional requirements and some pills may be overkill. For example, humans are fairly unique (along with guinea pigs and fruit bats) because they can’t make their own vitamin c. Whereas dogs can and do depending on what they need.

Which dogs need extra nutrition? Well, probably most dogs, but if your dog seems to be suffering for fatigue, or is getting old, or is recovering from surgery or an accident. They could be exactly the boost he or she needs. For all round needs pick a supplement that supplies a good range vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and essential fatty acids (Omega oils). There are also more targetted solutions for joint health containing the same ingredients that we need such as MSM and Glucosamine.

One living example of pet nutrition working a treat comes from our days of running a pet sitting service. We had one poor client who was a border collie that had been in the wars. He’d had his throat torn out, he’d been run over by a car and was also recovering from having a cancerous lump removed. Not that you would have known it! He was strong, fit and full of life. Something that can only have been helped by his owner supplementing his diet.

Nutrition for your dog can come in various different forms. Some as pills, which can be hard to persude Rover to take, and others in dog chews which your pet will actually see as a treat or in an oil to pour over their food.

About the Author

Chris Andrews runs the site Pause for Paws.

New! We've just starting a message board and discussion forum over on the Toxic Byte Pets Forum. It's a bit lonely over there at the moment, but feel free to join in and participate!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Pet Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.