Thurs 23rd Sept: What makes a healthy dog?

Not a poodle, but shiba puppy Donny going home

 Continuing with the never-ending intake of dogs and puppies we have yet more arriving on Friday from AFCD Sheung Shui, this time three very cute puppy littermates and a friendly five year-old poodle.  Unsurprisingly the poodle has a skin problem, minor apparently, but almost all poodles have food allergies and can't be fed beef or chicken.  

There's always ongoing debate about feeding and diet and what's good or bad, and the pet food industry is like any other when it comes to creating novel ingredients and ways to market their product.  Now there's a backlash against the  previously-popular "grain-free" foods, with claims that it can cause heart problems in some dogs.  

If you really want to keep it simple, natural is always going to be better although not everyone has the time to home-cook for their dogs and to make sure that it's a properly balanced diet.  We do suggest that even if you use the convenient commercial dog foods, you add some fresh meat or vegetables for variation and taste. Imagine if you had to eat the same processed dry food every day of your life and how you would feel about it.  Apart from anything else, giving the same food every day for years on end is what causes allergies to develop later on. 

Sharpei-cross Tufty in 2012 

Having said that, with so many hundreds of dogs under our care at HKDR, its obviously impossible to provide fresh food for all of them so the old, sick and weak dogs are singled out for individual feeding. The oldest dog I have on Lamma now is Tufty, who's sixteen or even seventeen, and she gets her special meals twice a day but she has eaten kibble for most of her life, just like the other dogs.  In fact I have many dogs that are fourteen-plus living with me, so I'm always checking to see that they're doing well and staying fit.  The older dogs are also given supplements every day according to their needs, as personally I'm a great believer in natural health and that supportive care and prevention is far better than cure.

What keeps a dog healthy is a combination of factors including genetics, lifestyle (stress affects animals as much as it does humans), good exercise and, of course, diet.  Over-vaccinating is also a contributing factor to things like auto-immune diseases, so please do your own research about this issue.  Certainly vaccinating every year is something that is not recommended.