Dog – Man Best Friends

How To Feed A Guard Dog

Most dogs used as guard dogs are German Shepherds, with a special Doberman Pinscher, Boxer, or Labrador Retriever. The standard weight of an adult male guard dog is about 70 pounds. No one should weigh less than 50 pounds. To adequately provide a guard dog with enough amounts of energy and nutrients every day, its food should have the following three characteristics: 1) It should enclose roughly 2000 calories in each pound. 2) It should have the nutrients balanced to be fed at about 40 available calories per pound of body weight. 3) The general digestibility of the food should not be less than 80 percent.

No food exists, in standard commercial food channels, that will gratify the characteristics just listed. While a few canned foods meet the digestibility necessities, no dry foods do. Neither type meets the caloric density or nutrient balance necessities. Soft-moist foods meet the digestibility requirements, but have even lower caloric densities than the dry foods.

The addition of fresh, or canned, meat and meat by-products to a dry food frequently improves the digestibility of the protein and fat in the diet. But, because of the high water content of meat foods, their addition actually reduces the caloric density of the final diet mixture.

Caloric density can be enlarged by the addition of corn oil. This method works well only when enlarged energy needs are minimum. With a guard dog’s energy necessities, nevertheless, so much corn oil is needed that it, too, will reduce the food and nutrient deficiencies are appropriate to occur.

All guard dogs should be fed by firm portion control. How each dog’s weight, general situation, and performance are affected by its diet can be much more precisely compared when feeding by portion control. Guard dogs whom are from a self-feeder are apt to become overweight, sluggish or impassive. The last two are mainly fatal to a guard dog and its mission.

Guard dogs should be fed no less than three hours, before or after, their tour of duty. To feed any closer to the tour is a request to bloat, torsion or other gastric distress. The danger of these diseases is further enlarged if the dogs are eating low-quality foods containing poorly-digested nutrients.

Feeding guard dogs is an exemption to the rule that all dogs should be fed at the similar hour every day. A guard dog’s tour hours are subject to frequent change. Also, its meal hours must changed since feeding three hours before duty tours is more significant than standard feeding hours. In fact, once their feeding routine is learned, most guard dogs will become familiarized to being fed three hours before going on duty and will adjust their behavior to cue on their feeding time the same way any dog does that is fed at the similar time every day.

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Energy Sources

Originally, dog owners who fed their pets natural ingredients were attempting to restore the natural diet of the dog. Natural ingredients used nowadays are no longer the foods eaten by an animal ”naturally” in the wild, but have turn into modifications of those original products to more confinement or longer-lasting forms.

The human diet consists of a big selection of such customized natural foods, most of which have been tried for feeding a dog. Besides these human foods, there are still a few natural ingredients accessible to the dog owner that are not usually considered to be human foods. Examples of such foods are horse meat, hog livers, and bone meal.

Meat is, without question, the most ordinary natural ingredient fed to a dog. It is also the most widespread source of protein. It is not the only source, nevertheless, nor is it the best. Eggs, milk, and plant proteins also make up a big reservoir of protein sources available to dog feeders.

All natural foods containing nutrients are energy sources, because most nutrients can grow to be energy. Some natural foods supply more energy than others and are customarily used as energy sources. These are the foods containing the major quantities of fats and carbohydrates. Fats are the main energy source in any diet for a dog. Most meats come with the fat already attached, particularly in the chopped and ground varieties. Fats also can be found in nature in the pure form as vegetable oils or as tallow and lard.

Carbohydrates, while not as concentrated an energy source as fats, are lower in cost. Carbohydrates are functional to weaken the protein in high-meat diets or lower the caloric density of diets containing too much fat.

Most likely the most universally functional source of energy for a dog is corn oil. Corn oil supplies 9 calories in every gram, 250 calories in each ounce, 124 calories in each tablespoonful, and 62 calories in every teaspoonful. When used as the only fat in a food it also furnishes about ten times the amount of vital fatty acids required by a dog. Corn oil is cheap, easily obtainable, and has a logically good keeping quality. Other vegetable oils that can be used adequately as an energy source for a dog are olive oil, peanut oil, safflower oil and soybean oil.

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Feeding Requirements for Guide Dogs And Dogs “On The Go”

Like hunting dogs, dogs that are on-the-go are always moving. These dogs come from the “round-tip” family as they were normally used to round up animals. Unlike hunting dogs, nevertheless, round-up dogs rarely get a chance to relax every couple of hours. They work endlessly until they have recovered all the strays, brought in the last maverick, or are called off by their owners. As a result round-up dogs burn great amounts of energy each day they are working. Many of them are performing at the upper limits of a dog’s capabilities and endurance.

Always leaving food out and having these dogs self-feed more desirable than portion control. By allowing the dog to create its own daily eating it will do a far better job of determining how much it wants, in relation to how hard it is working, than you could ever do.

Dogs that are on normal herd duty can be fed any time that is suitable to the herdsman. Like all working dogs, they should be fed twice every day, if at all possible. For herd dogs, about half of the daily needs should be fed at each meal. Round-up dogs should be fed their morning snack at least an hour before they start, if that’s possible, and must always be permitted to rest an hour or so at the end of the day before being fed their evening meal.

Guide Dogs

These are the dogs that act as a blind person’s eyes. Much of their outflow of energy depends on the activity of their masters. Active persons will have active dogs. In addition, mental stress and tension play a part in the necessities for energy in guide dogs. Therefore, even guide dogs with owners who are practically inactive have a bigger need for energy than dogs of the similar breed that live as house pets.

Most guide dogs, like any other dog, should have their food intake adjusted to preserve their individual body weight. The convenience of the food is almost as vital as its quality where guide dogs are concerned. Elaborate mixing of ingredients, or even reasonable combinations, become impossible tasks for people who cannot see to read a degree or level a tablespoon. A single-food diet is most pleasing for guide dogs, and the foods of higher caloric density (1600 to 2000 calories per pound) provide the least trouble for the maximum performance.

Feeding guide dogs is best completed by using portion control. It poses the least problem for a blind owner to just measure out a fixed amount of food at each mealtime and throw away any food remaining uneaten. By having a sighted person weigh his dog at regular intervals, a blind master can make a decision as to whether or not his dog’s food should be increased or decreased for the next interval.

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Nutritional Needs For Different Dog-types

While the first dogs were definitely kept as companions, it perhaps did not take long to comprehend the working value of this newly-made friend. Even before the history of dogs was recorded, these pets were helping man for a variety of purposes, mostly to hunt for food. In those days, nevertheless, hunting was not a sport, but severe hard work.

Nowadays the dog still helps man in his search for food, but the nature of the job has taken on a different form. The dog still helps man to hunt, but for a different cause. Whatever the reason or nature of the job, the performance of work always requires time expenditure of energy. As a result, each working dog’s primary dietary want is increased energy. Every time dietary energy is increased, those B-complex vitamins, minerals, and the water needed for burning the energy must as well be increased.

Except for this increased need for energy and the nutrients to burn it, working dogs need most nutrients at no greater levels than non-working dogs. When working dogs consume huge quantities of ordinary maintenance dog foods to get all of the energy they require, they regularly consume some of the nutrients in excessive amounts. Paradoxically, they may also consume such large quantities that the digestibility of all the nutrients in their diet are negatively affected and some nutrients may in fact be obtained in inadequate amounts.

In other cases, a working dog merely cannot, physically, eat all of a food required to supply its energy requirements. In these instances the dog suffers from the deficiency of total digestible energy, and loses weight. If the situation is allowed to continue, the dog will decrease its activities in order to reduce its caloric demands. If the dog is forced to continue working at the similar pace, it will lose weight faster and laster, and ultimately work itself to death.

Herd Dogs are the most frequent working dogs that are fed in the United States. Herd Dogs are dogs that wattle or protect animals use the slightest amount of extra energy of any of the working dogs. They rarely are required to use energy in excess of standard activity for any period of time. Even their short-term expenditures of energy are not very great. The only time herd dogs ever exploit large amounts of energy are when they are rounding up strays, lost or semi-wild animals running at large.

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Can I Feed My Dog Meat Only?

There are a few dog feeders who irrationally claim that meat is the only thing a dog should ever be fed. Meat only is totally insufficient for a dog. The leading deficiency in a diet of meat is its lack of calcium. lf the meat is trimmed of fat there is also likely to happen a deficiency in energy. There are several other deficiencies, but none as dramatic as these two.

Meat, however, is the single most vital source of protein fed to dogs. Thousands of tons of horse meat and beef are used each year in producing commercial dog foods. Hundreds of tons more are fed as a enhancement to commercial foods or in home-made rations.

When fed as an addition to a balanced commercial food, meat can be added up to 10 percent of the weight of the combination. When added in any larger amounts it will weaken the commercial food to the level that the diet will no longer be balanced or sufficient. When used as the only source of protein in a home-made portion, meat should comprise at least 25 percent of the total weight of the diet. Nevertheless, home-made rations should ever include more than 75 percent of its weight as meat

All meats excluding pork can be fed to a dog either cooked or uncooked, but will typically furnish more diet in the raw state. Vitamins are damaged by the heat of cooking. Fat also is driven out of meat throughout cooking, and except it is poured back into the ration, it will become vanished as an energy basis. The only real justification for feeding a dog cooked meat in a homemade ration is since it is pork, or since the dog does not like raw meat. Dogs having a actual dislike for raw meat are few and far between.

The nature of the animal from which the meat comes does not appear to be too significant where protein is concerned. Nutritionally, most proteins from different animals appear to be about equal. For years it was contended by some dog owners that pork could not be fed to dogs. Feeding experiments do not find this to be accurate. In fact, pork liver is perhaps among the most nutritious livers normally available to dogs. The only limit which pork has when being fed to dogs is that it be cooked.

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