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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