Dog Nutrition

If you want your dog to live as long and healthy a possible then it is important to take dog nutrition into serious consideration and learn about what you can do to take care of their health. This article discusses the importance of dog nutrition, in particular about how important it is to choose complete or balanced dog food for your pet, which is going to be as natural and free of additives and preservatives as possible. It also talks about how detrimental poor nutrition can be on your dog, whether that involves a lack of exercise or from dietary deficiencies.

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Dog Nutrition

When dogs were wild, or at least still hunted for their food, hunger may have been an occasional concern, but rarely were nutritional deficiencies or imbalances ever a problem. Dogs killed and ate almost all of their prey’s carcass including the entrails, skin, and even bones.

Domesticated and dependent upon their owners for food, today’s dogs are amply fed, right to the point of obesity, yet they often develop a number of deficiencies from their improperly balanced diets. The advent over the past decade of nutritionally “complete” or “balanced” commercial dog foods, and their increasing acceptance by dog owners and veterinarians alike, has drastically reduced the incidence of dietary deficiencies. Today such nutritional problems are seen mostly in dogs who are fed homemade diets or a diet of table scraps and leftovers.

Poor nutrition, whether from dietary deficiencies or excesses, has a significantly negative effect on your dog’s ability to remain in good health. Resistance to infection is lowered, as is the production of antibodies, allowing infectious agents to multiply rapidly and spread. The resulting fever, diarrhea, or other manifestations of illness, more than likely will make your dog less interested in eating, thus increasing the state of malnutrition.

Original article at I Love Dogs

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