dog vitamins and general health?
I have a 1 and 5 year old german shepherds. I would like to avoid giving them pills (glucosamine,multivitamins). Is there a more natural way to make sure they get proper nutrition so I reduce a chance of them having problems with their hips and bones in general? Thanks
Why don’t you look up glucosamine on Wikipedia? I just did, and it looks pretty natural to me. I started using it some months ago, just after I got a 10 year old rescue dog who had longstanding cruciate ligament damage in his back legs when I got him. He had trouble getting into my van when I got him, now he jumps in like it’s nothing, and bounces around like a young dog. It comes in a powder which is very easy to add to food. Next time I buy it, I’m going to get the version made for horses, it’s cheaper and fine for dogs, it says on the label.
And I’ll add another story to the first one. I had a 2 year old cat who developed severe respiratory problems. Every 4 to 6 weeks his lungs would fill up so he could hardly breathe and he was miserable. At the time, all the vet could offer was steroid shots, which worked well, but I was told they weren’t good as a continual treatment, so only give them when absolutely necessary. The prospect of a lifetime of this for the cat didn’t look good. By chance, I found a book on megavitamin therapy for cats. I decided there was nothing to lose, and started giving the cat 1,000mg of vitamin C daily, which is a huge dose. Six months went by and he didn’t need any steroids. I took him off the vitamin C, the filled lungs came back. Back on the 1000mg. I tried several times, same result. He stayed on the vitamin C for a little more than 2 years, and one day I stopped it again but the filled lungs never returned and he lived in perfect health till he was 17 and had kidney failure,very common in cats.
Moral of this: it’s almost impossible to find a perfect food, and if I had a breed prone to joint problems, as Shepherds are, I’d give the glucosamine as well as a very high quality food. Each animal is different, and some may do very well even on table scraps while others need more. Why not weight the odds in your dogs’ favour?
Let me tell you a story…I used to breed, show, field trial, and hunt with brittanies…I had this one six month old that was quite remarkable (he ended up growing too big to show)…When he was 6 months old and after a day of hunting with me for like 8 hours, he started to limp in the back end…I took him to the vet the next day…The vet took an xray and showed me the results…You could clearly see the beginning of hip displasia in both his hips…I was devistated…I always feed a very high quality puppy food and here’s what the vet told me…Even WITH more than enough calcium in a fast growing dogs diet, if the food doesn’t contain vitamin C (Ascorbic acid) most of that calcium can’t make it to where it needs to go….What the heck ??? He suggested I start adding some vit. c with his food and I did…Two years later I took him in for OFA certification (where they xray the dogs hips and elbows and have them "rated" as to whether or not they have or do not have hip displasia…A dog that passes is rated fair, good, or excellent…HE RATED OFA GOOD ! The vets suggestion had comepletely cured his hip displasia…BUT, this was at 6 months old when I started the vit. C and he was still rapidly growing…On the one year old, vit. C may be and ace in the hole…But if the 5 year old isn’t showing any signs, he probably doesn’t have displasia so don’t worry about it..
References :
Depending on your food could either determine if you should supplement or not. A well rounded dog food should have enough essential vitamins and minerals that you should not have to supplement. In certain cases yes, sometimes if your vet reccomends it. There are plenty of premium dog foods out their and it’s entirely what you choose. I tend to go with a dog food that cooks their food at lower temperatures, that way the vitamins and minerals are not over cooked, to keep the potency of the vitamins and minerals.
References :
http://www.bluebuff.com/
Been showing dogs forever almost!
Why don’t you look up glucosamine on Wikipedia? I just did, and it looks pretty natural to me. I started using it some months ago, just after I got a 10 year old rescue dog who had longstanding cruciate ligament damage in his back legs when I got him. He had trouble getting into my van when I got him, now he jumps in like it’s nothing, and bounces around like a young dog. It comes in a powder which is very easy to add to food. Next time I buy it, I’m going to get the version made for horses, it’s cheaper and fine for dogs, it says on the label.
And I’ll add another story to the first one. I had a 2 year old cat who developed severe respiratory problems. Every 4 to 6 weeks his lungs would fill up so he could hardly breathe and he was miserable. At the time, all the vet could offer was steroid shots, which worked well, but I was told they weren’t good as a continual treatment, so only give them when absolutely necessary. The prospect of a lifetime of this for the cat didn’t look good. By chance, I found a book on megavitamin therapy for cats. I decided there was nothing to lose, and started giving the cat 1,000mg of vitamin C daily, which is a huge dose. Six months went by and he didn’t need any steroids. I took him off the vitamin C, the filled lungs came back. Back on the 1000mg. I tried several times, same result. He stayed on the vitamin C for a little more than 2 years, and one day I stopped it again but the filled lungs never returned and he lived in perfect health till he was 17 and had kidney failure,very common in cats.
Moral of this: it’s almost impossible to find a perfect food, and if I had a breed prone to joint problems, as Shepherds are, I’d give the glucosamine as well as a very high quality food. Each animal is different, and some may do very well even on table scraps while others need more. Why not weight the odds in your dogs’ favour?
References :