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Diet and Your Dogs Behaviour

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Dog Behaviour Linked to Diet
Nutrition and Your Dogs Behaviour
The Effect of Dietary Protien on Dog Behaviour


Dog Behavior Linked To Diet

 Written by Lori Matthews
Thursday, 12 October 2006

We all know the dangers of eating junk food or living on a diet of foods that are processed. We know about them and most of us make a point to avoid them. We also make sure that our children avoid them. This is often because hyperactivity and an array of behavioral problems have been closely linked with the diets of sufferers.

What many pet owners fail to see, is that by feeding our dogs a diet that mainly consists of processed, poorly prepared dog foods or the equivalent of junk food, they may be causing many of the behavioral and severe illnesses that are found in dogs today. Basically, the diet that you are feeding your canine companion could not only be making him aggravated, hyper or plain old mean it could possibly shorten his life span.

A well balanced diet provides quality nutrition and in turn keeps the cells, tissues and organs healthy. This enables an animals' immune system to stay in top condition to fight any invaders.

The same holds true for behavior. If you ate fast food and candy bars everyday, eventually it will affect your energy level and your mood.

Because we love our pets, this may be a little confusing for those who think that they are doing the right thing, say, feeding their pets dog foods out of the can. Admittedly, not all dog foods are bad. However, many are and contain ingredients that are difficult for your pet to digest and can make him sick. So how do you weed out the good dog foods from the bad?

In order to give your pet the best life, you must make sure that he has the best type of lifestyle, just like us humans. Before buying pet foods, check the label to see what is in the food. Basically, the first five ingredients are important. Foods that list 2 or more grains in the first 5 ingredients may have more vegetable protein than animal protein which means less nutrition and more clean up.

Canned food can also be full of preservatives, to keep the food inside from going bad. Dog foods containing preservatives should be avoided. Not only has the pet food been filled with preservatives that could cause your pet harm, the pet food has been boiled at high temperatures in the cooking process causing any of the useful nutrition found in the food to be lost anyway. Proper cooking of pet foods will ensure that no preservatives are needed to keep it fresh.

Keep in mind that canned dog food mainly consists of water so feeding a canned diet alone will not give your pet the proper nutrition they need to live a healthy lifestyle.

So let's look at the things that should be avoided when buying pet food:

· No Preservatives. Avoid foods that contain chemicals in them such as BHT or BHA. If these preservatives are found anywhere on the label, give the food a miss, as these chemicals can be harmful to your pet.

· No by-products. By-products are the parts of meat that are unsuitable for consumption, such as the feet, necks and intestines of other animals. As you can imagine these parts of animals were not made to be digested by humans, dogs or any animals for that matter.

· Beware of grains. Soy, corn, corn gluten and wheat gluten are often used as protein sources; however, they are generally inferior and difficult to digest.

Give your pet the chance at life that he deserves, feed him with a good nutritious premium dog food, free from preservatives and additives that are not meant for dogs. A great way to decide what is suitable for your dog to eat is ask yourself if you would eat it? If your answer is no, don't feed it to your pet.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com
About The Author:
Lori Matthews studies health, nutrition and wellness. Enjoys writing articles on health for both people and pets. Please visit Lifes Abundance premium dog food for more information.

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Nutrition and Your Dog’s Behavior

By Jeanne Perciaccanto - Ultimate Dog Training
Nutrition and Your Dog’s Behavior
www.ultimatedogtraining.com

Proper nutrition is a fundamental basic for your dog.
It affects their health and longevity by offering an essential balance of proteins, fats, complex carbohydrates and the trace nutrients and minerals their bodies need for growth, repair and maintains of sound immune system.

Nutrition is a complex and integral part of your dog’s ability to think clearly, lower stress levels and a produce a calmer behavior.

Thinking takes a lot of energy. Dogs involved in a training program, expend tremendous mental energy focusing on the tasks presented to them. If your dog starts with minimal nutrition, they become lethargic, edgy or hyper active when asked to perform the simplest of tasks. They cannot focus and loss concentration after a short period of time or become confused. If the dog is continually asked to do something they cannot comprehend, confusion can lead to an aggressive form of acting out.

In training dogs, the first thing I look at is the dog’s diet. I work from the inside out. Training becomes ineffective if the underlying causes for the behaviors are not changed.

Hyper, unfocused and out of control dogs often are eating foods with high levels of cereal foods such as wheat, corn, and corn meal.

Aggressive dogs eat food containing higher levels of single source protein. Many of these proteins are incomplete chains of amino acids which do not offer proper building and repair of muscle fiber and cell tissue.

Shy and stressed dogs do not digest their foods well at all and often suffer from intestinal complications such as diarrhea. Their coats are often very dry and shed heavily.

One way to test the foods you are feeding is to soak the food in water for about 30 minutes. If it swells in size and becomes mushy, it is primarily cereal.

Are you dog’s stools often soft and loose or is the dog gassy? They are not digesting the food properly.

By looking at their food, you will do more to help balance their behavior, as well as, contribute to their health and longevity.

Life Abundance offers the best combination of food for all dogs concerned.

The proteins are complete and digest easily.

The carbohydrates are complex and do not turn into simple sugars producing energy swings of highs and low behaviors.

The Probotics in the food balance and digest more easily, which is not only perfect for the nervous or shy dogs, but ensures all dogs are receiving the nutrition they need from food.

For information on food search at http://www.healthydogfood.net  or http://www.caninehealthy.com
reprinted with kind permission from Jeanne Perciaccanto

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Summary of Tufts University study on the effect of dietary protein on dog behavior

In this study, four groups of dogs were fed diets containing three different protein levels and the behavior over time recorded by the dogs’ owners and the supervising veterinarians. Only one sub-group was reported to show any effect of changes in protein intake; in the rest, no differences in behavior were noted.

The dogs were each classed into one of four behavior groups: those who showed Dominance aggression, those who showed Territorial aggression, those considered to be Hyperactive, and those whose owners reported no behavioral problems. Each group was fed a low (17%), medium (25%) and high (32%) protein diet for a two week period and owners were instructed to score their dogs’ behavior on a daily basis.

All dogs in the study were neutered adults, in good health as determined by examination and blood tests. Owners were instructed not to do any behavior modification (training) during the testing period. Each dog’s behavioral diagnosis was confirmed by an interview between the dog’s owner and a veterinary behaviorist. All dogs in the aggressive groups displayed a minimum of 2 episodes per week in the three months prior to the study. The hyperactive dogs were referred by their own veterinarians.

During the first two weeks of the study, all the dogs were fed their regular diets and their behavior scored by their owners. Areas scored were territorial aggression (aggressive toward strangers at home), dominance aggression (aggression toward owners), excitability, and fearfulness. Then each group was fed each of the test diets for two-week periods and their behavior scored during that time. Caloric intake was kept uniform by keeping the amount of carbohydrate stable and adjusting the fat content to compensate for the differing protein levels.

Within the Territorially aggressive group, two sub-groups were identified: those who had pronounced dominant tendencies and those who had pronounced fearful tendencies. While the scores for fearfulness did not vary for any of the dogs in any of the groups during the tests, the scores for Territorial aggression changed significantly for the Territorially aggressive/Fearful group when fed the low and medium protein diets. For the rest of the groups, behavior did not vary significantly with the changes in diets.

The study concluded that a reduction in dietary protein is not generally useful in the treatment of behavior problems, with the possible exception of those with territorial aggression that is the result of fear.
Summarized from an article in the February 1996 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Association (JAVMA)
Original article co-authored by: Nicholas H. Dodman, BVMS; Ilana Reisner, DVM; Louis Shuster, PhD; William Rand, Ph.D; U. Andrew Luescher, DVM; Ian Robinson, PhD; Katherine A Houpt, VMD, PhD.
reprinted with kind permission from Catherine de la Cruz
http://www.sonic.net/%7Ecdlcruz/GPCC/

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The above information is simply informational. It's intent is not to replace the advice of a veterinarian nor to assist you in making a diagnosis of your pet. Please consult with your own veterinarian for confirmation of any diagnosis. Your pets life may depend on it.