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.
The food should contain several forms of protein such as proteins from chicken, fish and egg which are a complete chain of Amino Acid and digest easily.
The carbohydrates need to be complex and not simple sugars found in corn, corn meal and wheat which not produce allergies but also energy swings of highs and lows in behaviors. There should be several Probotics for a balance and digest easily food, which is not only perfect for the nervous or shy dogs with nervous stomachs, but ensures all dogs are receiving the nutrition they need from food. To search sites for food information go to http://www.healthydogfood.net
