Nutrition, Balance and Healthy Working Dog Food Diet

Somewhat surprisingly, there are still many working dogs in the world today. Police dogs, service dogs, search and rescue dogs, dogs in the armed forces, even herding, driving, and carting dogs are still in use world-wide.

For some, "sporting" dogs, such as retrievers and coonhounds, are still part of their livelihood. These dogs might be used to take vacationers and other guest sportsmen out on hunting trips, to give them the experience of hunting ducks, raccoon, or other birds or game.

All of these dogs have a higher daily requirement of calories, primarily from fat and protein, to give them the kind of energy that they need to get through the day. If your 75 pound "couch potato" needs 1490 kilocalories every day, then a working dog needs 2049 if he does light duty. If that same dog does heavy duty work, the kilocalories required to maintain his weight and health shoot up to 3725 to 7449.

Working sled dogs may require up to 10000 kilocalories every day to stay healthy. These requirements mean that the working dog can need from 4.7 cups (1120ml) to 5.4 cups (1276ml) of dry food per day if he does light duty and up to 26.3 cups (6227ml) of high quality dry dog food per day!

It is no wonder that these dogs are fed diets that contain higher amounts of nutrients than do foods fed to their less active cousins. Foods for working dogs are normally formulated to contain a greater amount of protein, fat, and antioxidants than foods for the average family pet, to support their energy level and so that their bodies that can repair the damage to their muscles and joints that occur on a daily basis.

Having access to great quantities of water is vital to working dogs, because energy is processed as heat and water is needed to remove the byproducts created in the generation of this heat. Large amounts of water are also needed to flush other waste products from dogs' bodies in the form of urine.

Like working dogs, performance dogs can consume vast amounts of calories per day. Although that prize-winning agility dog might only be in the ring for seconds on performance days, he may train for one to two hours every day during the week.

Dogs that sprint, like coursing dogs, use fewer calories that dogs that engage in endurance work, such as the sled dogs mentioned above or such as herding dogs that move their flocks or herds over long distances.

There are different carbohydrate needs between endurance dogs, who may experience stress diarrhea from too many carbohydrates in their diet, and sprint dogs, who benefit from higher amounts of carbohydrates for the fast energy they provide. Dog owners should be aware of the kind of energy requirements that they working or performance dogs have before providing any special diet to them.

Next article: Maintaining A Dog Diet Feeding Routine