Maintaining a healthy diet is one very important aspect of your dog's daily lifestyle and if overlooked, can lead to problems down the road.
There are a number of strategies that you can make use of to keep your dog's diet in check and keep their healthy lifestyle on track.
This article will discuss a few of those strategies and how each one of the may benefit your dog with regard to their health.
One of the strategies that is often the most underused, but may be one of the most effective is portion control.
It is often a common practice for many owners to fill their dog's bowl full of food in order to not have to fill it again for a longer period of time, perhaps as much as a week.
The result is that the dog has a heaping bowl of food sitting in front of them for an extended period of time.
This can be troublesome for a number of reasons.
One reason this is not a healthy practice is because the dog may be tempted to eat continuously, or overeat, which will in turn cause unwanted weight gain.
Another reason this may not be a healthy strategy is because the food is sitting out in the open for an extended period of time, it is more exposed to dirt, dust, and any bacteria or harmful substances that may be present in the area.
This can be unhealthy and possibly harmful to the dog.
One way to properly control your dog's eating is to only serve the recommended portion at one time, and then take the bowl away.
This will ensure that your dog is not overeating and that their food is safe to eat.
Another strategy that could potentially help in maintaining your dog's healthy diet is by splitting your dog's meal into multiple servings.
One possibility would be to serve half of the daily portion in the morning, and the other portion of their daily serving in the early evening.
This is typically a good practice because it promotes better digestion of the dog's food, and also allows them more time to generate energy and burn off the after affects of the food that was consumed.
When trying to maintain a healthy diet for your dog, it is important that you remember to stick to one source of food and not feed your dog all kinds of different foods.
This helps them keep their digestive process on track.
Treats are acceptable once in a while, but not acceptable all of the time.
Excess feeding can lead to obesity in your dog regardless of what you're feeding them.
The main thing to keep in mind is that it's important to stick to one food source and only give treats on occasion.
Keeping these few tips in mind will help to maintain your dog's healthy diet, or get your dog on track for having a healthy diet.
This requires discipline on your part and a little effort to do things the right way.
Your dog will benefit greatly from it and so will you.