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Practical Nutrition for Working Dogs
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What should an owner of working dogs feed their animals to ensure they stay in peak condition? Veerle Vandendriessche offers some hints and tips from her own viewpoint as a nutritional expert.
Veerle Vandendriessche
DVM, Dip. ECVCN - Pavo Nutrition, Heijen, The Netherlands
A 2005 graduate of the Ghent University Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Vandendriessche worked in private mixed practices for 8 years before completing a residency in companion animal and equine nutrition at Ghent University in 2016. She became a European board-certified nutritionist in 2017 and currently works as a nutritionist with a feed company.
Key Points
- The protein and energy requirements for working dogs can differ significantly from the needs of the average pet dog.
- Diets must be tailored for individual working dogs, using a 9-point Body Condition Score as the primary benchmark when calculating the amount of food to be fed.
Introduction
Although the number of working dogs that will be presented to the average small animal practicing veterinarian may be low, it remains important to know how to advise their owners, as these dogs have very specific nutritional requirements. In order to give an overview of the different factors that should be taken into account when addressing this issue, this article will briefly discuss how muscle physiology functions during strenuous activity, and then present a summary of the requirements for the different types of working dog. It can be helpful to categorize these dogs as follows;
- Low-intensity, high-duration exercise (e.g., endurance dogs)
- Moderate-intensity, moderate to high-duration exercise (e.g., police dogs, hunting, search and rescue, service dogs)
- High-intensity, short-duration exercise (e.g., sprinting, agility and weight pulling)
It is essential to take into account not only the actual nutritional requirements for these animals, but also to consider other management factors that can be applied in order to help these canine athletes function to the best of their ability.
Energy sources during exercise
During exercise, muscles requires ATP (adenosine triphosphate) as fuel. This can be obtained from different sources, and can be both from within the muscle (endogenous sources) and from other organs (exogenous sources). When oxygen is available, aerobic metabolism (oxidation of glycogen, fatty acids and amino acids) will occur in the cellular mitochondria, whereas in the absence of oxygen anaerobic metabolism will take place in the cytoplasm (Figure 1). Which fuel source will be used is determined by the type and the intensity of the work, and the conditioning and nutritional status of the working dog.
There are four important energy-generating pathways: creatine phosphate (Cr-P) and glycolysis, which occur in the absence of oxygen, and carbohydrate oxidation and fat oxidation, which can only take place when oxygen is available. The first two methods can generate ATP from endogenous storage in the muscle during the first seconds (Cr-P) or minutes (glycogen) of activity, and are thus very important for short, high-intensity exercise such as sprinting and weight pulling. Complete oxidation of carbohydrates and fatty acids will supply the muscles with energy over a prolonged period of time (hours) and are thus the most important energy sources for low to moderate-intensity exercise such as hunting, agility, police work (Figure 2) and pulling sleds. [...]
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