Dogs with Cancer may require a special diet. But is there such a thing as a special canine cancer diet? How effective is it, really? And, could such a diet help, possibly rescue, your pet?
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Tip 1

Uneaten food should not be left around for more than 30 minutes. lf you feed only one or two dogs, removing the uneaten food within 30 minutes should offer no problem. You should begin to pick up the food containers just as soon as you have completed feeding the last dog. Pick up the feeding containers in the same order that they were put down. Don’t get in such a hurry to get them, however, that you forget to record each dog’s food intake.
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Pancreatitis in dogs is a serious issue but one that can be avoided with proper nutrition and diet. So, do you feed your dog table scraps? If so, depending on the quality of the scraps, you may be setting your dog up for pancreatitis, and here’s why.
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In this post I continue the discussion of the importance of vitamins and minerals in your dog or puppy’s daily nutrition. Keep in mind that how and what you feed your dog will, to a great extent, determine its overall health, longevity, and enjoyment of life. By the way, one of the major points to take away is the importance of liver.
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I don’t think there is any argument over the importance of proper nutrition to your dog’s health. In this post, I lay out some of the basics about the sources for your puppy’s vitamins and minerals. When evaluating commercial dog food, be sure to examine not only the nutrients included but the nutrient quality. Be sure to see our article, More on Vitamin and Mineral Sources. If you think meat is all there is to dog diet, see our article, Nutrition for Dogs–Understanding Fats and Carbohydrates.
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Just as in human diets, fats and carbohydrates play an essential role in the nutrition of dogs. I know, there is a school of thought that would have it that the perfect diet for dogs is solely meat. I’ll let you be the judge of the wisdom of such a diet. However, believe it or not, in order to understand dog nutrition, you do have to come to grips with fats and carbohydrates. Be sure to see our articles on How to Feed Your Dog, and for more on nutrition, Dog Health and Nutrition, and Rough Guide to Vitamins and Minerals.
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How and what to feed your dog and the quality of nutrition have everything to do with your dog’s health and longevity

This post is about kinds of natural foods you can feed your dog. I discuss 5 natural foods. You can use this as rough guide on how to supplement your dogs meals and also to help evaluate commercial dog foods. Be sure to see our articles on animal fats and carbohydrates and sources of vitamins and minerals.
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I’ll just lay it right out. There are some very specific dos and don’ts about how you feed your dog, and I’m not just talking about nutrition for your dog or what to feed your dog. I referring to rules about how you feed your dog. Be sure to see our articles on Dog Health and Nutrition, Nutrition for Dogs, Dog and Puppy Nutrition, and More on Vitamins and Minerals.
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Your dog’s water requirement . . . .

You may not know this, but your dog could die within three days without water. Your dog may be able to live three weeks without food, but again, could die within three days without water. Water is necessary for
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This is a good question. After all, licking is how dogs show affection as well as submissive behavior. Generally speaking, I think face licking should be discouraged. This is my opinion; others may disagree and feel that to stop the dog from face licking would be to deny it a means of interaction.
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Mouth and Tooth Disorders: drooling, reluctance to chewing, misaligned bite

Excessive Drooling

If your dog is showing sings of excessive drooling then it may be caused by a salivary cyst, a periodontal disease, tongue injury, or simply a foreign object. Salivary cysts look like large blisters that occur under the tongue. If your dog has periodontal disease then the cement that holds his teeth in place gets destroyed. Tongue wounds can occur from self infliction or by getting info fights with dogs.
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If you must give up your dog, choose the right way to do it . . .

Matthew Major, on behalf of Public Opinion’s editorial writes about a particular kind of dog abuse that occurs more frequently in times of economic distress–dog abandonment:
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An aspect of good preventive vet care that shouldn’t go unnoticed is understanding some of the common disorders associated with specific dog breeds. It may be helpful to know that in dogs, the body parts most frequently affected by congenital ailments are the central nervous system (CNS), eyes, muscles, and bones. For example, Beagles, Collies, Miniature Pooldes, German Shepherds, and Keeshonds are prone to congenital epilepsy.
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There is a lot of interest in over excitability in dogs, what it is exactly and what leads to this condition. In my last post, I talked about identifying psychotic dogs, and so I thought the subject of hyperkinetic dogs would be appropriate and perhaps helpful for those who may be dealing with this issue with their dog.

Anyone who has worked extensively with dogs has occasionally been confronted by an over-active, sometimes raging, vicious kind of dog, the handling of which has required a heavy duty tranquilizer and several helpers. In many cases, such behavior cannot be explained by improper handling or cruelty and neglect by their owners. When it seems that nothing can be done to correct the problem, the dog is then usaully destroyed as a menace. Since the early 1970s, such excitable and mean behavior has been identified in some dogs as hyperkinesis.
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Although many people may think that any dog who bites is crazy or psychotic and should be destroyed, the issue of true dog psychosis is a more complicated and requires a little more effort to understand.

Psychosis is generally defined as a mental disturbance of sufficient magnitude that there is personality disintegration and servere detachment from reality. I know we could argue about the dividing line between neurosis and psychosis, so I’ll add that for our purposes, the psychotic dog is likely to not only be dangerous to itself but also a danger to others. The dog may also appear to be unaware of its behavior during and after an episode.

Dog considered to be psychotic generally manifest the following kinds of symptoms:
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Let’s switch gears, as it were. I’d like to say a few words about early disease detection. As with humans, prevention is worth an ounce of medicine. Or perhaps that should read a quart of medicine.

Where prevention is concerned, one of the most important actions you can take is to simply keep your eyes open and observe your dog. Often, you can detect disease or some othe pathology early, possibly before it even truly manifests, by spotting abnormal behavior in your pet. If you see your dog behaving in an unusual manner, follow up on it. If you catch your dog repeated atypical behavior like scratching or biting himself, or rubbing its eyes on a rug, check it out. That is clear sign that medical intervention may be needed.
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The best dog medical care is often preventive care. Prevention is the key to avoiding diseases and illness in your dog. In fact, the best prevention begins even before you start breeding the dog. This is actually an important “secret” to sound dog health. But what do you do if your pet was born with a health problem? There are a few options for you to choose from when helping your dog that is born with a congenital defect. Often times, surgery can correct a structural defect. Other aspects such as good feeding, good amount of exercise, proper grooming and home veterinary care all help in controlling certain disorder and symptoms from occurring. But the most effective treatment for congenital defects is in preventing them from happening in the first place.
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You can help prevent disease in your dog by employing a simple, early detection strategy. In order to keep health problems in your dog from getting serious, you need to detect them early. In order to detect them early, you need to know how to do a basic, routine preventive check up on your canine companion. Sometimes just watching your pet and catching abnormal behavior can tell you that there is something wrong, even before the actual signs start to appear. Therefore, it is necessary to give your dog a basic check-up about once a week. This check-up takes no more than a few minutes, and it can help prevent problems as well as expenses down the road.
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Physical conditions that can create stress in your pet include surgery, pregnancy, mange, dermatitis, diabetes and other types of diseases. Some of the major social conditions that induce stress are monotony, inconsistent treatment by people, excessive activity, noise and changes in routines.

Canine nutrition experts recommend that you should feed your stressed dog a high-protein diet with moderate amounts of fat and high-quality carbohydrate. Increased potassium in the diet further calmed excitable types if a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet was fed. However, this sort of dietary adjustment needs more serious investigations by canine nutritionists and behaviorists.
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I recall once walking my German Shepherd and handing over the leash to my young nephew. Safi, our shepherd, decided to go her own way causing my nephew to yank back on the lease, which in turn brought Safi up on her hind legs. I was horrified and quickly took back the leash. Fortunately, My nephew’s over reaction did not leave our dog with any discernable neck injury.

So, the question: “Who is walking whom?” How often do you see dog owners being dragged along by their dogs? Often. I see this so often I have to assume that the majority of owners never bother to give their dogs the most basic obedience training. But my point, here, is that when dogs haul their owners around, the owners frequently yank and jerk the leash with consequent strain to the dog’s cervical spine.

I’ll interject at this point that dogs instinctively pull on the leash. If you pull back, the dog will instinctively pull harder against the tautness of the leash. That’s why it’s so important to teach your dogs to heal, or at least to teach them not to pull. You could even resort to a choke collar or a gentle leader collar to break the pulling habit. These are gimmicks and shouldn’t really replace training, but it is better to use a gimmick that doesn’t harm the dog than to put the dog through constant jerking and yanking of the leash.

Most dog owners have no idea that their frustrated leash-pulling dog might actually suffer physical injury during their daily tug-of-war. However, in a Swedish study by the noted behaviorist Anders Hallgren, of 400 dog owners who agreed to have their dog’s spines X-rayed, 63% were found to have spinal injuries. Of the inured dogs with neck (cervical) injuries, 91% had experience harsh jerks on the leash or were serious leash strainers! Among aggressive or overactive dogs, 78% had spinal injuries.

Please give this some thought. If you find that you have to resort to leash yanking, please take the time to learn how to train your dog out of pulling.

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