Feeding Your English Springer Spaniel
Image by Alex Butler via Flickr
If you select an English Springer Spaniel as your family pet, it will be a dog of medium size that has a strong build, energetic, and very friendly. It makes a good watchdog, being protective of its master, and family members. These are intelligent dogs, which is usually easy to train but one must be firm and caring at the same time,while training the pet.
The training of the dog should actually begin when it is a puppy and this factor is to be kept in mind when you are visiting breeders and for buying your pet. That person and you can set the foundation for a happy, well-behaved dog.
One must also inquire about the feeding of the english springer spaniel.
Be sure to ask your breeder for tips on the best methods and methods of feeding since more unique systems work well with this breed.
In feeding your english springer spaniel, most owners have had good experience with fresh, lean meats, fruits, and vegetables. You should avoid feeding grapes and raisins because of a unique toxicity with many purebred dogs. In addition, many dogs are allergic to the corn, wheat, and soy in low-grade commercial foods, causing skin irritation and other problems because of these allergies.
That being said, it is a general consensus that there is no breed of dog which has a nutritional requirement for corn or wheat. Springers are known to have issues with ear infections and allergies. Both of these conditions have proven links to grains and a diet high in wheat and corn is quite possibly going to result in a dog that does have these issues. Dogs simply do not manufacture the digestive enzymes required to digest grains in sufficient quantities to be able to do it day after day year after year without overtaxing the pancreas and digestive tract and eventually resulting in skin, allergy, and ear problems.
Thousands of years of breeding has changed our domestic dogs from their original state, but for most dogs (Springers included), a diet of at least 75% meat and bone, with the rest made up of organ meat and vegetables in a digestible format is ideal. At four months of age, you could feed your dog dirt and he wouldn’t show any visible signs of deficiency. It can take years to see the adverse signs of a poor diet, but a healthy diet not only improves overall health, but prevents many of the age-related diseases that we see in our dogs now that were not present before commercial dog food became so prevalent.
Vitamin C supplementation is certainly not essential and can be harmful. Vitamin C from a natural source (vegetables, fruits) is not a problem. Dogs will use what they need and excrete the rest. Providing a high level of supplementation is what you want to avoid. Most of the premium dog foods I’ve looked at contain a small amount of vitamin C from natural vegetable sources. This should not pose any problem for your Springer, and can, in fact, guard against the formation of urinary stones, which is a common ailment in dogs fed a dry dog food. Some people are an avid raw feeder, because they believe it saved their dog’s life. Some have spent thousands of dollars at the vet for every ailment from stones to ear infections, to bad teeth, to digestive and skin issues. When they started the raw diet, they have not had to so much as clean the dog’s ears.
Not everyone is prepared to feed a raw diet, though, so if you are going to feed a dry dog food, you are far better off with the premium, grain-free brands than anything else on the market. Since most of these foods get their Vitamin C from the vegetable ingredients, you should not worry about the low levels. If you want to support the liver and kidneys, the use of herbs such as milk thistle for the liver.
Kidney health is maintained with good hydration. Dry food is the hardest on the kidneys and you can minimize the strain by moistening it with spring water or sodium-free broth. A poor quality food will harm the liver and kidneys far more over time than a good quality (premium) food.
When considering a premium dog food, it is important to look at the first 5 ingredients and a protein should be listed first and there should not be any corn or wheat by-product listed.
