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Freedom from overfeeding may sound totally counterintuitive, but too much food is unhealthy, and poor health is a freedom inhibitor. Being overweight can have a whole range of negative health effects for dogs. It can cause inflammation, heart disease, arthritis, ligament and muscle injuries, breathing problems, and liver disease, all of which can compromise a dog’s health just as they do ours. It can make it less enjoyable for dogs to walk, run, and play and can thus reduce the overall quality of life.
It’s estimated that more than half of all dogs in the United States and the United Kingdom are overweight. Veterinarians talk about the canine obesity crisis in the same dire terms that public health experts talk about the human obesity crisis. Many consider obesity to be one of the top welfare concerns for pets. It’s no coincidence that dogs and people have grown fat together: We and our dogs eat a lot of junk food, we eat more than we need, and we don’t get enough physical exercise. Overfeeding is a form of mistreatment, and it can have serious consequences. Jessica heard a story from her local shelter about a dog who was adopted and brought back three months later after having gained forty pounds. He had to become part of the foster program; he needed a temporary home where he could be given extra physical exercise and brought back to a healthy weight before being adopted by another family.
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Like humans, dogs can be both overfed and undernourished at the same time. Plenty of doggy “junk food” is available, such as the Pup-Peroni, Snausages, and Pup Corn dog treats lining pet store shelves, smartly packaged to appeal to human consumers. As with humans, a little bit of junk food probably won’t shorten your dog’s lifespan, but no one should live on donuts alone.
Think about what you put in your dog’s mouth just as you would think about what you put in your child’s mouth. Consider the nutritional profile of your dog’s food, not just the price, since as a rule, you get what you pay for. A great deal of the so-called food on the market is garbage. That said, a wide range of moderately priced high-quality foods are available. Do research and talk with your veterinarian about your dog’s specific nutritional needs, so you can find a food that provides appropriate nutrition and, of course, that your dog enjoys. Many pet stores will allow you to return food products if your dog doesn’t like them, so you and your dog can experiment.
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Finally, if you have a dog who is a little wide around the belly, measure his or her food and include snacks in your overall calorie calculations. “Eyeballing” a half cup of kibble is deceptively hard — try it and see how accurate or inaccurate you are. If you offer an overweight dog table scraps, feed less at mealtime or make the table scraps part of their meal. For dogs who are insatiable, splitting the allotted food for the day into several smaller meals can help keep them feeling more satisfied. For example, now that Maya is a senior citizen, she eats four small meals a day. She has a thyroid condition that makes her feel very hungry, and the time between meals seems very long to her. There is no rule about only feeding dogs once or twice a day. Just make sure to measure out the day’s food carefully so that you don’t feed more than is healthy.
Individual dogs obviously vary in what they need and how they process food. If you are feeding processed kibble or canned food, keep in mind that the feeding instructions on the back of a bag of dog food won’t necessarily be exactly right for your dog. The “amount to feed” guidelines given by dog food manufacturers are generally bloated. Their goal, after all, is to sell more food.
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Food and feeding also can be emotionally complicated. For example, the food your dog eats can affect his or her mood and some dogs are stress eaters. Furthermore, for many people and dogs, food is love. Humans use food and feeding to build trust and attachment with their dog. And dogs, for their part, are very skilled at tugging at our heartstrings, looking longingly at us as though they are truly starving to death, even if they just ate half an hour ago. It can feel cruel to deprive hungry dogs of what they really want — namely, more food! But we don’t do dogs any favors by allowing them to become overweight. Because we control their diet, it is our responsibility to keep them at a healthy weight.
Finally, here are two interesting research tidbits about food and feeding. First, Labrador retrievers have a reputation for being food hogs. Apparently, there is a reason for this: Labs have a genetic mutation that makes them exceedingly hungry. And second, if your dog isn’t “weight compromised,” you could add a little fat to their diet, and it might have a surprising side effect: When dogs eat more fat than protein, their sense of smell may improve.
Also from Unleashing Your Dog:
No matter how cushy their lives, dogs live on our terms. They compromise their freedom and instinctual pleasure, as well as their innate strategies for coping with stress and anxiety, in exchange for the love, comfort, and care they get from us. But it is possible to let dogs be dogs without wreaking havoc on our lives, as biologist Marc Bekoff and bioethicist Jessica Pierce show in this fascinating book. They begin by illuminating the true nature of dogs and helping us “walk in their paws.” They reveal what smell, taste, touch, sight, and hearing mean to dogs and then guide readers through everyday ways of enhancing dogs’ freedom in safe, mutually happy ways. The rewards, they show, are great for dog and human alike.
Excerpted from the book Unleashing Your Dog: A Field Guide to Giving Your Canine Companion the Best Life Possible. Copyright ©2019 by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce. Printed with permission from New World Library.