Why you must provide a nutritious diet for your labrador

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It’s essential that a dog’s diet has the correct balance of nutrients their body needs to work to the best of its ability. And dogs that don’t eat a healthy and balanced diet can suffer a variety of health issues.

In the wild, dogs would hunt and scavenge to fulfill their dietary requirements. But the modern dog relies solely on their owner to provide them all they need. So the provision of a quality, balanced and nutritious diet is the duty of any responsible owner.

When people think of malnutrition, it’s usually of thin and bony looking animals, neglected by their owners. But this isn’t always the case.

There are well cared for dogs in very loving homes that suffer malnutrition. But not from a lack of being fed and provided for, rather from a lack of balancing the nutrients in the food that they are given.

It’s also a fact that many malnourished dogs are actually overfed instead of underfed which is still a form of malnutrition and just as bad for health.

So malnutrition most often comes from their owners not having sufficient knowledge about canine nutrition and the balance of different nutrients they need to provide rather than under-providing and starving their dogs.

So it’s important you take a little time to study and learn about your Labradors dietary needs, learn how to spot the symptoms of malnutrition and how to go about avoiding it.

Contents & Quick Navigation

• 1 What Should A Labrador Eat?
• 2 How Can We Most Easily Meet Our Labs Nutritional Requirements?
• 3 What Is Malnutrition?
• 4 Obesity Is A Form Of Malnutrition!
• 5 Symptoms Of Malnutrition

• 5.1 Weight Loss / Being Thin
• 5.2 Tiredness And A Lack Of Love For Life
• 5.3 Digestive Problems
• 5.4 Coat And Skin Problems
• 5.5 Increased Risk Of Illness And Slower Recovery
• 5.6 Other Possible Problems Caused By Malnutrition

What Should A Labrador Eat?

Although mostly described as ‘opportunistic carnivorous scavengers’, dogs aren’t true obligate carnivores and don’t thrive as well as they could if given only a 100% purely meat diet.

Eating excessive amounts of and especially a 100% protein diet is totally unnecessary and can even be detrimental to health in dogs.

They have slight omnivorous eating habits and do best when eating a diet that consists of balanced proportions of proteins, fats, carbs, vitamins, minerals and water.

Wild canines will mostly gorge on meat when they hunt, but they will also supplement their diet with berries, fruits and other scraps they find scavenging, as well as plant matter ingested by eating the intestines of their prey.

We need to replicate this balance they would have naturally had. But how do we do this?

How Can We Most Easily Meet Our Labs Nutritional Requirements?

Commercial dog food. Yes, it’s that simple.

There is of course the alternative of making home-made food, researching a Labradors nutritional requirements and carefully measuring out and planning recipes. But in today’s busy world, most people just don’t have the time to dedicate to this.

So you can buy a commercial dog food and that’s definitely the easiest way, is more reliably nutritional in the correct quantities and infinitely more convenient.

The manufacturers of dog food have created feeds that can be given as a dogs complete, balanced and only source of food without ever having to add any supplements. When looking for a commercial dog food, you just have to make sure it’s labelled as ‘complete and balanced nutrition’.

Complete means it contains all the necessary nutrients a dog needs.

Balanced means the nutrients are present in just the right proportions when compared to each other. This is vitally important because it affects the way nutrients can be used by the body. Not enough or too much of one nutrient may prevent the body from effectively using another.

And the ‘complete and balanced’ label is important and reassuring because there are laws and regulatory bodies that mean a pet food manufacturer simply cannot claim this unless it’s absolutely true.

So a food carrying this label guarantees you are providing all the nutrients your Labrador needs and in the correct proportions. And the absence of this labeling almost certainly means that you aren’t and your dog could suffer malnutrition.

What Is Malnutrition?

It’s when the health of an animal is compromised or the onset of sickness is caused by an animal not eating enough food, or not eating the right nutrients in balanced proportions.

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This can mean not enough of a particular nutrient or in many cases…and this is what most people fail to realize…too much of a particular nutrient in the diet.

Almost everybody thinks of malnutrition as just not eating enough. But in most first-world and especially western societies, malnutrition in pets is usually caused by over-feeding, by over-nutrition and excessive intake of nutrients in an unbalanced way.

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Your Labrador relies on you to take care of every aspect of their health and well-being. So do the best you can for them and provide them the correct nutrition.

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