Health considerations, Part II -
​A Resource Guide

What you feed your puppy and adult dog and the kinds of chemicals you use in your home and yard have important ramifications for your dog's health.  Being aware of what to avoid will help you make good consumer choices.  Ultimately, you are responsible for the care of your puppy from the time you take it home until the end of its life.  This means providing an excellent diet and a toxin-free environment, appropriate veterinary care for your dog via annual health screens, periodic vaccinations and/or titering, and rehabilitation care after injuries or surgeries.  Veterinary care can be expensive and owners should be prepared to either set aside funds in a pet care fund/account or to purchase an insurance plan for their puppy.  Insurance plans vary considerably in what they provide and policy prices also vary depending on the age at which you insure your dog, the kind of deductible you choose, and the zip code in which you live.  For a comprehensive comparison among the insurance plans available, please click here.  This site also has a nice comparison that is state-by-state.  Healthy Paws has the best reviews and is one of the least expensive plans with coverage equal to or greater than more expensive.

Food & Importance of
​Proper Weight

Generally when born, PWD puppies are under a pound.  In their first year, they can grow from this <1 lb to, depending on sex, 40-60 lbs.  That is a 40- to 60-fold increase in weight in just 12 months! -- a phenomenal growth rate when compared to us humans.  This rapid growth rate means that bones, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage must change rapidly; therefore, nutritional imbalances as well as improper exercise leading to improper stresses on joints can cause and/or exacerbate genetic propensities for various types of joint disorders.  So it is important that you understand how food and exercise will affect your puppy during this first year and how you can help set the stage for a healthy adult dog.  All of our puppy owners will go home with an exercise guidebook for the first year of their puppy's life that will help to ensure that owners do not introduce undue stresses onto their puppy's bones and joints to minimize any possible injuries and/or abnormal growth patterns.  An additional guide is available here from Avidog/Zink ventures for those who do not have access to the Puppy Culture exercise guidebook.

Studies examining feeding schedules in puppies indicate that those puppies that are free-fed as much as they desire (i.e., bowl is left down all day long with food in it), will overeat and grow too fast and this will cause joint problems later on.  In contrast, dogs fed a restricted diet (both on a particular schedule and restricted in terms of how much was fed), had fewer joint issues later in life and were at lower risk for developing hip dysplasia.  It is important to feed your new puppy a high quality puppy food and to not add additional supplements; if you choose your food well, those supplements are not only unnecessary, but could also be dangerous for the growing animal.  Young puppies may require 3 to 4 small meals a day of a puppy formula food that has the proper nutrition and mineral load for growth; by 6 months, you should be able to transition to 2 meals a day and by 9 to 12 months, you should be able to transition to an adult feed or an "all life stages" feed.  Watch Dr. Karen Becker's, DVM, video for an excellent discussion of proper feeding of puppies.  

So how do you know if you are overfeeding and if your puppy is too fat?  Well there are several ways to tell.  First, a fat plump puppy is NOT healthy.  Second, you should be able to touch the sides of your puppy's chest area and easily feel the ribs without having to press in.  Third, you can use the graphics below to determine if your dog is overweight, underweight, or just right by looking at the shape of the body.  Fourth, you can also run your hands down your puppy's body to see if his or her waist tucks in.  Watch this video to see how to do a hands on assessment of your puppy.  By keeping both your puppy and your adult dog at a proper weight and restricting diet to a specific schedule of feeding, you can not only help your dog avoid debilitating joint diseases, but you can also prolong your dog's lifespan.

Below are several links to articles that will help you understand how diet restriction helps your puppy grow properly and live longer.

1. Kealy et al. 1992.  Effects of limited food consumption on the incidence of hip dysplasia in growing dogs.
2. Richardson, 1992.  The role of nutrition in canine hip dysplasia.
3. Smith et al. 2006.  Lifelong diet restriction and radiographic evidence of osteoarthritis of the hip joint in dogs.
4. Lawler et al. 2008.  Diet restriction and ageing in the dog:  major observations over two decades.
5. Beuchat 2015.  The 10 most important things to know about canine hip dysplasia.   
6. World Small Animal Veterinary Association 2011.  Nutritional Assessment Guidelines.
7. Dog Food Advisor's Puppy Food Reviews  (also has Adult Food Reviews and a listing of all food recalls and is useful for reference throughout the life of your dog).
8. Dr. Jean Dodd's blog discusses the current concern over taurine-deficient mediated cardiomyopathy and various "boutique" grain-free kibbles.  We strongly RECOMMEND that you read her updates on this topic and her statement analysis of the current research.

Be aware that just because your dog is of an appropriate weight and shape, it does not mean your dog is physically fit.  Regular exercise that targets all major muscle groups is needed for true fitness.  This INFOGRAPHIC can help you understand the muscle condition of your dog to help you determine whether your dog is physically fit.  Taking your dog for hikes, bike rides, and swimming are some of the best ways to get and keep your dog in shape.  Fitness classes are also increasingly offered at training facilities nowadays.

Environmental Exposures
​

The environment of your puppy consists of everything that he or she will be exposed to in your house, your car, and your yard, as well as when you eventually take your older puppy out for walks in public and/or in stores.  When you attend puppy classes, the facility to which you go will also have environmental influences.

So, when you think about the environment, you should be thinking about the chemicals you have in your house for cleaning purposes, the soaps and shampoos that you might use on your puppy, whatever you place on your yard lawns or ground-cover in terms of fertilizer, pH balancers, and pesticides, the type of surfaces that your puppy will touch with his or her paws (wood, tile, carpet, asphalt, concrete, linoleum, dirt, leaf litter, etc.),  It will also include the things in which you store your puppy's food (plastic bins, metal bins), the type of bowls you use (metal, plastic), the toys that your puppy will tug and chew, and if you feed canned food, the liners in the cans.  All of these things can influence not only your puppy's health, but also your own!  

Be aware that as with humans, how adults respond to chemicals is very different from how growing "babies" respond, so you want to make sure your puppy's environment is as chemically clean of toxins as possible and, obviously, it would be best to keep the environmental as toxin-free as possible even after adulthood.

We don't have a lot of choice in how dog food is packaged, but understand that plastic packaging often leaches chemicals into food and cans are usually lined with a BPA containing plastic (those that are BPA Free will say so).  Metal or glass containers are preferable for food storage when possible.  Under no circumstances do you want to be using products like RoundUp (a carcinogen) to control weeds on your lawn and you want to minimize the use of chemical fertilizers as much as possible.  If you love a lush, green, golf-course like lawn, then a PWD is NOT the dog for you -- they love to run, they make race-courses in your yard, and they love to eat greens.  

You also want to be careful of the products you use on your dog.  Shampoos with "fragrance" often have phthalates and parabens present to lock the fragrance into the soap and to make it stick to your dog's hair.  Phthalates are a softening chemical that are known "gender benders" -- endocrine disruptors and these should be avoided.  You will also find phthalates in plastic toys that feel like softened rubber and should not present these to your puppy.  And toss out those plug-in "air fresheners" -- they are highly irritating and unsafe for your pets.  The chemicals present in these toys and smelly products are not required to be labeled , but if you see the word "fragrance", that means they are usually present.

Flooring can also be problematic.  Some of the wood-like products out there (mostly in discount stores like Lumber Liquidators) are full of formaldehyde that will out-gas after you lay down the floor.  Some carpets have flame retardant chemicals in them that can be absorbed over the skin.

Finally, you will find that most PWDs like vegetables and even some fruits:  broccoli, carrots, the bottoms of asparagus, peas and green beans, strawberries, blueberries, apples, and bananas.  Be sure to buy organic for these products as you do not want your puppy and adult to be ingesting pesticide chemicals that are nearly impossible to remove with washing.  If you grow these items in your garden, you will want to avoid using chemical pesticides and should resort to more eco-friendly and natural forms of pest control.  Likewise, you want to minimize exposure to toxic compounds found in tick and flea products, especially since there are now many effective natural repellents to use instead.

A good source for determining what kinds of products you might want to buy for cleaning and for personal use can be found at www.ewg.org -- they provide a number of excellent consumer guides.  Additional pet friendly cleaning products can be found here and a guide to good "green" products and what you should look for in such products is here.  For laundry, we LOVE Dizolve and Breezo, both eco-friendly products that come in minimal packaging and can be bought online.

If you live in a tick and flea infested area, we suggest you put out tick tubes in the early spring -- place them just outside of your fence far enough away that your dog or cat can't get to them.  A tick tube can be made of a paper toilet roll stuffed with lint from your dryer that has been soaked in permethrin -- the mice will take the lint to use in their nests and this will kill off the ticks and fleas that they carry (white-footed mice are the major vector that spread ticks around).  You can also spray Wondercide on your dog before taking him or her for walks in areas where ticks and fleas are likely.  This is preferable to using a product like Frontline.  Some people have had luck with Seresto or Preventic collars but we don't recommend leaving them on your dog for long periods of time and you should NOT use these on puppies at all.  We do not recommend using any ingestible chews for flea or tick control.  A comprehensive guide on ticks is available HERE.

For heartworm control, we recommend Interceptor Plus or the original Interceptor.  Heartworm preventative/control agents do not need to be used year 'round.  Here in the Northeast U.S., the season is generally from June to November so you can take your dog off the preventative from December to April or May and retest annually before starting again.    See this guide for more information about how to properly dose your dog and what side effects might be exhibited with each brand of heartworm medication.

What you feed your dog is very important and can affect your dog's health.  You can read more about the importance of ingredients here.  We have found that our dogs thrive on several formulated feeds and recommend that you feed these as well (see below) and we rotate amongst these brands regularly and also regularly rotate proteins (red meat, fowl, fish, etc.).  NOTE:  Recent concern about "grain-free" kibbles and taurine-deficient mediated dilated cardiomyopathy has created a huge amount of confusion about what kind of feed to buy for your puppy and dog.  We strongly RECOMMEND that you read updates on this topic and the statement from Dr. Jean Dodd's about the testing that is ongoing on this subject to understand what the results of current tests mean.  We also strongly recommend that you avoid any foods with corn in them as "feed corn" is generally highly polluted with glyphosate (main ingredient in Round-Up and a carcinogen) and often is also infiltrated with molds.  Wheats and barleys also typically are sprayed with glyphosate before harvest,  so you might want to avoid those as well unless you find a product that is both organic and GMO-free and/or sources its wheat/grains from an EU country (like Farmina brands) or uses an ancient grain that is not massed produced and treated like standard grains.