Proper healthcare for a dog is not only in taking the dog for medical checks at the clinic. It begins with routine hygiene and biosecurity measures that you put in place to ensure a clean environment.

Some of the tips to improve your dog’s health are listed below:

Exercise and calorie intake monitoring to prevent obesity

Lack of exercise is a popular cause of obesity in dogs. As an owner, it is important to pay attention to the hours your dog spends doing exercise daily. Half of the time, dogs that are not engaged in much activity daily become taciturn and destructive to the properties in the house. Other times, the dogs just become lazy and obese.

Another cause of obesity is overfeeding or feeding the dog indiscriminately. You are supposed to institute mealtimes that the dog gets accustomed to. This way, the dog knows when to expect food and doesn’t eat indiscriminately. Most owners, however, either feed anytime or overfeed the dogs, increasing the risks of obesity. Feeding dogs excessively with processed food can also cause obesity, as processed foods usually contain fat and oil in their ingredients.

Some ways to alleviate the risk of obesity include:

Regular, frequent exercise sessions with your dog.

Measure the feed you give the dog per day accurately before giving it and ensure the measurements align with the recommended standards.

Reduce the use of years to training sessions.

Use lightly processed diets to feed your dogs

Most dog owners use processed food for their dogs because they don’t have time to compou nd and prepare daily meals. There is, in fact, a major advantage of processed feed products.

There are also marked disadvantages of using the processed variety. Some of the brands have additives that are proven carcinogens; if the dog fails to metabolize these chemicals, it is at risk of developing cancer.

Also, the vigorous processes the raw ingredients are subjected to usually destroy some trace or highly reactive nutrients within them. This leads to an overall loss in the total nutritional value of the feed produced.

A lightly processed diet is prescribed as the best form for a dog diet. Better still if it is human-grade. Whatever the feed is, it must contain balanced portions of animal and plant products. For example, a simple rice-and-chicken mix, properly cooked in your kitchen to a homogenous state, is a perfect homemade meal for your dog.

Institute biosecurity measures

‘Prevention is better than cure.’ Don’t depend on medications to treat and manage diseases when they affect your dog. Simple hygienic practices that you follow will save you a lot in bills and stress when your pet is ill. Besides, the drugs administered usually have side effects, ranging from mild to severe, in your dog.

Some of these practices include:

Regularly cleaning your pet’s play and living area

House-training the dog

Including omega fatty acids, antioxidants, and multivitamin and minera l supplements in the dog’s diet

Regular exercise and massage for the joints t o promote full body flexibility

Vaccination

Vaccination is the only way to protect the dog against killer pathogens like Canine Distemper Virus, Canine Parvovirus, and Leptospira species. However, it is advisable to observe some principles while vaccinating your dog. Otherwise, the pathogens you intend to protect the dog against will infect the dog.

Those principles include:

Ensure that only healthy dogs are vaccinated. Dogs with an underlying illness are often susceptible to infection by these killer pathogens.

Give a three-to-four-week lag between vaccine doses. This period allows the immune system to build suitable antibodies against the pathogens inoculated.

Check the immunity of your dog before every vaccine dose. It is important to know whether the immune system is strong enough to withstand such pathogen load.

Following these health tips will help you reduce your dependence on medications and reduce the occurrence of illnesses in your dog.