When it comes to owning a dog, it is so important to ensure that they are as healthy as possible. Maintaining the health of a dog can come in many forms, from regular exercise, and mental stimulation, to grooming them regularly and brushing their teeth.
A healthy gut is critical for a dog, and can help to keep the balance within their body. Just how it is critical for us to eat a healthy and well-balanced diet, this is significant for a dog too. Without it, their gut health can become compromised.
In this article, we will be chatting you through 7 tips you will want to implement to help maintain a healthier gut for your dog. They are all small changes, but ones that will make a great deal of difference.
1. The Correct Diet
To begin with, you will always need to ensure that your dog is eating the correct diet. This will have a big impact on its overall gut health. If your dog is eating unhealthy food that is full of additives, fillers and unhealthy carbohydrates, it makes the food far more difficult to digest.
In turn, this can lead to stomach and intestinal problems over time, especially if the dog has an allergy to any of these ingredients. While some people will choose to feed raw food to their dog as an alternative, you can also try high-protein dry food that is grain-free and contains only natural ingredients.
2. Regular Worming Treatment
Keeping up with worming and anti-parasite treatment is so important when it comes to maintaining a healthy gut for your dog. Ideally, a dog should be treated for worms with all natural dog wormer every three months, to ensure that any infection is eradicated.
If left untreated, worms can cause stomach and digestive issues, and your dog can become seriously ill. It is easy to treat, and the treatment is not too expensive to purchase.
3. Supplements
If your dog is having gut issues, then it is useful to look into supplements. These will help to improve its overall health. Additions to food such as Ashwagandha can be fantastic, as can dog digestive enzymes. There are many options to consider on the market that can be useful.
4. Prebiotics
In addition to supplements, prebiotics are certainly useful to give to your dog when aiming for a healthier gut. Prebiotics increase the amount of good bacteria that can be found in the dog’s gut, which will then help to improve the flow of the digestive system, and will help to decrease any potential inflammation. Some common probiotics that are safe to give to dogs include soybeans and chicory root.
5. Probiotics
Probiotics are also microbes that are healthy and useful for your dog’s gut. They are particularly useful when it comes to helping prevent infections, and they will help to maintain a healthy gut.
Probiotics can sometimes be found in dog food, but alternatively it can be purchased as a supplement too. Some examples of probiotics include kefir and yogurt that contain live cultures.
6. Exercise and Mental Stimulation
A lot of dog owners tend to underestimate how much exercise and mental stimulation can have on a dog. While all dog owners are aware of the benefits of exercise and mental stimulation for a dog’s fitness and wellbeing, they may not realize that it can affect a dog’s gut too. Check out How to Help Your Dog Battle Anxiety And Stress?
Regular exercise helps to keep the digestive system working as it should, and it can also help to improve any stress, which is another factor that can have an impact on a dog’s gut. It is so important that a dog receives daily exercise, and enough mental stimulation.
7. Relieving Stress
As discussed, stress can have a big impact on a dog’s gut. This is why it is so important to reduce stress as much as possible. While this can be done through exercise and mental stimulation, in some cases this is not enough.
You will want to focus on creating a stress-free environment for your dog, and carry out training sessions that are specifically designed at targeting what is making your dog anxious or stressed. This will have a huge impact on a dog’s digestive health. Visit here to get more helpful hints.
Summary
These are the 7 best tips to maintaining a healthier gut for your dog. They are all easy steps to implement, and can make a great deal of difference when it comes to your dog’s health.