Winter Nutrition Tips for a Healthy Dog
Winter has already set in with moving summer away. The cold season not only changes the landscape to a complete white canvas, but also has a lot of effect on your pooch’s body. With the starting of cold weather, you need to look into the diet of your furry friend, bringing in certain changes according to the season. Pet parents are not aware what significant alterations they have to do for their pet’s health.
Switching to a healthy nutritional diet during winter is an important ritual that you need to perform. This greatly helps your dog or cat to stay active and healthy during winter. Find here the top nutritional tips you can follow to help your pet stay healthy and enjoy the fun of snow.
Stop Frozen Dinners
During winter, pets need more energy to stay warm as it’s cold outside. They require more amount of food than summer. Moreover, the outside animals eat more during snow season. Frozen treats may be fun to them but never feast your pet with these items, as they are quite harmful for their body system.
Similarly, providing ice pops might be funky but that icy treat is not to suffice his water requirement. Your pet requires fresh running water, which plays an essential part to keep them healthy. Keep a look on water reservoir you are providing to your pet. Ensure to supply fresh and clean water twice a day to your pooch.
Winter Diet
Indoor animals have different dietary needs in cold months. During winter, they conserve energy by sleeping for longer hours. Going for a walk, playing, exercising or outdoor activities also become less for your dogs and cats. Therefore, they need to adjust the amount of food accordingly. You don’t want your furry pal to overweight.
On the contrary, outdoor pets spend most of their time outdoors in the cold month and thus, burn more calories to keep themselves warm. Therefore, compared to indoor pets, they require more amount of food. If your pet is an outdoor fan, make sure you provide an additional amount of 25 to 50 per cent of diet to cover up his calorie needs.
Extra Supplements
To keep winter illnesses at bay, a good nutritional supplement is always beneficial for your four-legged companion. Mostly commercial food for dogs and cats claim to be balanced and complete. But, most of the times, pets do not get all the required nutrients for a healthy well-being. Giving nutritional supplements help to complete their diet apart from improving their immune system. Especially, providing glucosamine and chondroitin supplements to old pets during winter help them to combat arthritis problem that arises due to cold.
Changing Diets
It’s always a good idea to provide your pet the best nutrition possible. If you are thinking to change the diet of your pooch in order to provide those extra calories or vital nutrients, then remember this. Abruptly changing the diet or switching the dog or cat feed, can disturb his/her digestive system causing diarrhea or vomiting. Sometimes, your pet may also not like the new feed. To avoid such situations, the best way is to introduce the new diet gradually. Just mixing the new feed with old one and then gradually taking your pooch onto the new feed is an easy way.
Wintering with your pet is the most beautiful experience if you follow the best nutritional tips to keep your pet healthy during this frosty season. Discuss with us what other things you take care of to keep your furry pals healthy and happy during snow weather.