Hello, welcome.
Last week I spoke of the importance of balance in your dog’s week of walks - how best to meet both their intrinsic breed needs AND their emotional needs.
Today, I wanted to delve into your dog’s life at home. There’s plenty of other areas we need to ensure are kept well-balanced, let’s look at just a few.
Diet.
Talking about what your dog eats can be an emotive conversation. But as with all choices for our dogs, it’s what’s best for both you and your dog. What fits your budget, your lifestyle, your dog’s physical and emotional needs.
Balance when it comes to our dogs food doesn’t have to happen every day. You might feed venison one day, fish the next. Green leafy veg in one meal and have veg-free meal another time. Balance is important over time - whatever kind of diet you’re feeding your dog.
It can be useful to speak with a canine nutritionist you trust about what you’re feeding. Just because a company declares their recipe ‘complete’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s meeting the nutritional requirements for your individual dog.
Stimulation.
As we discussed in relation to walks, too many exciting experiences can sometimes be a negative thing for your dog. Think about the sort of stimulation they encounter at home. Do you have noisy neighbours or building work taking place? Do people walk past your windows on a regular basis or is their a local cat who loves to parade past a glass panel in your front door? Do you have visitors coming and going - lots of fun, but not much downtime? Do you have a young family so there’s not many quiet periods of the day? Do they attend doggy daycare and are on the go all day long?
Tracking the disturbances your dog encounters each day, then monitoring their behaviour can be really useful to see if there’s any tie-in to how your dog responds. Perhaps the day after your visitors leave, your dog appears more barky. Or when building work is taking place, they’re less inclined to eat their food. Journalling for your dog is something I encourage all my behaviour clients to do - as without the data, we just don’t know what’s creating the biggest impact for our dog.
Sleep and Rest.
You’ll have heard this one from me before…. the better quality rest and sleep your dog is able to enjoy, the more emotionally well they will be. Dogs are often limited when it comes to achieving the quality downtime they need. All those stimulation examples I mentioned above could be impacting your dog’s ability to switch off. Do they need to be on ‘neighbourhood watch’? Do they struggle to stay in sleep mode when you get up to move around your home? I don’t say this lightly that I believe one of the biggest impacting areas affecting dog behaviour (2nd in line after illness and pain) is a lack of quality sleep.
How much rest does your dog get? Do you know? If not, start jotting down the hours over a couple of weeks and see if they’re getting enough.
I hope you can see how important balance is in all areas of your dog’s life - just as it is for yourself.
Until next time, enjoy a balanced life!
Caroline
so wise, and suggests so many ways we can make our dogs' life better. Thanks, Caroline