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Sure, it’s easy enough to run to Target once every few weeks, pick up that giant bag of food, and pour a scoop or two into your buddy’s dish, but is it really the best thing for him? Dogs’ diets can be as complex as ours, and it’s important to hit all of the vital nutritional bases.

Lack of the proper vitamins and nutrients can lead to upset stomachs, skin problems, brittle bones, obesity, and even – in the worst cases – death. Proper pup nutrition is the building block of his overall health. Without the right nutrition and exercise, his defenses against disease and disorders are weakened. Educate yourself about the ABCs of poochie health by reading on!

What does my dog need from food?
As you most likely learned in primary school, dogs are carnivores. After centuries of domestication, dogs still enjoy living out the illusion that they are the wolves from whom they were naturally selected. They hunt prey (unfortunately for Kitty), love their bacon and sausage treats, and love the solid crunch of chewing bones or other hard toys. Yet a diet of meat alone is not ideal for your dog.

While meat provides most of the crucial nutritional elements to help provide energy and enhance bone growth like protein, fat, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals, your pooch’s diet should also include some amount of fiber to help his body digest his food.

Just as in your own body, an overdose or deficiency of any given nutrient, vitamin, or mineral can cause reactions or illness in your dog. We’ll discuss the ins and outs of vitamin supplements later in the chapter, but you should be generally aware of what amount of each nutrient is ideal for your dog and select his food accordingly. Decent guidelines for nutrition are the percentages above.

Check the sides and back of your dry food bag and you should be able to find the nutritional content fairly easily. If not, give the manufacturer a call and ask them to provide you with the information. If your dog is a sucker for moist food, you’ll find an adjustable formula later in the section.

Should I feed him dry food, canned food, or a mixture?
Walk down the pet aisle in the grocery or pet store and you’ll be able to tell instantly what type of food is the favorite among pups. Commercial dry food is cost-effective, easy to measure, comes in a wide variety of flavors and types, and, as your dog would tell you if he could, feels nice on his teeth and gums and makes fun noises when he bites down. It works well for millions of dogs.

Canned food, on the other hand, is vacuum sealed and therefore doesn’t contain any preservatives. Some dogs love the meatier taste and consistency, which is closer to what they would enjoy in the wild. Canned foods often contain the same amount of nutrition as dry food, but they don’t have the same dental benefits as dry food, they can be more expensive, and serving them requires more than just a scoop.

If you’re the average dog owner, your dog is much less a pet and far more a member of your family. You delight in his silly little expressions, love taking her to the park every weekend, and snuggle with him for naps. If you’re one of the more neurotic dog owners, you take her for manicures, dress him in sweaters and pants, drop her off for days at the doggie day spa, and spend more on his bed than on your own. Sure, she pulled all of the toilet paper off the roll last week just to see what happened, he demolishes your furniture once in a while, and sometimes you just don’t know why she does of the things she does, but he or she is still your baby. Bad moods pass and moments of mischievous behavior are quickly eclipsed by those big, wide, brown eyes staring up at you adoringly.

But what if something happened to your precious pooch? Would you know what to do? Could you help her recover from shock? Do you know the warning signs of the more major diseases and disorders?

Without seeming too dramatic, that knowledge can mean the difference between life and death for your pup. If you don’t get your poochie to a veterinarian soon enough, some diseases can be debilitating or even fatal.

But you’ve tried reading those other reference books and they were all “blah blah blah” boredom, right? This one’s different. It’s not a complete encyclopedia of canine anatomy and biology and doesn’t read like one, so you can make it through the whole book rather than letting it sit on the shelf until you run into an emergency. And really, do you want to be flipping through the index of a reference book when your dog is choking?

You won’t find exotic and uncommon diseases here, but you will find conditions and illnesses that crop up in canines on a regular basis. With fun facts and quick tips, this is one manual you can read all the way through without waking up to a drool-stained keyboard thirty minutes after beginning. Phrased as questions and answers rather than a lecture, you should be able to find the solutions to most of the basic health dilemmas you encounter with your dog. And for emergencies, flip directly to the last chapter to find information about choking, shock, bleeding, and other urgent problems.

So read on, enjoy, and keep that precious pup happy and healthy!