Author Description

Winner of the DWAA Maxwell Award for 2006 Best Care and Health Book Learn about the special needs of your performance dog and how to meet them with a sound nutrition program. An excellent resource for determining what food is best for your dog to enhance working ability. Explains how to read dog food labels and select appropriate food for your dog. Written by a veterinatian who is a long-time breeder and musher. What reviewers are saying... PAWS IN REVIEW Active dogs competing in sports (or those engaging in the physical and mental demands of service work.) burn more calories and have different energy needs than companion dogs. Performance-dog owners who want to keep their canine athletes at peak health and fitness need to understand their dogs' special nutritional needs. Written by veterinarian, Performance Dog Nutrition covers the dog's digestive system, various commercial diets (there's little information on home-prepared diets) dog food labels and nutrient evaluation. Through it includes valuable information for all dog owners-like a very clear explanation of a dog's digestive process, reading a dog-food label, and determining ingredients' digestibility-this book is really intended for the owner of performance dogs. Each chapter highlights how its contents apply to performance dogs, with whole chapters devoted to how food is converted to energy, the importance of fats, and carbohydrate needs specific to performance dogs. There is also information on the importance of water ("the most essential nutrient to the performance dog"), on conditioning, and a chapter recognizing physical problems (and solutions) in performance dogs. The final two chapters' help readers apply what they've learned in the book. "Practical Label Examples" describes three performance dogs and how to determine if a diet is right for them, and "Performance Dog Case Examples" offers a quartet of anecdotal problems, and how they were treated. In addition, case studies from the author's veterinary