Canine Nutrition:

The Essential Vitamins and Minerals

Ensuring that dogs receive vitamins and minerals in their diet is crucial for their health and well-being. Just like humans’ dogs require a balanced diet to support bodily functions, growth, repair and the immune system.

You can feed your dog commercial, prescription or homemade food. Commercial diets should have all the necessary vitamins and minerals included in the food. Prescription diets may have less than required vitamins and minerals due to specific illnesses or diseases, this is why they are prescription diets. Homemade diets require either vitamin and mineral supplements or diet needs to be balanced by a nutritionist. Homemade diets can be either cooked or raw fed but raw fed diet is not typically suggested for diabetic dogs since their immune system is compromised.

Today I am going to go over the essential vitamins and minerals that a dog requires in their diet along with deficiencies, excess and sources of said vitamins and minerals. This will be a multi-part blog on Canine Nutrition.

Grab a cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage and let’s jump right in!

Before getting into the essential vitamins and minerals we should go over some basic terms that will be used throughout this blog series.

Nutrients

Nutrients are required for the body to grow and function properly, this includes metabolism, cellular repair, growth and maintenance. There are seven nutrients:

• Water - required for life and plays a crucial role in the proper functions of the body.
• Energy - also known as calories - is what feeds the body. Energy comes from protein, fats and carbohydrates.
• Protein - breaks down into amino acids.
• Fat - breaks down into fatty acids.
• Carbohydrates – simple and complex: break down into glucose. Glucose is the main source of energy used.
• Vitamins – fat soluble and water soluble; there are essential and non-essential vitamins.
• Minerals – minerals, trace minerals and electrolytes are required for growth, reproduction, repair and maintenance.

Macronutrients

Macronutrients provide energy and are:

• Protein
• Fat
• Carbohydrates

Micronutrients

Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals the body needs in very small amounts. There are water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins. Minerals include macro minerals, trace minerals and electrolytes.

Essential vitamins

There are eleven essential vitamins that a dog requires. There are fat-soluble vitamins and water-soluble vitamins.

The following are fat-soluble vitamins, below are their functions, deficiency, excess and sources of each vitamin.

Now for the water-soluble vitamins:

Now let’s look at essential minerals, this includes minerals, trace minerals and electrolytes.

Trace Minerals

Electrolytes

I know this was a lot of information to read but as you can see essential vitamins and minerals are very important in a dog’s diet. Take some time to digest all this information and come back to learn more next week about canine nutrition; we will learn about proteins and fats, also known as amino acids and fatty acids.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please start a conversation below.

For a printable version of this blog click here.

Until next week stay comfy, don’t stress and you got this!

Michelle Miller-Matlock

AAHA Certified Diabetes Educator

Founder/Administrator of DDO: Diabetic Dog Owners University

Administrator of Diabetic Dog Owners on Facebook

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