As seen in the April 2012 issue of Clean Run magazine.

We all want our dogs to live long, healthy, and happy lives. This quest causes responsible dog owners to research nutrition in foods and supplements. This is especially important for those who have dogs that compete or work. Nowadays, there are so many choices and so many claims it’s tough to know what’s the best product to buy for your dog. There’s just no reason to purchase a supplement that does not contain everything your dog needs to stay healthy and vibrant.

Vitamins and minerals are the tools that maintain and clean out your dog’s cells. Your dog’s body has trillions of cells in it that make up tissues which in turn make organs. A cell can be compared to a microscopic house that‘s always under construction.

Vitamins and minerals are the hammers, mops, detergent, and nails that keep the house clean and in working order. They run all of the metabolic processes and are the tools the cells use to maintain good health every single day. The tools available to your dog need to be complete and balanced so you need to know how to compare labels and understand ingredients so that you can purchase a quality supplement.Vitamins and minerals work together and if they’re not balanced, containing all the ingredients needed to get the job done, the job simply doesn’t get done.

First of all, the milligrams (mg), micrograms (mcg) and International Units (IU) should be listed next to the ingredient on the label. This tells you exactly what’s in the bottle. The source of the ingredient and the quality of the ingredient is also an important factor because the vitamins and minerals need to be in a form that your dog can assimilate and absorb. For example, calcium is best absorbed from an acidic formulation or as a water-soluble calcium from leafy greens. Most people don’t know this, but ingredients can vary in their activity level. As one example, cranberry can have activity levels ranging from 10% to 70% but the milligrams noted on the bottle will be the same. If one bottle states 50 mg of cranberry and that ingredient is 70% active, it’s that much better than a bottle with 50 mg of 10% active cranberry. The rub is that you can’t discern this from a label. The best way to get around this is to purchase from a reputable company and/or look at the difference the product makes in your pet’s health and vitality.

Brewer’s Yeast, an inexpensive by-product of the beer brewing industry, is often used for B vitamin content. I don’t believe it’s a quality source of these important vitamins and it is also high on the list of common allergens for dogs. Dogs like the taste of it and it is not expensive to use so it’s present in many formulations.

Another reason that the mix should be complete and balanced is because certain vitamins and minerals help each other work much more efficiently. Vitamin E works much better when vitamin C is in the mix, Selenium and Vitamin E work together to prevent cancer, and calcium needs magnesium and active Vitamin D3 to work effectively. If a few inexpensive ingredients are placed together but are incomplete, the cells are left at a disadvantage.

The best supplement would be one designed with the canine species specific needs in mind that also provides enough supplementation to help prevent common diseases and detoxify from everyday environmental toxins. Dogs, unlike humans, can create their own Vitamin C. But in today’s toxic world some extra C in a supplement only helps to detoxify chemicals and pesticides and also boosts the immune system.

For many years I used human vitamins in my practice because I appreciated the quality of the ingredients and how complete and carefully balanced they were. The problem was always the small dogs for whom the pills were too big; they are veteran, expert pill-finders and pill-spitters. Finally, in frustration, I used a new nanotechnology to create a supplement that contained all human-grade balanced and complete vitamins and minerals and super-foods in a special formulation that tasted like a treat. To my delight, the formulation created even more dramatic changes than the high- quality human vitamin. That proved my hypothesis: our dogs were getting so much disease and cancer because they were not getting all the tools they needed. Every dog deserves a healthy and long life and this is why supplementation is so very important.

Dr. Deva Khalsa, VMD