Help your dog to live a long and healthy life by following the tips below:

Keeping your dog healthy isn’t as hard as it seems.  It’s all about taking care of them every day, making small changes to their routine and forming good habits.

• Feed your dog the best balanced diet you can afford.
• Keep them fit
• Brush their teeth, clean their ears, clip their claws and groom regularly
• Vaccinate and use tick, flea and worm treatments
• Considerate neutering

Feed a Good Balanced Healthy Diet

Our Amirene Grain Free dog food is a complete food. That means it contains all the protein, vitamins and minerals that a dog needs to build healthy bones, muscles and maintain good all round health. Our Amirene Senior food has a reduced fat/calorie contents and contains additional joint care minerals and vitamins. Amirene Puppy food contains extra protein and all the vitamins and minerals necessary for a fast growing puppy to build a robust skeletal framework and muscles. Feeding the right food for the life stage of your dog will certainly help in keeping your dog healthy.

Feeding your dog correctly will help to keep your dog healthy and free from a wide range of chronic diseases meaning less trips to the vets. Many of our customers tell us that after switching to our food they found their dogs didn’t need to visit the vet with stomach upsets.

A well-balanced diet isn’t just about the food in their bowl, it also includes treats that you give them.  Too many treats throughout the day can be damaging to their health and contributing to weight gain.

Keep Your Dog Fit and Healthy

Exercise keeps your dog healthy and happy, prevents weight gain, burns calories and can prevent digestive problems, boredom and stress. Although dog walking isn’t a high-intensity workout, it’s great for cardiovascular development, strengthening of muscles and bones and lowering blood pressure.

Rising dog obesity means that more dogs are now at risk of living shorter lives because of heart disease, breathing problems, hormonal disease and joint issues. So exercise is such an important factor in keeping your dog a suitable weight for the breed.

• Make sure your dog gets an adequate amount of exercise each day
• If you can’t walk your dog then you can play, take them swimming, teach them scent work or take them to agility classes.
• Try to avoid high impact exercise e.g. jumping as this will be harmful to a puppy’s joints.
• Never exercise your dog on a full stomach as it can cause life-threatening bloat. After eating give your dog an hour to rest and digest the meal before any exercise.

Groom Regularly

Brushing your dog’s coat will help to keep it in good condition and during moulting will help shed some of the fur. The frequency of grooming wil depend on your dog type with longer fur needing more regular grooming to ensure it doesn’t become matted. Grooming doesn’t take long but it does give you some bonding time with your dog and the opportunity to check for injury or parasites. of illness, injury and parasites. Clip your dogs claws regularly. Did you know that it you let them grow too long it can affect the bone structure in their paws and cause great discomfort.

Brush Your Dogs Teeth

Tooth decay and gum disease are common reasons for a dog to visit their vet. In fact, dogs are five times more likely to have gum disease than humans, partly because of their more alkaline mouth, but also because we clean our teeth. Brushing your dog’s teeth daily will help minimise bacteria, create healthy gums and keep them free from gum disease.

• If you start brushing their teeth when they are a puppy, they soon get used to it.
• Buy tooth-friendly toys and treats

Clean Their Ears

Ear infections are also a common health problem in dogs. Just as in humans infections are uncomfortable and painful. Dogs have a sharp bend along their ear canal, which makes an excellent breeding ground for bacteria and yeast. To help prevent ear infections you should regularly clean your dog’s ears. Massage the base of their ears for around 20 seconds, which softens and releases any material. After a brief ear massage, wipe the inside part of your dog’s ear flap several times with a cotton ball or wet wipe. Start at the entrance to the ear canal and move toward the tip of the ear, dragging any material away from the ear canal. Dry the ear gently with a towel afterwards.

• Avoid pushing anything into your dog’s ear canal in case it damages the ear or pushes particles deeper inside the ear.
• If your dog has very furry ears then you can trim some of the fur away and this will prevent moisture from being trapped in the ear.
• After swimming always ensure that you dry your dog’s ears.

Get Them Vaccinated

Vaccinations are a great way to keep your dog safe from some nasty infectious diseases, such as distemper, hepatitis, parvovirus and leptospirosis. Most dogs are vaccinated when they’re young and many owners continue to keep their immunity up with top-up booster vaccinations. Over time, your dog’s immunity to these diseases can fade. It’s important to either regularly vaccinate them or alternatively you can have their levels of immunity checked and only vaccinate if their immunity is getting low.

Dogs travelling abroad may need extra vaccinations so you will need to check online or speak to your vet about the best course of action.

Prevent and Treat Parasites

Parasite such as ticks, fleas and worms can make your dog very poorly. You should either regularly give your dog worming treatments or alternatively you can buy worm count kits online and only treat it they have worms. Use products to treat and prevent fleas and ticks.

• After walks in woods, fields etc check your dog over for signs of ticks and remove with a tick remover to ensure all of the tick is removed properly.
• Regularly groom your dog and check for signs of fleas.
• Look for signs of worms when you pick up your dog’s poo.

All of these tips will help you keep your dog healthy and a healthy dog is a happy dog! Further information in keeping your dog healthy is available on the PDSA website.