What If You Could Lengthen Your Dog’s Life?

More years to love and be loved!

The Right Start “The moment a new dog enters your life, you start making choices about how to care for it,” writes Ted Kerasote in Pukka's Promise: The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs, “but much of the common advice you hear isn't necessarily the best for a dog, even when it comes from your local vet. Advances in veterinary medicine are providing new tools that can give our dogs healthier, longer lives.”

More years to love and be loved!

The Ergonomic Dog – Whether you go to a shelter or a breeder for your new dog, Kerasote discovered that you should look for the same thing: “a dog with a reasonably long nose so the dog can breathe and legs that are longish so the dog can run, even it's a small dog. If the dog is a purebred, make sure that its breeder has given both parent dogs all the orthopedic and genetic health screenings appropriate for the breed. These tests insure that puppies won't become crippled or develop a genetically transmitted diseases. Following this advice, Kerasote eventually found Abby, a yellow Lab, in Minnesota. She reminded Ted of his old dog Merle -- she had Merle's collected, calm energy and was a good athlete -- and Ted decided to take one of her puppies when the pup became seven weeks old.

More years to love and be loved!

Raw Meats, Bones and No Corn – Ted named his new pup Pukka, which in Hindi means "genuine" or "first-class." Having read in the scientific literature that grains like corn and rice raise dog's blood glucose levels, and that animals who keep their blood glucose levels low suffer fewer chronic diseases and live longer, Ted decided to feed Pukka an ancestral canine diet -- meat, innards, bones, and green-leafy and yellow orange vegetables, both of which have been shown to reduce cancer rates in dogs and humans. The good news is that many pet food manufacturers now offer this kind of diet in a variety of forms -- frozen raw food, dry raw food, and kibble -- which can be bought in pet food stores and online. Such diets have the potential to improve the life spans of our dogs, and in the short term, they immediately lead to shinier coats, smaller stools, and less gas.

More years to love and be loved!

Environmental Pollutants – While researching Pukka's Promise: The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs, Kerasote discovered that both children and dogs are more affected by environmental pollutants than adults because they receive a larger dosage of these toxins per unit of body weight. Dogs and children also spend a lot of their time on the ground. To reduce kids' and dogs' exposure to toxins, don't spray lawns with herbicides, use stainless steel or glass bowls for dogs instead of plastic (many plastics contain endocrine disrupting phthalates), and give dogs beds whose fillings are free of fire-retardants (they're also a source of endocrine disruptors). Make sure that dog toys are non-toxic and use non-toxic balls instead of tennis balls, which can contain potentially harmful chemicals.

More years to love and be loved!

Rethinking Spay/Neuter – The campaign to spay and neuter most dogs has certainly helped to reduce the number of healthy dogs who are killed in North American shelters. However, the latest veterinary research shows that spayed and neutered dogs may not be as healthy as intact dogs. Compared to intact dogs, spayed and neutered dogs have an increased risk for certain cancers, are more prone to orthopedic injuries, urinary incontinence, and adverse reactions to vaccines, and are more obese. There are safer forms of canine birth control -- tubal ligations or hysterectomies for females and vasectomies for males -- the very same procedures used in human medicine. The reproductive results of these three procedures are exactly the same as spaying and neutering -- no puppies -- but because the ovaries and testes are not removed, dogs who have undergone a tubal ligation, hysterectomy, or vasectomy retain their estrogen and testosterone, these beneficial sex hormones having been shown to lower the incidence of the above conditions. Dogs who retain their sex hormones also have stronger muscles and are less prone to back injuries.

More years to love and be loved!

The Chance To Choose – Most people like variety, whether it's in their food, entertainment, or work. Dogs do too. And why shouldn't they? In Pukka's Promise: The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs, Kerasote notes that they're so physiologically akin to us that they're now frequently used in many medical experiments. In this vein – the similarity between dogs and humans – it pays to rotate a dog's diet. It makes mealtime more interesting for the dog and it also reduces the chance that the dog will be eating the same pollutants every day of its life. Likewise for toys. Giving a dog the chance to choose what it will play with improves its self-esteem by allowing it to express its individuality. Some days, for example, Pukka will choose his orange ball, some days his black one, and some days one of two blue ones. And some days he'll go outside and bring in a totally new ball, borrowed from one of his dog friends. With a grin, he'll say, "This is my preference today!"