Dog Auto Immunity

Dog Auto Immunity

When a dog builds up a resistance and attempts to reject part of itself, it is called autoimmunity. There is a host of problems produced by this phenomenon. A dog may become immune to parts of the kidneys, to the blood platelets, to the red or the white blood cells. If diagnosed early enough, some cases are reversed and returned to normal by the administration of steroids. Rheumatoid and poly arthritis rethought to be the result of autoimmunity.

Weigh your dog. Let us say it weighs sixty pounds. Find the sixty-pound mark on the left side of the graph. Follow this line until it strikes the curve. From that point on the curve, drop straight down to the baseline. There you will see how many calories it needs-1,9oo for the sixty-pound dog has.

Or you can work the graph backward from the calorie line to see from the diet your dog is getting compares with its actual needs. It is getting two cans of a good grade of dog food, plus three large dog biscuits, three candies, assorted tidbits from the table, and a bowl of milk every night. Let us figure out just the first two items. Two cans of food have goo calories, three large dog biscuits (one-half pound each) have 2, zoo. That makes a total of 3,100 calories, when only what is necessary is 1,9oo. Add the table scraps, candy, and milk and your dog is getting nearly twice what it requires. This will explain why it weighs ninety-three pounds when the correct weight for its breed is sixty pounds. How are you going to reduce your dog’s weight?

There are two or three ways. First, you can feed it 1,900 calories, and knowing that a working dog needs many more calories than an idle one exercise is enough to take off the excess weight. You can easily find ways of real exercise. Hitch your dog to a wagon and give the neighborhood youngsters rides; take it for ten-mile hikes, if you are energetic; or make it retrieve. If you throw a stick or rubber ball only fifty yards and the dog runs after it and brings it back, remember that seventeen retrieves will mean it has run for a mile. If it is very fat, you will have to accustom it gradually to this exercise, a little more each day.

But if you do make your dog exercise, the fat will melt away provided you and the rest of the family all see to it that it gets its 1,90o calories a day and no more. The dog won’t be starving until it has used up the energy stored in its excess weight. When it is down to sixty pounds it still will have plenty of fat. The second method is underfeeding. Switch to a different diet, say, dehydrated dog food. You know it is good for your dog but so different that it won’t eat at first. Fine! 

See more: Dog Anemia