Keep Your Dog Healthy By Following These Simple, But Basic, Tips

I have a friend who is a professional dog trainer for the United States government. He has worked with and handled hundreds of dogs throughout his career. One of their primary focuses are keeping their dogs healthy all of the time with minimal vet visits. No matter what you do, you should always take your dog to the vet for check ups and boosters. That is one of the things that can not be overlooked.

What my friend does to keep his dogs out of the vet's office and healthy remaining on the road or in training even more of the time is through daily health point checks. Here's his main tip for keeping his dog in tip top shape: every day you should groom your dog. During your grooming session there are some areas of the dogs body you can check to ensure it stays healthy. In no particular order I will list and explain the different areas to check and what you will be looking for.

While grooming your dog make sure to check your dogs nose. What you are looking for is that it is moist looking or moist to the touch. If your dogs nose is not moist he might be dehydrated. Dogs are like us, it is not good to be dehydrated. You also want to check the dogs gums in his mouth. What you do is simply push on his gums with your finger. The area should turn white or change color. After releasing your finger the gums color should return back to normal in about 1.5 seconds. What we are doing here is checking the dog's capillary refill time. If the gum takes longer to go back to normal color the dogs blood is not flowing adequately. It also shows you that your dog may have a serious condition (ie. types of diseases like possible types of heart disease).

Another thing to check on your dog is his ears. You want to smell them too, if they smell like yeast, or a very bad odor they will need extra care. Check for irritation around the ear flap and canal areas. What we are doing on this check is checking for a possible ear infection or ear disease. We want to check the dogs overall body too. You'll want to run your hands over the entire dogs body to feel for any bumps, cuts, tics, anything out of the norm. If your dog has a cut it is good to go ahead to treat it so it does not get any worse. We use animax for our dogs cuts or sores but there are many other things on the market as well.

Important: don't forget to check his pads. Ensure that they are free of debris (ie. stones, rocks, splinters...). Checking the dogs pads ensuring they are free of debris will prevent future injuries. It is also a very good idea to get your dogs normal temperature. Just so you'll know, a normal temperature for a healthy dog is less than 102.5F typically. Once you know your dogs normal temperature, that can help with other possible ailments such as heat stroke. One of the signs of heat stroke are when a dogs temperature is over 105F.

If you do these most basic of checks to your dog everyday and all comes back good then chances are high that you don't need to go to the vet. Other good things to do is know what your dogs vital signs are normally. Extra tips would be to keep the dog within his ideal weight. The weight should be determined by the vet. Feed your dogs the best diet you can afford. Basically, these checks along with grooming, boosters, and your normal vet check up should keep your dog out of the vet and healthy.

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