I am doing a canine psychology course and have chosen the subject of how diet can affect a dog's behaviour for my special study. Can anyone help me? Have you had experience of your dog's behaviour being directly affected by his diet? Hope someone can help me!

Definately, my bedlington was completely mental, so much energy he didn't know what to do with himself, on pedigree complete puppy (high protein) . I was advised to change him to a lower protein food (DR Johns) and he calmed down in about 2 weeks and was a different dog, much calmer and more contented, would settle with toys and play with them, chew his bones quietly instead of throwing them at us all the time, walked on 4 legs when on the lead instead of 2, the list goes on :D

Hope this helps :)

Regards
Dill

Dill - thanks for that info. That does prove diet plays an important part. Any info is extremely helpful. I have not heard of Dr Johns at all.

Hi

I used to use Dr johns complete food. It is very commonly used amongst the working dog but is not really well known outside that communtiy. It provides a lot of the things a working dog will need but in my opinion doesnt contain enough for their coats etc so have switched to Masters which has two varieties, country ( lower protein level) and working ( higher level).

I think the main thing that will affect a dogs behaviour is in deed the protein levels, the higher the level the more energy the dog will have and the lower the protein obviously it has the opposite effect. Does anyone else know what other factors may effect a dogs behaviour?

Regards

Mark

artificial additives also affect behaviour - in the same way it can children. I had a puppy on Eukanuba - he was literally climbing the walls and was completely hyperactive. I switched to Nutro - only about 1% difference in protein but the difference in his behaviour was marked.

I have stayed with Nutro adding other things, eggs, cheese, tuna, real meat etc - all protein based and the behaviour hasn't changed -still a lively lad - but not up the wall!!

Pam n the boys

Things are never as simple as they seem. It's interesting that certain foods seem to be responsible for hype activity in some dogs and yet the same food is fed to thousands of other dogs with no ill effects! Some dogs appear to have an intolerance to certain parts of the food. Protein is usually blamed although that could maybe only be incidental. I have told people on numerous occasions to swap to a lower protein food and this often seems to help but is it maybe the nature of the protein? The way the protein is supplied? Maybe protein has nothing at all to do with it, the food in question just happening to have a slightly higher protein level but in fact the hyper coming from something else in the food?

I wish I knew!

Regards, John

Hi John

Have you ever read any of the "E numbers" and additives books (or probably there are now lists on the web). It is surprising we are not all climbing the walls with what manufacturers put in some foods.

I think it is probable that some dogs, just as some children, are more susceptable to certain things

Christine

our springer that we had to have rehomed started of being fed on jwb along with my lab, they were both fine on this, when my lab had her pups the springer stopped eating, i started her on bakers as it was the only thing i could get her to eat after about a week she became very hyper, due to all the colourings, i then fed her on omega tasty and jwb, and when the pups went managed to get her back on to jwb, i then got our cavalier who had lots of skin troubles which increased on jwb, i found autarky and fed the three of them that they loved it, when the springer seemed to be losing coat condition i started to add sa37 powder to her food within a day she was climbing the walls, zooming round the house at100mph knocking everything over etc etc, when i looked at the protein levels (cant remember exactly how much) i stopped giving her the sa37 within a week she calmed down.
our dogs are now fed arden grange working (sprocker pup) arden grange working light(lab and cavalier) all have calm dipositions (well as calm as a spaniel pup and lab can be) shing coats and look the picture of health

Yes, since taking my Afghan off all complete foods and changing to an all natural diet, his whole attitude and temperment have totally changed, for the better i might add.

Thanks for all this helpful information everyone! Ace can you let me know what sort of natural diet you are feeding your Afghan on? Is it a BARF type diet or home cooked etc?

Yes it's the barf diet , everything raw , and no complete dog food what so ever.

I did a bit of reading up on diets a few years back for my working labs and this is what i found :(excuses if any of this is outdated!).
A dogs digestive and nervous system is geared around absorbing mostly meat proteins and not vegetable proteins which are often shown on foods as 'derivatives of veg. origin'. Vegetable proteins are sometimes used in cheaper foods as they are cheaper to produce, but can act like E numbers can do to some children, prmoting some behaviours such as Anxiety, aggression, boisterousness and dominance.
Maize/Wheat gluten is a cheap product mainly used as roughage and to bulk up the foods. This can sometimes promote a bad coat and itchy skin in some dogs.

As I say above, this may be a bit outdated now, but the main thing I found is that all the best foods (and I mean complete dry foods her, not BARF or similar)avoided protein combining. By this I mean they didn't have fish,beef,lamb and poulty bi-products all in the same food. Agood example of this is James Welbeloved or Arden Grange.

Anyway, hope this helped.
PS- All the stuff about vegetable proteins, does not mean that its bad to give your dogs veg, just the by-products!

Hello Duncan,

Our vet recently suggested that our 5 month old pup might be intolerant to dairy products - we used to give him milk and cheese was his fave treat and we used a fair bit for training. The rest of his diet is Jame Wllbeloved plus some canned dog food containign tripe and minced meat. She diagnosed after we visited to have pup checked out after a (to date one-off) aggressive episode about 2 weeks ago. Still evaluating the situation as our pup is good generally so no marked hyper to calm transition. Our next step is to get him evaluated by a behaviourist and talk what happened over with her.

The one noticeable thing is that he is a lot less farty and his poo is more consistent (which are apparently suggestions of intolerance too) Lovely! I have since read a book 'Think Dog' (Ed: by John Fisher) where the author talks about dietary intolerance quite a bit in relation to dog aggression or hyperactivity probs, but I guess you will have come across this one already.

Jude

Think Dog is by John Fisher ;-)

Sorry yes, I just logged back in to amend my previous post. Reading too many dog books, can't remember who's who!

Jude :)