By Joe Spoo DVM

Nutrition is an often-overlooked area of overall gundog health. As athletes in the truest sense of the word, though, nutrition should be an area of top concern for gundog owners. You can find a pup out of the best bloodlines in the country and send him out to one of the top trainers in the world, but if the dog is not fed a diet designed for top performance, that pup won’t run at a top level.

When I refer to performance dogs, I’m not talking about the opening weekend dog that may or may not retrieve a bird or two all season. Performance dogs are the true working dogs out there, dogs that hunt most weekends during the season, often including a couple of weeklong trips of truly intense hunting. Field trial, hunt test or dogs trained heavily in the summer also would fall into this category, like Jag, see picture, who made around 250 duck retrieves just this season.

Feeding these performance dogs whatever food was cheapest that week would be the equivalent of using regular unleaded in a top-fuel dragster. But what fuel is best for these athletes?

Researchers at The Iams Company set out to answer that very question. Their study looked at the effect of diet on the hunting performance of English pointers used on a quail plantation. The dogs were divided into two groups and both groups were fed quality diets. One group was fed premium performance dog food; the other group was fed a premium adult maintenance food. The dogs’ performances were evaluated throughout the season by the trainer/handlers, who were unaware of which diet the dogs received. Veterinarians, also blinded to the diets, evaluated blood parameters and physically examined the dogs.

The findings of the study are very eye opening. All the dogs remained healthy and consumed their typical amounts of food throughout the season, but that is where the similarities ended. Dogs fed the performance diet were able to maintain or gain body weight and condition. The other group lost weight and condition as the season progressed.

The performance-fed dogs out-performed the dogs on the other diet in the field as well. They had more total finds per hunt and located more birds per hour of hunting. Essentially the dogs fed the performance diet stayed in better shape and hunted better than their counterparts that were fed a high-quality maintenance diet.

The main difference in the performance diet versus the maintenance diet is that the performance diet contained a substantially higher fat content. Fat is a highly available energy source, and is the preferred fuel for endurance in the performing dog. This is quite different from what we’re used to as human athletes. We get hung up on our own needs for carbohydrates; it’s the reason there’s always a pasta feed the
night before marathons. Dogs conversely have a very low requirement for carbs and an increased need for fat fuel.

The performance diet also had an increased level of dietary protein, and, like human athletes, dogs undergoing aerobic training need more protein than other dogs. The dietary levels of fat and protein in the performance diet also may have contributed to better adaptation to temperature extremes, especially the heat stress encountered in the south.

It’s not necessary to feed performance diets year-round if your dog doesn’t perform year-round. If you do switch between a performance food and a maintenance food, do it gradually over a 3-4 day period of mixing the old and new food. Studies also indicate it’s important to switch to the performance diet at least 8 weeks before the training/hunting/trialing begins to allow the body time to adjust to utilizing the increased amounts of fat.

What it boils down to is that hunting dogs have unique nutritional requirements, and through careful selection of food you can help your partner achieve his best in the field. Being in the profession I am in, I’ve had the opportunity to feed my Chessie, Emma, several different brands of high-quality food. Five years ago I settled on a performance diet—two years before the study was published. It wasn’t that I noticed significantly better performance in the field, it’s just that I thought a performance dog should have a performance diet, and now this study shows why.

Working dogs are athletes, and, as such, need to be fed in a way to maximize their performance. Granted, feeding a performance diet isn’t going to bring the birds out of the woodwork and make your hunting that much easier. However, it may mean the third rooster in the bag on the last day of a late-season Dakota pheasant hunt or nailing that last water triple on the second day of a field trial. Just a little “food-for-thought.”

Much of the technical information cited was taken from two source

• Davenport, GM et al: Effect of Diet on Hunting Performance of English Pointers. Veterinary Therapeutics. Vol 2. No 1. 2001. pps 1-14.
• Coffman, M: Conditioning the Performance Dog. Nutrition for Competitive Dog, The Iams Company. 2000. pps 6-11.