Keeping an old dog ready to hunt...

F

FishinFreaks

New member
So my weimaraner is 12 this year. He had a good season last year, probably better than the previous 2 seasons. I was hoping to have a new pup late this spring that would at least bring some new adventure to the coming fall, but the female has yet to come into heat. The breeder thought February would be when she got bred.

So anywho, now I know that I will not be having a pup in the field this fall, even if the dog does get bred soon. And so I'm thinking about anything and everything I can do to help my 12 year old weim to be able to go as long and hard as possible for a geriatric.

Last year, I attribute some of the improvement to giving him hot chicken noodle soup a couple hours into the hunts. Warm calories really seemed to make a difference on hunt days.

Any other suggestions?
 
It would seem unlikely that chicken noodle soup before the hunt would help, but hey, who knows. I would make sure he gets a quality food and also be sure to keep his weight down. You might consider some kind of joint supplement. I recently posted a thread in this forum about the "Hunt Dog Hunt" supplement from Zoom Dog. I just started giving it to my dogs so can't testify how or if it helps but it looks interesting.

http://www.zoomdog.info/
 
First of all, welcome to UPH FishinFreaks! Been catching anything this Spring?

Zeb's right. Quality dog food is the first step, and the second step is keeping the dog at optimal weight.

Supplements can be very beneficial to a sporting dog, or any dog at that age. I have an eight year old German Shorthaired Pointer, and I supplement her diet with a joint supplement, and an Omega-3 supplement for heart health.

For the Omega-3 supplement, I simply feed her human fish oil liquid capsules. I just cut the end of the capsule off and squeeze the liquid onto her food in the evening. You can buy these cheap nearly everywhere.

As a joint supplement, I have been giving her Flexicose. It's a liquid joint supplement that contains many different joint health ingredients, including Glucosamine Chondroitin, MSM, along with many others. I prefer to feed her this because it is in liquid form, which has proven to be better in terms of bioavailibility (absorbtion rate). The pet formula is also the exact same formula as the human formula, just the dosing sizes on the bottle and label are different. You can read more about it here:

http://www.flexicose.com/

I started giving my dog this early last fall, and noticed substantial improvements in both her everyday movement, and recovery time after hunts. Simply stated, she doesn't get nearly as stiff as she used to, whether it's after hunts, or after napping for several hours on her bed. :D

You can shop around, and maybe find a similar product at a more affordable price, but I did a lot of research, and didn't find much benefit price-wise between price per dose, and ingredients included with other products.
 
Thanks for the input, guys. I'll be sure to look further into the joint stuff.

For food, I've started to giving him Hank's Premium Dog food. It's from a guy out in ND that custom mixes his food. No fillers. Here's its important contents:

Crude Protein, not less than……….29.00%

Crude Fat, not less than…………….20.00%

Crude Fiber, not more than…………….2.50%

Moisture, maximum…………………...10.00%

He's looking to be in great shape right now. Hopefully come fall, he'll be able to do some work still.
 
Percentages don't tell a lot about the food. But 29% protein and 20% crude fat are more than needed unless you have an extremely active dog that's getting alot of exercise. I would be interested in seeing the remaining analysis and more importantly the Ingredients.

But hey, if you dog it doing well on it and it a healthy 12 year old it would sure appear to be working. Every dog is different so you have to feed accordingly. But if I was you I would look into some of the supplements that have been listed here.
 
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