Feeding the working and sporting dog: energy, fat and meal timing

The useful distinction is not between sporting dog and pet dog, but between short intense effort and prolonged effort. The first category covers sprinting, jumping, explosive starts and much of canine sport where a run lasts a few minutes. In these activities muscle works largely without oxygen and burns mainly glycogen, the sugar stored in muscle and liver.

The second category covers hunting, herding, search work and any activity lasting hours at moderate intensity. Here metabolism is mostly aerobic and the main fuel becomes fat, which dogs use with an efficiency greater than most mammals. That is the technical reason why rations for endurance dogs raise the fat share instead of adding carbohydrate: it is not a fashion, it is the energy source that this type of muscle work uses best.

The requirement of an active dog is expressed as a multiple of its maintenance requirement. The temptation is to overestimate: an hour of brisk walking counts far less than people believe, while a full day of uphill work in cold weather counts enormously. The table below gives the orders of magnitude used as a starting point, always to be corrected by what happens to body weight.

Two corrections matter more than the rest. The first is temperature: in cold conditions the requirement rises considerably because part of the energy maintains body temperature, and in dogs working long distances in freezing environments intakes many times maintenance have been measured. The second is terrain: deep snow, sand, undergrowth and gradient raise the cost of every kilometre far more than the distance alone suggests.

When activity consistently exceeds two hours a day, simply increasing the amount of the same food leads to bulky rations that are hard to digest and hard to give before work. At that point it makes sense to move to a food more concentrated in energy, that is richer in fat, so the same calories take up less room in the stomach.

• Fat: the main lever for endurance. In rations for dogs in prolonged work the share of energy coming from fat rises substantially compared with a maintenance food, and adaptation takes weeks rather than days.
• Protein: it is not there to supply energy but to repair muscle and support red cell production. A ration high in fat but low in protein is associated with a higher injury rate and with a well described sports anaemia.
• Carbohydrate: it matters mainly in short intense efforts, which burn glycogen, and in recovery immediately after work. In pure endurance its role is smaller.
• Balance between nutrients: raising fat without also raising protein dilutes the protein share of the ration, and that is the commonest error when switching to a more energy dense food.

The move to a fattier ration should be gradual and made before the working season starts, not in the week of the first outing. The metabolic adaptation that makes muscle better at using fat takes several weeks of consistent feeding and training, which is why the sporting dog's ration is prepared in advance in the same way physical condition is.

This is the part most often managed by habit. A large meal shortly before intense effort leaves the stomach full during activity, reduces performance, increases the risk of gastrointestinal upset and, in deep chested breeds, adds to the other factors that favour gastric torsion. At the opposite extreme, working on a completely empty stomach for many hours is no advantage either.

1. 1

   Move the main meal to after work

   In dogs doing prolonged activity the large meal comes at the end of the day, once the dog has cooled down and is breathing normally. Before work, at most a small and easily digested portion, several hours earlier.

2. 2

   Allow time before and after

   As a prudent rule, avoid intense effort in the hours immediately after a large meal, and wait for breathing to settle before offering the full meal on return.

3. 3

   Use the recovery window

   In the first hours after prolonged effort muscle rebuilds glycogen stores faster. A modest portion combining carbohydrate and protein at that point supports recovery better than the same amount given late in the evening.

4. 4

   Split rather than concentrate

   On heavy working days two or three smaller meals are better tolerated than a single large one, reduce gastric load and spread energy intake more evenly.

5. 5

   Introduce nothing new on competition or working days

   Every change of food, supplement or treat should be tested in training. Novelties introduced on the day are the most banal and most frequent cause of midday diarrhoea.

Dogs shed heat mainly through breathing, and that means water losses that grow with intensity and with temperature. Dehydration reduces performance before any visible sign appears, so water should be offered often and in moderate amounts throughout the activity, not only at the end. A dog refusing to drink during work will often accept water lightly flavoured with a small amount of wet food.

• Offer water at regular intervals, in small repeated amounts, rather than allowing a very large drink all at once at the end.
• Salt losses through sweating are modest in dogs, so in the vast majority of cases water and a balanced ration are enough, and unnecessary electrolyte solutions can cause intestinal upset.
• Check ambient temperature and humidity before planning the session: on hot humid days the issue is not performance but heatstroke.
• After activity check that breathing returns to normal within a reasonable time and look at urine colour, because very dark urine after intense effort needs veterinary assessment.
• Plan at least one recovery day after a very long effort, with a normal ration and light activity, because replenishing stores is not immediate.

No table replaces checking the animal. The most reliable signal is body weight followed over time, measured on the same scale at the same point of the day. A slow steady loss during the working season shows intake is below expenditure even when the amount looks generous; a gain during the rest months shows the active season ration was never reduced.

1. Weigh the dog once a week during the working season and record the value next to the amount of food given.
2. Assess body condition by hand every two weeks: ribs easily felt under a thin layer of tissue and a waist visible from above.
3. Record stool consistency on working days: repeatedly soft stools suggest the ration is too large, too fatty or given too close to the activity.
4. Watch recovery: a dog that is stiff, flat or slower the following day is receiving less energy than it spends, or needs more rest.
5. Review the plan at every change of season, workload or target weight, and bring the collected data to the check up.

One last element concerns treats. In a sporting dog the rewards used during training can account for a far from negligible share of daily energy, and they should be counted inside the ration rather than added on top. Weighing them once, to see what a session really adds up to, is an exercise that surprises almost everyone.