The way to a fit, happy and successful gundog is through its stomach. We ask Julie Collins of Dog & Field why canine nutrition is as important as having the right training equipment

Every dog owner knows that diet is important. Dogs are omnivores, so benefit from eating both plant and meat but the key to balancing that diet lies in achieving a complex mix of minerals, vitamins, essential amino acids (from protein) and fatty acids (from fat). It’s not quite as simple as plucking a product off the shelf of Pets at Home.

“It’s really just the same for dogs as for athletes when they’re training – the protein and fat has to be balanced,” says Julie Collins of canine nutrition specialist (and Game Fair exhibitor and sponsor) Dog & Field.

“If you have too much energy in a dog we’ve found it can yip, so there’s no point having dogs on 28 per cent or 30 per cent protein or fat if you can’t let them run to burn it off. They need that stamina, but if they can’t burn it off they get so excited that they make a noise and get put out at the trials.”

A passion for understanding how dog performance – as well as health, fitness and stamina – are linked to diet is the ethos behind Dog & Field, a business founded in 2014 by Colin Chalkley, whose family has been in dog breeding and working dog kennels for four generations.

Fuelled by Colin’s love of shooting, Dog & Field is also a market leader in gundog training equipment, and prides itself on a deep-rooted and 360-degree approach to the exact needs not just of working dogs but of every individual animal.

“When he first started, Colin wanted to think about the nutrition side, to support kennels by having everything under one roof,” explains Julie.

“We want to bring it back to the nutrition and be able to say to customers ‘we know what you need’. We were working with extremely successful trainers and were always asking them what they need in order to have fairly lean but fit spaniels and Labradors – what is it that they’re asking for from their food?

“We were able to speak to and learn from them about how we could do a complete range without tripe or raw food. That’s where we started our ‘good, better, best’ range, allowing people to pick and choose what protein and fat they wanted.”

Information is key

For Dog & Field, giving owners of working dogs detailed advice on the right food to buy is as important as supplying the food itself.

“Our own nutritional advisers will help you for each individual dog – every single one of them is different, like a human,” adds Julie.

“We will help you pick and mix whatever you want from the different recipes we have to make sure every single dog has the nutrition they need to build their stamina and carry on to win.

“There’s a lot of intolerance out there, especially with grain and chicken, so we always make sure that we have that advice available at vet level. When people phone up, we can really go into the detail of exactly what’s in the food, which is a huge help for anyone who’s got an intolerant dog.”

Quality counts

As a rule of thumb, the best advice is to feed your dog the best quality food you can afford and remember the difference between premium food and budget food is not found on the nutrition label.

Two foods could each contain 28 per cent protein, yet be of wildly different quality. The difference is in the quality and source of the ingredients – and in the case of Dog & Field, that includes those ingredients being ethically and renewably sourced.

“All our ingredients are traced back to the farms where they’re bought,” reveals Julie. “The serial number history goes right back to the source of where that fish or lamb came from, and it’s nearly as good a quality as what would go into a M&S sandwich – it’s from farms that farm to a human source. What it says on the bag is what you’re getting. You’ll see on a lot of bags it will say ‘meal’ first or ‘grain’ first – ours always have the fish, meat or poultry first.”

The Dog & Field philosophy, founded on long experience of breeding and racing greyhounds that began with Colin’s grandfather, has evolved via the family’s love of shooting to embrace the needs of working dogs.

With the shooting community facing greater pressures than ever before – in terms of sustainability, food prices and animal welfare – there’s an increasing need for gundog training to ensure that every shot bird is picked and brought into the food chain.

Having always been at the forefront of dummy innovation, Dog & Field has raised the game with its new range of dead bird dummies, designed to replicate the real thing so accurately that even ‘soft’ dogs can master the retrieve.

What we’re trying to do with the Train to Sustain range is give the dogs realistic dummies, with the head, the tails, the weight and the size so that they learn,” says Julie. “It’s lovely to get a dog over a fence and through the water and then they pick a 1lb dummy, but if that happened on a shoot it’s probably flapping, it could be in a bramble, we want to know if the dog is going to be able to go in there, face the cover and the situation and bring that bird back to the game bag.

“The smallest of changes, like having different dummies in your equipment, could possibly help. If everybody’s on the same page about sustainability I hope we can keep all the communities going and all the people who rely on the shooting season for their livelihood. It’s a great community and if people were just a bit more educated about sustainability and talked about it in a more ethical way people would support it a little bit more.”

www.dogandfield.co.uk

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6 ELEMENTS OF CANINE NUTRITION

Protein

For energy. Dogs produce some naturally, but need double that. Meat the best source

Fat

For concentrated energy, but high in calories. Best source fish and fish oils

Vitamins

For metabolic function. Variety of sources, including meats and plant-based foods

Minerals

For supporting life functions and body health. From meat, organ meats, bone, shellfish

Water

For hydration. Makes up 75% of a dog’s lean body mass

Carbohydrates

Source of glucose and other nutrients. Can be good for dogs but not essential. From vegetables and grains