Did you know that your dog is made up of around 70-80% water? With water making up such a large part of their bodies, dog hydration affects their health in many different ways - from ensuring that their internal organs function properly to the quality of their fur.
Here are some of our top tips for keeping your pup healthy and hydrated.
Why is hydration important?
Hydration is about more than just drinking water. It is part of a series of factors that work together to keep our precious pups healthy, active, and always getting up to mischief (at least our is).
For example, good hydration is essential to proper digestion. Your pooch could eat all the right things, but without sufficient hydration, it would not be able to get all the benefits from the food.
Water is essential for the digestive system to extract the nutrients from food, and to process them into the dog’s system. Good hydration helps release toxins, improves mobility and regulates dogs’ body temperature.
With hydration affecting so many aspects of a dog’s health, it’s no surprise that dehydration can negatively affect everything from a dog’s eyes to their nails, teeth, skin and stools.
This is not dissimilar to humans, however, to put things in perspective, people can go for a week without water, while dogs can only last 3 days without a drink.
How to make sure that your pup stays hydrated
Water bowls
It’s important to change your dog’s water regularly and to clean the water bowl often. This seems like an obvious thing to do, but because water bowls often don’t appear as messy as food bowls, it’s easy for them to go unnoticed.
Just like with your furry friend’s food bowls, wash the water bowl regularly to avoid any nasty germs or diseases. A good habit to get into is to wash the bowl and change the water at least every day.
Another idea is to have a few water bowls positioned around your home. Dogs might be more inclined to drink from one than another, and the more accessible you can make their water bowl, the better.
Bonus tip: for particularly stubborn dogs who refuse to drink, changing the bowl can sometimes do the trick. Leave some water out in a human bowl or cup, and your pup might just think of it as a “forbidden fruit” (i.e. human food)!
Hydration away from home
A really good routine to get into is bringing a water bottle with you on walks - even shorter ones. You never know when a quick walk around the block might turn into a long run around the park, and before you know it, your pup is parched and panting.
Try as we might, sometimes we just can’t get our fur babies to drink as much as they should.
In these cases, you can try:
- adding some water into their food bowls at meal time
- giving them ice cubes as a fun, hydrating treat
- mixing in some flavored supplements (like our delicious PupWater).
Take hydration to the next level
Once you get into a routine of good hydration, take the opportunity to add some nutritious supplements to your pup’s bowl for added flavor and health benefits.
PupWater is full of goodness to help your pup stay healthy, hydrated, and energized to keep getting into all sorts of adorable mischief!
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