Water- Driving force of nature, driving your pet’s health
It is the driving force of nature and the driving factor in maintaining your furry friend’s health and wellbeing. Learn how much water you should give to your pet and how does the quality of water affect their health.
Everyone knows that water is the elixir of life, be for humans, animals, or plants. Animal’s body (especially dogs and cats) is composed of 70% of water and 30% as dry matter. Therefore, water plays an important role in your pet’s life. The amount of water required by your pet depends upon body weight, weather conditions, and activity level.
The daily requirement for dogs even without activity is approximately 200ml/kg body weight. Calculating the amount of water your pet needs can be very cumbersome task, therefore in general it is to be given ad lib. More than the quantity of water, the quality of water you give to your pet also matters a lot.
Secret of life in each drop!
Unhealthy and unhygienic categories of water may affect the health of your pet. Many pets get used to drinking normal tap water resulting into allergies, skin infections, and gastro problems. Major source of infection in pets comes from water source causing diarrhoea, worm loads, liver infection, urinary calculi, and uro-genital infections which in turn makes your pets weak, emaciated, prone to allergy, dull and inactive.
Let seasons change, but not the good habit of water intake
As the season changes, water consumption patterns also change. In winters the water intake becomes very less and this precipitates into different kinds of diseases like UTI, calculi, allergy and skin diseases.
In rainy season, when ground water table level improves people who are using submersible or ground hand pump water, the quality of water deteriorates causing diarrhoea, hepatic infections and other gastro-intestinal ailments. Give your pet ample amount of clean, filtered, and hygienic water at room temperature. Don’t forget to clean his water bowls on a regular basis and change the water.
Water and food go hand-in-hand
Pets who are on dry food diet must consume optimum water. Those pets who consume less water also precipitates different types of diseases. Talk to your vet and ask about increasing the intake amount of table salt in your pet’s diet. This will increase the thirst and help avoiding UTI and calculi.
I wish that all pet parents will start giving optimum amount of hygienicand filtered water to their pets, apart from given exercise and adding salt in diet to improve the intake.
(Dr. Kaushlendra Kumar, Shri Nataji Pets Clinic, Lucknow)