About supplements

Adding essential supplements to your dog's diet

At Peak Paws Nutrition, we try to meet the nutrient requirements as much as possible using whole foods, while using the minimal possible amount of supplements.

For example, ground eggshells are commonly used to provide calcium. This is especially useful for dogs who cannot eat raw meaty bones. This is an example of a natural supplement.

Another example is manganese, which is commonly supplemented in synthetic form. Mussels can provide manganese but they are 1) difficult to source and 2) disliked by many dogs. In this case, only half a tablet of chelated manganese a week can provide enough manganese for a 20 kg dog.

A third example is vitamin D, which can be supplied by eggs. A medium-sized dog would require one egg every day in order to meet vitamin D requirements. However this would add up to a lot of calories, which could otherwise be filled by other nutrient-dense foods (e.g. meats, organs). So in this case, the vitamin D requirement would be fulfilled but other nutrient requirements may be lacking. Our solution is to include a reasonable amount of eggs (e.g. twice a week) and use a vitamin D3 supplement to cover the rest.

There are a lot of different types of supplements that can provide nutrients. Some categories are natural vs. synthetic, tablet vs. powder vs. liquid etc.

Selecting supplements- natural vs. synthetic?

When selecting supplements, our main concern is the bioavailability of the supplement for dogs.

A typical example is vitamin E, which is difficult to fulfil for many raw feeders. Sunflower seeds, a "natural" supplement, contains vitamin E but is of low bioavailability to dogs, meaning that dogs may not be able to synthesise and utilise the vitamin E present in sunflower seeds. In our recipes, we use a capsule vitamin E supplement, which is of higher bioavailability and needed in much fewer amounts than sunflower seeds.

A less well-known example is thiamine, which is usually easily supplied by pork muscle meat. Some studies have shown that raw fish contains thiaminase, which may degrade thiamine when stored together. This article goes into more detail about thiaminase. As a result, some raw feeders include a vitamin B1 or B complex supplement in their dog's diet, or store raw fish separately from the meat. This is another area where supplementation comes in handy, though we don't routinely include vitamin B supplements in our recipes.

An example in my own dogs is zinc. A commonly suggested food high in zinc is oysters, specifically canned oysters. Other common foods for dogs don't even come close to the zinc content in oysters, which makes this a natural choice for many raw feeders. However, not all dogs do well with oysters in their diet- my own two dogs both get runny stool from oysters. So, I opt for a zinc picolinate supplement, which is needed in very tiny amounts (1-2 tablets per week) and is highly bioavailable for dogs.