Why dogs need calcium

Calcium is essential to your dog for a number of reasons. It helps build strong nails, bones and teeth for starters. It also helps maintain a healthy coat. And it helps support nerve and muscle function, assists in helping blood to clot and helps maintain a healthy heart.

And if those weren’t enough, it’s essential for hormone distribution, in aiding circulation and in supporting a healthy digestion.

You can see then why calcium is important for your dog and why, by inference, the better quality the calcium the better it is for your best friend.

What’s in most canine calcium supplements?

There’s a simple reason why most dog calcium supplement are cheap. It’s all in the ingredients. As with any product, the cheaper the ingredient, the cheaper the finished product. So just what is in most calcium supplements for dogs?

That’s an easy one to answer. Rock. Limestone and sometimes marble. That’s why most commercial canine calcium supplements are dirt cheap. They’re made from rocks, and rocks are cheap to obtain and cheap to process.

Okay, they’re rocks made of calcium carbonate which is what your dog needs for healthy teeth and bones. But by whatever parameters you choose to use, your dog’s digestive system was not designed to digest rock. Particularly rock that has been processed using potentially harmful chemicals!

When have you ever seen a dog settle down to a nice long chew on a piece of rock?

Pica

Okay, it has been known. There’s a condition called pica. It affects both dogs and humans. It’s a health condition whereby the sufferers seem compulsively to need to ingest non-food items.

Favourites amongst those are the likes of clothing, plastic, wood, paper and, yes, occasionally, rocks. But that doesn’t make it normal. And even if a dog does it because of some kind of nutritional deficiency, it doesn’t mean that rocks would necessarily be its first choice when it comes to plugging any nutritional gap.

Why? Because dogs are smart. They instinctively know that a bone is good for them. They may not know exactly why, but their instinct tells them that bones not only taste nice, but that they’re actually good for them as well.

But rocks? Trust me, they’re way down the pecking order when it comes to satisfying the tastes of the average dog. Aside from anything else, chewing rocks can damage teeth and cause gastrointestinal problems. And, according to human studies, increase the risk of heart attacks and digestive problems such as bloating, constipation and irritable bowel syndrome. And all because rock is so alien to the body.

More natural calcium carbonate

You owe it to your dog to provide he or she with the very best and most natural form of calcium carbonate supplement. Something like my own Essential Calcium for Dogs.

Don’t give your dog bone meal which contains heavy metals and is no longer recommended for dogs. And don’t give your dog ground up rocks just because they’re cheap. Feed the best calcium supplement for dogs that money can buy!