Why is your dog always tired and cranky?
Is there a relationship between the kind of food fed and its behavior?
Well, in this post, we give you the reasons why your dog’s diet may be responsible for the crankiness and the solutions to that.
Come with us, will you?
Why Your Dog’s Diet is Making Them Tired and Cranky
These are the reasons why your dog’s diet may be responsible for its tiredness and crankiness:
Unbalanced diet
What you feed your dog determines their wellness and behavior. Feeding your dog on unbalanced food can result in many health issues due to nutrient deficiency. Dogs need various nutrients for optimal growth and health. As such, their diet should be carefully made with all essential nutrients.
This will lead to other various behavioral issues, including crankiness and fatigue. An unbalanced diet can cause conditions like urinary tract infections (UTIs) in dogs. A dog with UTI may be easily irritable and stressed due to the pain and discomfort caused by the condition.
Solution
Feeding a proper diet will impact your dog’s behavior positively. Ensure that your dog’s diet contains the right mix of ingredients necessary to provide all required nutrients. It should be well balanced with proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, oils, and essential minerals.
Poor quality ingredients
A diet containing low-quality ingredients can severely impact a dog’s health. Besides being low in digestibility, these ingredients cannot meet the nutrient requirements for dogs.
Feeding your dog on a diet with substandard ingredients may cause tummy upsets digestive issues, including bloating, excessive gas, etc. These issues are painful and cause discomfort in dogs, which may make your dog tired and cranky.
Solution
Always go for high-quality dog food that’s made with quality ingredients. Choose foods made with natural and wholesome ingredients, including real animal proteins, vegetables, and fruits, as they are packed with healthy nutrients.
Giving your pup a balanced diet containing natural, wholesome ingredients will supply him with the necessary nutrients for good health. A healthy dog is a happy dog.
Excessive carbs/ grains
A diet containing too many grains, especially corn, can cause behavioral issues in dogs. A dog’s body cannot fully process grains, which may cause digestive problems. Corn interferes with serotonin production, which is an important hormone that influences the mood in humans and dogs.
Dogs with low serotonin levels are highly aggressive.
Besides, a high starch diet causes blood sugar spikes characterized by glucose peaks followed by an energy crash.
Solution
If your dog appears aggressive, moody, or tired after feeding a grain-inclusive diet, switching to a grain-free alternative is the ideal way to remedy this condition.
You can also opt for diets that are made with high-quality, easily digestible sources of carbohydrates such as sweet potatoes or potatoes.
Artificial additives
Artificial additives like preservatives, flavors, and colorings hugely affect a dog’s mood. The most widely used additives in dog food, such as BHT (Butylated hydroxytoluene) and BHA (Butylated hydroxyanisole), cause behavioral issues in dogs. These have been linked to hyperactivity and aggressiveness in dogs.
In addition, these additives do not have any nutritional value for your dog and can have adverse effects on your dog’s health.
Solution
The best solution is to opt for additive-free dog food. Ensure you read through the ingredients list to identify any additives included. Stay clear of foods containing artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. You should consider fresh foods or those containing natural preservatives.
Overfeeding
Imagine how you feel when you’ve had excess food? Quite uncomfortable and cranky, right?
That’s the same feeling dogs have when they overfeed. Feeding dogs too much or too often can cause various health issues which ultimately affect their behavior. An overfed dog is tired, sluggish, and moody. It is, therefore, essential to give appropriate quantities and avoid feeding too much in one sitting.
Giving too much food to your dog makes it uncomfortable and puts it at the risk of becoming overweight. This can make it unwilling to exercise and hence moody.
Solution
Portion your dog’s meals appropriately based on its age, weight, and health condition to ensure they get what’s sufficient for optimal health. You should also avoid free feeding. Break up the feeding schedule, instead of a single, break them into 2-3 meals per day. Also, avoid feeding too often, resulting in the same unfavorable effects.
Feeding too little
Giving your dog an inadequate amount of food can put it at risk of having nutrient deficiency as it will not obtain sufficient nutrients for good health. Nutrient deficiency can cause various health issues, including digestive tract issues, weight loss, coat, and skin issues.
These health problems can result in emotional distress from depression, general lethargy, and irritability, to aggressiveness.
Solution
It’s essential to ensure you give an appropriate amount of food as part of a balanced diet. This will provide enough supply of necessary nutrients. Feeding your dog with the right amount of food will make it satisfied and happier.
Giving an adequate well-balanced diet to your dog will promote optimal growth and health and help stabilize its mood.
Diet change
Making sudden changes to your dog’s diet can cause a whole lot of health issues from tummy woes, indigestion, and at times sensitivities. Switching your dog’s food to something of lower quality or disagrees with it may also affect its health. This can, in return, alter your dog’s mood and behavior.
Any discomfort or pain caused by a change in your dog’s diet may make it irritable and cranky.
Solution
Ensure that any changes in your dog’s diet are gradual and not sudden to avoid causing them to stomach upset. Slowly introduce new foods by first mixing little with the dog’s old food, then gradually increasing the quantity of the new food while decreasing the amount of the old food. The change should be made within a week. Also, make sure you only switch to high-quality foods.
Meal location
Where the dog eats from is also an important consideration. If you are inconsistent with the feeding location and tend to feed on any area, your dog may have negative behavior patterns.
It’s essential to make your dog used to eating from a single point. If it’s in the bowl, be consistent and always feed them from there. This will help foster positive behavior and discourage bad behavior such as whining and aggression when it needs food.
Solution
Identify a specific feeding location and train your dog to stick to it. This way, it will understand that it’s only from the usual point that they can get their food.
Over Processed foods
Most commercial dog foods are usually over-processed. In making these foods, ingredients are exposed to very high temperatures, which destroy the nutrients.
Over Processed foods are low in nutritional value and highly indigestible. This leads to overworking a dog’s organs and, consequently, health issues. All these can make a dog cranky and tired.
Solutions
Opt for an unprocessed, whole foods diet. These are easy to digest and are packed with nutrients. You can also switch to raw foods that are rich in protein. In addition to being high in protein which aids in serotonin production, natural foods are also low in carbohydrates hence less bloating, aggression and discomfort.
A diet made with whole, natural ingredients can significantly help to improve dogs’ mood and make them less cranky.
Too little proteins
Feeding your dog on a low protein diet can lead to depression and low moods. Protein is the most critical nutrient that dogs require to survive. Foods that are too low in proteins result in tryptophan deficiency in dogs. Tryptophan is an essential hormone that aids in the production of serotonin, which influences the mood in dogs.
If a dog feeds on a low-protein diet, it may experience unstable moods because the low levels of tryptophan compete for absorption.
Solution
Feed your dog on a protein-rich diet that contains quality protein sources that are easy to digest. This will help to boost serotonin levels and improve a dog’s mood and behavior.
Choose natural and wholesome protein sources, including natural animal proteins, and avoid animal byproducts to stabilize mood.
Read our article on Dog-Friendly Snacks That Your Frenchie will Love Anytime.
Conclusion
So, is your dog’s diet responsible for its crankiness?
Diet has a massive impact on the behavior of dogs. What a dog feeds on will determine the kind of behavior.
A poorly fed dog is unhealthy, unhappy, sluggish, tired, and cranky.
As such, it is essential to ensure that you give your dog a well-balanced diet with the proper nutrient levels and in the right portions and timing for optimal health and consequently a stable mood.
Generally, a good diet will not only promote your dog’s health but also make it a lot happier. Isn’t that what you want?