For gun dog owners, few moments are more gut-wrenching than those following a snakebite. Encounters with rattlesnakes are fraught with fear and chaos as hunters rush to triage their dog and face the prospect of a life-threatening reaction.

Canine athletes are incredibly efficient metabolic machines that can create tremendous amounts of heat while burning energy. It’s a physiological trait that helps them achieve impressive feats of athleticism, but in hot ambient temperatures it can also become a liability.

The canine athlete is a unique metabolic machine that is remarkably efficient in converting food into fuel for mind boggling feats of speed and endurance. However, the strategy for feeding hunting dogs is hotly debated, and there’s a mountain of anecdotal evidence supporting a variety of techniques to achieve this common goal.

If making sense of canine supplements feels like an overwhelming and confusing endeavor, you’re certainly not alone. Over the past decade, the canine supplement market has seen exponential growth along with a sharp rise in popularity among hunting dog enthusiasts.

For decades, veterinarians have uniformly promoted early spay and neuter as a solution to managing the pet population. While effective at controlling unwanted pregnancies and preventing some reproductive diseases, this strategy brings its own unique set of consequences that are seldom discussed with dog owners.

Maintaining peak physical condition in our hunting dogs is a year-round pursuit, not an activity confined to the week before opening day. Hunting dogs are similar to human athletes in that their bodies require training and conditioning to constantly perform at the highest level.

With so much discussion about dog food, it’s easy to forget just how important hydration is in the nutrition of canine athletes. Water performs myriad functions in the bodies of performance animals, from lubricating joints to enhancing nutrient uptake in muscles.