8 Life Hacks That Will Make Your Dog Hunt Better and Live Longer, According to a Vet

Dogs are resilient. Working breeds in particular can tolerate the discomfort and grind of a long hunting season. But just because our gun dogs get along fine with whatever we’ve been doing doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from smart yet simple lifestyle changes. The good news is these tweaks require minimal effort on your part.

I’ve hunted with and interviewed plenty of gun dog trainers and veterinarians over the years, and I’ve picked up a few good habits — and shed some bad ones — after learning how the pros care for their own dogs. Dr. RuthAnn Lobos is the senior veterinarian for Purina, a certified canine rehabilitation therapist, and the owner of an 11-year-old Lab and a 2-year-old wirehaired pointing griffon. She’s a firm supporter of applying science to canine nutrition and health, and she applies those lessons from Purina’s team of researchers and other veterinary experts to her own bird dogs. 

These are her tips not just for maximizing daily hunts but for getting more hunting seasons out of your dog.

1. “Fasting” Your Dog Improves His Endurance

You might need breakfast before a hunt, but it’s not particularly helpful to your dog. In fact, it can actually hold him back.

“Research shows us that dogs have better endurance if they are fasted,” says Lobos. “You want to feed them eight to twelve hours before you’re going to run them, work them, train them, hunt them.”

The best way to accomplish this is to consistently feed your dog one daily meal in the evening. The reasons why boil down to simple physiology.

“It takes water, energy, and blood flow to digest the food that we feed them. We want that to be occurring when they’re sleeping, not when they’re hunting and exercising,” says Lobos. “We want their blood flow to be in their muscles, to retain their water for hydration, and to have that energy go to their brains and their bodies [during a hunt] to keep them moving and finding birds.”

Some owners feed their dogs very early — say, 4 or 5 a.m. — before driving to a field trial or a 10 a.m. pheasant hunt. That may bypass the risk of bloat (see below), but it won’t improve their performance. The best endurance levels are achieved if you feed after that 8- to 12-hour window.

2. Feeding in the Evening Can Prevent Bloat

Another reason to skip feeding your dog before a hunt is to reduce the risk of bloat, which is more serious than it sounds. If your dog has a big lump of kibble in his stomach before exercise, there’s a risk the stomach can actually swing around and twist on itself. This is called gastric dilation-volvulus, and it’s lif-threatening. 

Fortunately, it can usually be avoided by not feeding your dog before physical activity. Some working breeds, including Labs, are at a greater risk of bloat than others.

3. Feed a Smaller Recovery Meal After a Hunt

There’s an exception to the one-meal guideline, and that’s feeding a small recovery meal after hunting.

“Similar to humans after exercise or a hard workout, our dogs have about a thirty minute window where their cells are really open and [receptive to] that nutrition for recovery,” says Lobos.

For a post-hunt recovery snack, wait until your dog is cool and no longer panting hard. Then feed anywhere from a quarter to half their daily ration. This will help them recover for the next day’s hunt. This can be particularly helpful toward the middle and end of the season when already-lean hunting dogs are losing weight even as their metabolisms ramp up.

“Sometimes the volume that we need to feed dogs in order to maintain their body condition can be larger than their stomachs are,” says Lobos. “By feeding them after a hunt and giving them an opportunity to get some calories as recovery, you don’t have to feed them this massive quantity at dinner and you’re still gonna be able to meet their caloric needs.”

4. Float Your Dog’s Food with Water

Lobos adds water to her dog’s kibble year-round, but says it’s particularly helpful during hunting season and other periods of high-intensity exercise. There’s no exact ratio of dry food to water she recommends. Instead, think about adding water to kibble like you’d pour milk over cereal. Cover the kibble until it just floats.

“This gives them a bit of what I call pre-hydration,” says Lobos. “[Studies show] once dogs get dehydrated, it’s hard for them to rehydrate themselves in a timely fashion. And, especially if you’re going on multiple-day hunts, that dehydration can become cumulative … Floating their kibble also helps because then they don’t have to dump as much water from their own cells into their intestinal system to break down the food. They’ve got a head start.”

As you would with a bowl of Cheerios, add water to dry food immediately before giving it to your dog. This is for two reasons. First, it ensures the kibble stays crunchy enough to help clean your dog’s teeth. Second, allowing watered kibble to turn mushy causes more problems than it solves.

“If you do let it sit until it’s an oatmeal consistency and that kibble has lost its shape, that actually can make it too digestible. It will actually pass through their GI tract too quickly. That can lead to dehydration in itself, diarrhea, and loss of the ability to absorb those nutrients. Timing is key.”

5. Bait Your Dog’s Food to Keep Weight On 

As a Lab owner, I’ve never had any trouble getting my dog to eat. But many hunting breeds are notoriously difficult to coax into finishing their dinner, particularly during the excitement, distraction, and fatigue of bird season. 

To make their food more appealing and encourage consumption, Lobos suggests sprinkling something like FortiFlora, a probiotic with a beef-bullion-like flavor, onto their food. (This also works in a water bowl if you’re worried about hydration.) It doesn’t hurt that the probiotic helps shore up your dog’s immune system and can ease diarrhea. 

Another option is adding wet food to dry kibble. I do this during bird season to increase my dog’s calories, help him consume more water, and give him a treat when he’s sore and tired from hunting pheasants. Lobos prefers adding wet food to dry kibble rather than old standbys of a fried egg, ball of hamburger, or other human food, which are often too fatty and risk GI upset.

“People think it’s kind of a delicacy, but I love wet food as an additive for people who mainly feed kibble. It’s nice to keep in your back pocket for either the dog that’s a little bit off their food because they’re so excited about chasing birds, or maybe just need a bump in calories, or you’re looking to offer some variety without upsetting their stomach.”

6. Get More Seasons Out of Your Dog by Not Overfeeding

A landmark dog lifespan study by Purina set the standard for what a dog’s healthy weight means. That research study found that lean-fed dogs (ones that ate 25 percent fewer calories than their littermates) lived longer, healthier lives by almost two years.

The most eye-opening part of this research, to me at least, is that the “overweight” dogs weren’t the kind of Labs that look like overstuffed ottomans waddling around the dove fields. The dogs who, on average, died 1.8 years sooner and had arthritis three years sooner than their counterparts were just 10 percent over their ideal body condition. In other words, they looked like — to an average dog owner — fairly healthy.

“That’s the crazy part,” says Lobos. “[That extra weight] had that big of an impact on their lives and their health. So pay close attention to that with your dog, because it will impact their lives and their careers, and their time afield with us.”

One easy way to make sure you’re feeding your dog the correct amount of food? Throw out the scoop, says Lobos, and use a true measuring cup. Level your measurements as if you’re baking a cake, not heaping coffee grounds into the filter.

The dogs with shorter lifespans were scored just over a six on this body condition chart; the ideal score is a four or five. This system, developed by Purina, has become the global standard for evaluating canine body health.

7. Dogs Need Joint Supplements at Every Age

Lobos recommends starting your dog on a joint supplement not when your dog becomes a senior, but from puppyhood on.

“If people wait until their dog is limping or old, and then we start to think about, ‘Oh, let’s give them a joint supplement?’” says Lobos. “We’re about five to eight years too late,” says Lobos. 

Instead, give a joint supplement proactively to support your dog’s joint health. Most reputable supplements like Purina Joint Care or Dasuquin have glucosamine in them, but Lobos also says to look for supplements with omega-3 fatty acids from marine sources (think fish oil, not flax seed), type II collagen, and hyaluronic acid. All these have good data behind them.

“People immediately jump to glucosamine and chondroitin as the gold standard in supporting joint health, but we have learned relatively recently by looking back on the data that glucosamine and chondroitin really don’t do all the magical things we hoped and thought they did. But we know they don’t do any harm, which is going to be first and foremost when you’re choosing a supplement.”

8. Stop Letting Your Dog Jump Off the Tailgate

I used to let my dog jump out of the car or off the tailgate because it was easy, efficient, and seemed harmless. Now I pick my dog out of the cab of my lifted truck and lower him off the tailgate myself, even though he’s in his prime at five years old. That’s because I want to keep him healthy as long as possible. The reason is to prevent damage to my dog’s bones and joints, and to avoid something called jump-down syndrome. Lobos is a big fan of lowering your dog from high places instead of letting him jump.

“The elbow joint is a complex joint. The ulna, which is the bone that makes up the point of your elbow, has little notches on it where the radius, the bigger bone in your arm, sits. And when a dog jumps down repeatedly, it can actually cause a little piece of the edge of the ulna to break off,” says Lobos. “It’s not necessarily something that’s going to cause them to become immediately and acutely lame, but it can be like the pea in the mattress from that old childhood fairy tale. It just continues to sit in there, in their elbow joint, and rub, and then it will cause inflammation and eventually arthritis.”

Dogs bear 60 percent of their weight on their front end, says Lobos, so when they get front-end lameness, it affects their quality of life and can shorten their hunting career.

“Lowering your dog is just one simple thing that we can do for them. I always have people who are like, ‘Well, my dog is twelve years old and he’s jumped out of the tailgate his entire life, and he is just fine.’ And sure — great, congratulations [for that dog]. But if there are little things that we can do for our bird dogs to help to extend their careers and their quality of life, I think we should do it. It’s a no-brainer.”