How Important is the Relationship of Nutrition to Behavior in Pets?
By Dr. R.J. Peters
It’s inevitable that studies will be done, if not already in progress, on animals to determine the effects of specific nutrients on specific behaviors. Along with the obvious positive potential for optimizing our pets’ health, this pursuit could have potentially negative effects on their health and behavior and thus, their ultimate welfare.
In the broadest terms, behavior depends on adequate nutrition to make it possible for an individual to maintain such functions as reaction time, cognition, immune response, strength, and other qualities of good health.
If any of these functions is compromised, behavior will be affected. Loss of strength, for example, might cause most pets to pass up a long walk or a very active game, because they have learned that it hurts afterward.
Loss of cognition, the ability to be aware of one’s surroundings and detect mood changes in others near them, can lead to fearfulness and thus, aggressive behavior as a defense.
If you feel nauseous, you may feel more like resting than playing until you feel better. If you ache when you try to jump or run, you will avoid games that involve these actions. And if your mouth hurts, you might pass on eating, no matter how hungry you feel. Our pets react exactly in these ways, too.
Since poor nutrition can contribute to poor function in numerous ways, it’s more logical to look at “the bigger picture” and aim for proper diet overall than to devise a pick-and-choose scheme of selecting nutrients to affect specific behaviors.
While it may be academically interesting to search for specific connections between, say, nutrient A and body function B, such pursuits tend to lead primarily to the typically narrow-minded approaches to health offered up by our allopathic “health care” systems. Thus, it’s possible to one day see “anti-aggression pills” for dogs that contain, perhaps, a formulation of tryptophan and antioxidants, made in certain strengths for mildly aggressive, moderately aggressive, or severely aggressive. A very medical approach… but one that would be pounced upon by a naive public, searching for the perfect dog. If you can’t learn to work with your dog, then give it a pill and force it to behave.
This approach easily leads next to the profit potential in a new industry that sells Vitamin X to treat Behavior Y or Z, propelling the supplement industry into a quasi-drug business… which is exactly what the medical profession has been trying to do for decades.
Proving a specific connection between a nutrient/chemical to a specific result in one’s physiology would land the product within the definition of a “drug.” And that would lead directly to the prescription counter. Selling vitamins by prescription has a much higher profit potential than buying them affordably at the supermarket or health food store, or online, and puts doctors and veterinarians squarely in control, where they want to be, directing every phase of our lives and our pets’ lives… all for a price.
It may be useful for a veterinarian to understand these connections in order to help clients solve specific problems with their pets, but there is no good reason for a pet owner to be required to consult with a licensed professional for every little thing. This will lead only to more pet abandonment and a higher euthanasia rate as more people discover they can’t afford to buy their way to a better dog, believing that it’s the only way.
Dr. Peters has an extensive background in health care, animal care, journalism, computer repair and systems administration. She writes articles over a wide spectrum of topics and has numerous ebooks available on the Internet. Visit her websites, http://www.theproblemcat.com and http://www.hipaws.com for more articles and information about pets.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._R.J._Peters
