Mastiff Health
The health of a mastiff is determined by many different factors. Amounts of exercise, diet and genetics all play a role in how healthy your mastiff will be through out it's life. On this page you will find some helpful info.
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Benefits of RawI highly recommend doing your research before switching your dogs food at any time! We decided to switch our dogs to raw and noticed a difference with in a week in our dogs appearance and how much they needed to go outside. The amount of poop is smaller and reduced the amount of times they went a day dramatically. Coats were shiny and their bad breath was gone! Energy levels were better too! Choosing to go raw is a big decision but we are very glad we did! Please go to the links below and decide for yourself! http://rawfeddogs.org/benefits.html
https://www.facebook.com/houseofmastiff/posts/1051759021559319
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Exercising & Nutrition |
Mastiffs are a giant breed dog or a molosser breed. Because they grow so fast monitoring exercise is very important. Letting a mastiff puppy play at free will is fine however, going up and down stairs should be prohibited. Small walks everyday until 2 years of age is ok and encouraged but watch your puppy for tiredness. Keeping a mastiff puppy fit will help ensure the joints aren't carrying too much and allow them to grow slowly.
Nutrition plays a key role in mastiff health. If you are feeding kibble keep a close eye on your calcium/phospherus levels a 1-1 ration is best. Protein levels should be around 25% and come from a quality meat source. |
Health Testing |
Health Testing is a very important tool for breeders! We have several DNA Markers that are very easy to use. We test for CMR, PRA and DM and only breed to dogs that have been tested also. We have in the past x-rayed for hips and elbows but no longer do so. We don't x-ray for puppy counts either we believe in only x-raying for emergency situations only because of the radiation it puts in your body. I will share links to explain our reasoning. We do have our dogs heart listened to frequently and we also have their eyes examined. We also have thyroid testing done. We DO NOT X-Ray for puppy counts. http://www.avidog.com/how-badly-do-we-need-to-know/ http://www.thedogplace.org/health/x-ray-hype_andrews-126.asp http://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/protect-your-dog-radiation/
_http://www.instituteofcaninebiology.org/blog/how-do-hips-become-dysplastic Along with health testing we have adopted a new vaccine protocol. It is now in our contract how many shots to be given. This is a display of the minimum amount of years a vaccine protects a dog after being given a vaccine. Minimum Duration Of Immunity For Canine Vaccines Distemper- 7 years by challenge/15 years by serology Parvovirus – 7 years by challenge/ 7 years by serology Adenovirus – 7 years by challenge/ 9 years by serology Canine rabies – 3 years by challenge/ 7 years by serology Challenge - animals are injected with or exposed to the wild, infective virus and then observed to see whether they develop the disease Seriology - measurement of components in the plasma, or presence of antibodies in the blood to the above viruses. http://www.vet.bc.ca/canine-vaccines.pml http://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/lifelong-immunity-vets/ |