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Hold the doggy-bag and chill the water, dog scientist recommends

July 19, 2005

thumb_Brown Wendy 0002.jpgHere’s a conversation-starter for the water-cooler; dogs like it cold, according to latest research from The University of New England.
Water, the fountain of life, is not only preferred cold by humans but by dogs as well, says Mrs Wendy Brown, a Research Fellow at UNE.
Her findings hotly follow other research showing dogs fed a vegetarian diet fare just as well as those fed meat and rice.
“We as humans have a preference for cold water, so why shouldn’t dogs?” Asked Mrs Brown, who presented her findings at an international animal nutrition conference held at UNE last week.
More than 100 delegates from Australia and abroad attended the 18th biennial meeting, entitled “Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition in Australia”, with 25 specialists presenting papers.
Mrs Brown, a self-confessed dog-lover, said she was initially approached by a pet food company to investigate how dogs prefer water.
“Research has tended to concentrate on food for dogs, but no research had been carried out on their drinking habits,” she said.
So, along with her honours student, Ms Christine Sydenham, she set up a two-week experiment on 11 dogs of mixed breeds.
The “guinea pigs” were offered three drinks of water daily for 15 minutes for each dog, with water temperature being offered at 15C, 25C and 35C.
“Preferences were tested for 13 days, enabling dogs’ drinking water temperature preferences to be recorded over a range of room and outdoor temperatures,” Mrs Brown said.

Indeed, it was found dogs did prefer the colder water, irrespective of outdoor temperatures.
But wait, there’s more, for Mrs Brown also wanted to find out whether dogs performed better on vegetarian or meat diets.
For this experiment, she traveled to Singleton where she recruited 12 sled-racing Siberian Huskies, six dogs and six bitches, ranging in age from two to seven years.
“Surprisingly, sled-racing has quite a following in Australia,” Mrs Brown said.
She said she wanted to test her theory – that dogs performed just as well on a properly balanced meat-free diet than on a diet based on meat.
The Huskies entered regular sled-races across Australia, pulling a wheeled-sled over dirt.
This experiment lasted for 16 weeks and followed the dogs through pre-race training, competitive training and four weeks of recovery.
Sure enough, the dogs fed on soya bean and non-meat protein fared just as well as those fed on meat.
Admitting her own dogs are fed “leftover diets from feeding trials”, Mrs Brown is now turning her research skills to novel sources of proteins for dog diets, including feeding them protein from leaves.
For more information phone Mrs Wendy Brown on 6773 5125 or
Lydia Roberts on 6773 2779


Posted by Lydia Roberts at July 19, 2005 01:07 PM