The little things that your dog needs a lot of
Macro minerals are the minerals that are used in your dog’s body in large amounts, plain and simple. Calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium are all in this category. Even though all of the macro minerals on this list are very important, there is one which tops them all. Calcium.
As many of us know, calcium plays an important role in the body including strengthening teeth and bones. However, there are a number of critical roles that calcium plays in the body.
First off, calcium contributes to the tone, strength and function of smooth muscle in the dog. Examples of this are the heart muscles, the digestive tract and the reproductive tract. If the readily available tissue reserves of calcium are depleted, the dog’s body will attempt to mobilize calcium from the bones to meet the requirements that the dog is demanding. Moving calcium from the bones to meet these needs requires increased acidity in the body and is not a desired approach to either short/long term performance. And certainly not for long term health. Many manufacturers will use large amounts of poor quality calcium with poor absorption rates that can cause reduced smooth muscle tone, depressed heart function, compromised physical strength, poor endurance, depressed immune function and even poor reproductive performance.
In other words, quality matters when it comes to macro minerals.
Let’s talk about the second major role that calcium plays: the role of the great transporter. That might sound a little science fiction, so let’s define it a little better. Available or soluble calcium plays a major role in supporting the utilization of other key nutrients. When body tissue is in short supply of usable calcium, many other nutrients and trace minerals are not utilized properly or to their fullest potential.
To make that a bit more simple, imagine a circle made of every nutrient in the body including calcium. If you were to draw a line from calcium to every nutrient that it helps use, and then a line to the next nutrient that is affected, you would have what looks to be a ball of string with lines crisscrossing all over the circle. This visual shows how important calcium is in using just about every nutrient in the body. The idea here is that we require a large amount of calcium for dogs to reach their fullest potential.
This is true, but we also need the correct amounts that are of a very usable quality for this to succeed. How did we do that you may ask?
We used a type of calcium that is 85% or higher in bioavailability, while conventional sources of calcium used by competitors can be as low as 10% bioavailable.
Bioavailability? Sounds like chemistry, you might say. Bioavailability simply means the extent to which a nutrient can be used by the body. Low bioavailability means very little is used. High bioavailability means very much or all is used by the body. To accomplish this, we use macro minerals that are at the highest bioavailability possible. Many dog food or supplement manufacturers formulate products to contain enough calcium or other macro minerals on paper. But they don’t factor in the low bioavailability of the source, and we quickly see that the dog will not absorb the target amounts needed to perform to its fullest potential.
This is a lot of information, so let’s review. We started with intestinal tissue that is healthy and absorbing to its fullest potential. We have the perfect natural blend of meat-based fats and proteins that keep a friendly environment in the intestinal tract. We incorporate highly bioavailable, or usable, macro minerals at the correct levels for active dogs. That sounds great. But, it is only a great start. Let’s go forward from there to examine our Trace Minerals.