Tools used to assess the nutritional status in dogs

Abstract

Currently nutritional status, have become of great importance in the clinical evaluation of the
animal, considered the fifth vital parameter. It is possible to establish whether the dog is thin,
the ideal weight or obese, and both obesity and thinness can cause serious influences on various
bodily functions, limiting the longevity of the animal. Among the many problems related to
poor nutrition, obesity is one of the most frequent and important. Four tools will be used to
make the nutritional diagnosis in dogs: weight, widely used method, but imprecise due to the
absence of tables for all races; body mass canine index, little used in veterinary medicine,
morphometry which is well used in humans, but expressionless in dogs, which determines the
amount of body fat and body condition score canine, a very subjective method, may be more
an interpretation by the evaluators. The participants were 38 dogs without selection race, older
than four months and less than thirteen years without sex determination, from March 2016, in
a park Claras-Waters Federal District. For data collection was used a previously structured form
and adapted to the four tools used for nutritional diagnosis of dogs, suggested in this study. The
results showed that weight and body condition score did not show such efficiency, it is
suggested that the canine body mass index associated with morphometry are the tools most
commonly used for nutritional diagnosis in dogs.