Lack of calcium in dogs. Symptoms and solutions
Calcium is an important part of your dog's development and well-being. The lack of calcium in dogs can lead to various problems that can lead to more serious diseases and behavior problems.
The first thing is that calcium is an essential mineral and as in humans, in dogs It is also part of their bone and dental development and plays an important role in the lactation of puppies, their circulatory system and even in their nervous system.
The function of calcium lies in allowing connections between muscle cells to be made and help in the process of neuronal cell synapses, helping your dog to maintain its functions and keep it oriented.
But of course knowing when your partner lacks calcium can be a somewhat complicated task and is that in principle when calcium levels are not yet too low, you will not notice very alarming symptoms.
Other causes of this condition in dogs may be due to malfunctioning kidneys, because if there is a problem in them the most likely thing is that calcium is escaping in that way.
Symptoms
There is a series of symptoms and characteristic of the lack of calcium in dogs that can help you to realize the problem, including:
- If we said that calcium is essential in its growth, then one of the points of alarm is that you notice that it is not growing in size the way you should do it, this especially in the case of puppies. But it may happen that, at other times, if the loss of calcium is already large, then most likely you feel that your dog's bones are a little thinner and thinner. If this condition in the bone structure is present, surely you will notice that your dog when doing exercises is easily broken.
- A dog with a lack of calcium will have apathetic behavior and fatigue, considering that it is compromised the cardiac system arriving to present arrhythmias or tachycardia.
- The next thing that occurs when there is lack of calcium in dogs are muscle spasms or convulsions since, like humans, it is an essential mineral in the body. muscle cell work allowing proper functioning.
- Hip dysplasia and tooth loss are also evident in the absence of calcium. Also joint and bone pain. Here we must distinguish between lack of calcium or on the contrary is a joint wear that would be treated with chondroprotectors for dogs.
- Another symptom that in many cases shows the loss of calcium, is that urine our dog turns a green color, a product of calcium that is not being conserved in the blood.
- Vomiting, lack of appetite and fever are other symptoms that your dog will have before low blood calcium .
Of course the lack of calcium can be caused by a poor diet, poor in this mineral. Whether the feed that you buy does not bring the necessary amount of calcium or if it is a natural food, the amount of calcium also fails.
Although this condition may happen because of diseases such as Hypocalcemia, as explained by Petmd, where calcium levels fall due to the failure of a protein called Albumin.
In the case of females, after giving birth they may suffer a disease called eclampsia and may even suffer it during pregnancy or in the period of lactation. In any case, this disease leads to the condition of low calcium levels.
Solutions
Do not be scared! This condition has a solution. The lack of calcium does not have to be permanent and luckily it can be overcome helping to recover the health of our best friend.
The first thing you should keep in mind is that under no circumstances or suspect that your dog may have a lack of calcium give him no supplement or calcium that you would take.
Remember that no excess is good and if you try to give calcium to others, the safest thing is that you end up worsening the problem and putting the health and life of your pet at risk.
] To start if you see any of the symptoms or several of them, the ideal is to take your dog to your veterinarian, so that in this way the proper diagnosis is made.
The best way to diagnose this condition is a blood test, which will also allow verification of other values that may indicate the possible cause of blood loss.
Once the veterinarian has the diagnosis, he will prescribe the appropriate amount according to his Size and age, will also guide you to find out what is the best way to supply this mineral to your dog.
To prevent the lack of calcium in dogs you need to be aware of how much calcium should your dog consume?
So when it comes to a puppy, the recommended amount is 320 milligrams per kilo and in the case of adults it should be 120 milligrams per kilogram of dog.
When you go to buy the food of your dog take into account all these factors to avoid choosing a food that is not appropriate to the needs of your pet and also if you plan to give any natural food can advise you to always maintain the nutritional values.
With all this information and you can identify or suspect the presence of this condition in your dog and that is that the sooner you can attend to it better.
Remember that the lack of calcium in dogs p It can lead to other diseases or on the contrary be the consequence of a disease. In any case, the faster you give attention, the faster you can give your dog a better quality of life.
