This is a course intended for people who want to learn how to formulate a balanced canine diet, whether raw, cooked or a mixture, based on sound, scientific principles of canine nutrition.

It includes a solid foundation in digestion, as well as review of all required nutrients and components of the canine diet.  It encourages critical thinking, so you can evaluate various diets and methods of feeding, and choose what works best,  to suit an individual dog. You will learn to formulate balanced diets, containing all the essential macronutrients and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). My emphasis here, as always, is a foundation of scientific knowledge, combined with skillful use of foods and ingredients, so that the end product is a series of recipes that support your dog’s health in every level.

The course is done entirely online, and is available as mentored (with assignments) or non-mentored – tuition fees vary.

For the mentored version I provide all course materials, plus marking of assignments with comments and feedback, and course grades. There is no grading for the un-mentored audit program. For the mentored program only, discussion and support is also provided via our private Facebook group and as needed.

There are 12 units.  The course includes reading, study and research, plus written assignments for the mentored version.  You can complete the course in your own time, and at your own pace, but I highly recommend sticking to a regular schedule of study.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Canine Dietary Formulation – Course Overview

Unit One: Introduction to dietary formulation – principles, tools and reliable resources, plus an overview of current, popular dietary approaches, and where they may go awry

Unit Two: Energy and Macronutrients –  How much food your dog really need? What should a diet consist of, in terms of carbs, fat and protein? Are all carbs really so bad?  Formulation starts with macronutrients and energy, and food sources of all.

Unit Three: Protein and Amino Acids – how much does a dog really need?  Food Sources, requirement ranges and how to calculate, nitrogen balance, signs of deficiency and excess

Unit Four: Fats and fatty acids – much confusion on this one floating around! here we will get the skinny on fats and why we need to understand fatty acids, not just the total amount a dog takes in from all sources.

Unit Five: Micronutrients; an overview, and requirements – vitamins and minerals are required in much more precise amounts than fat, carb and fiber. This is where many home made diets fall down – and yours never will again.

Unit Six: Vitamins –  what do they do in the body?  We’ll look at food sources, requirements, interactions, how to supply in the diet and supplement as needed.

Unit Seven: Minerals-  what do they do in the body?  As with vitamins, we’ll examine food sources, requirements, interactions, how to supply in the diet and supplement as needed

Unit Eight: Interactions and Anti Nutrients – all foods contain more than essential nutrients, and we need to understand some of these to get started. You  may have heard of phytates and oxalates – there are others! In addition, nutrients  can affect the absorption of one another if fed in excess, so here is here we learn about balance and ratios ,and why they’re important.

Unit Nine: Supplementation and food storage/preparation

Unit Ten: Putting it all together; forming the recipes. We’ll use nutritiondata, your own dog(s) as examples, and start figuring out how to actually put a completely balanced recipe together. We’ll look at raw and cooked diets, and get the foundation set up.

Units Eleven and Twelve: Practicuum in recipe development – vitamins and minerals, calculating fatty acid content, what to do if it doesn’t seem to work, substitutions.

This course may be taken as a monthly class, or you can take your own time, send me questions as required and complete in a more leisurely fashion (A ceiling of 8 months is recommended, so you keep some momentum).

For more information, contact me at catlane@thepossiblecanine.com

We will use all classnotes and Internet resources, so no additional texts are required. I will provide a Recommended Reading list, but you don’t need to purchase anything extra to get started.