Lifestyle

The Top 7 Ways to Spoil Your Dog AND Help Them Live Longer!

Some ways of spoiling your dog—like giving them too many treats—can actually do more harm than good. We know you love your dog, so we’ve come up with the best ways to spoil your dog that may actually help them live longer. Give these a try and help your pup feel loved while also improving the length and quality of their life.

1. Keep Your Dog Well-Groomed

Regular grooming—whether you do it yourself or take your dog to a professional—not only helps your pup look and feel their best, but it’s also a great way to notice or prevent certain health problems. How? Lots of ways!

Great Way to Notice Changes

How often do you look at your pup’s paw pads, in their ears, or under their tail? How often do you feel every inch of your dog? Regularly grooming your pooch gives you a chance to see and feel areas you don’t normally handle, so you can spot lumps, bumps, irritation, and any other changes at an early stage, when things tend to be more treatable.

Prevents Problems

If you have a long-haired dog, regular grooming is crucial to prevent painful tangles, called mats, from forming. Did you know severe matting can cut off the blood flow to a tail, ear, or leg and cause the appendage to become amputated? Severe matting also causes (and hides) numerous skin conditions. It’s also just plain painful.

Have a dog that sheds? Regular brushing and grooming are crucial for keeping their coat healthy, even if you have a short-haired breed like a Labrador Retriever or German Shepherd. Of course, brushing loose hair out of your dog also helps prevent that fur from shedding all over your home.

Helps Your Dog Look and Feel Fabulous

Many dogs prance out of the grooming salon because they know how good they look! When your dog is always clean and brushed out, they’re more likely to get positive attention from people, which is why grooming is truly a way of spoiling your dog.

2. Play With Them

While endlessly throwing a ball or playing perpetual tug may not be your idea of a perfect day, playing with your dog is crucial for both your relationship with your dog and their overall health.

Bonding

Playing with your dog is a way to bond with them, which actually helps both of you. Maintaining sustained eye contact with your dog—while playing or cuddling with them, for example—releases oxytocin, the “love hormone,” in both of you.

White Dog With Teal Collar Running Outside

Exercise

Play is a crucial way to incorporate exercise into your dog’s daily routine. Exercise is just as important for your pup’s physical health as it is for your own. Getting plenty of exercise can also help prevent boredom behaviors—such as eating from the trash, chewing on things they shouldn’t, and barking—that can cause your dog potentially serious problems, like intestinal blockages.

3. Give Your Dog Massage Therapy

You probably enjoy a good massage now and then, and so does your dog! You can massage your dog yourself by giving them long strokes in the direction their fur grows or step it up by having a licensed canine massage therapist pamper your pooch.

Feel Problems Early

When you regularly massage your dog, you know what every inch of them should feel like. If your dog starts to flinch or cry when you reach a certain area of the body, or if you notice new lumps, bumps, or skin problems, you can get treatment for your dog before you may otherwise have even noticed they were having a problem.

Make Grooming and Vet Visits Easier

Once your dog is used to having every part of them handled during a massage, they’ll be much more cooperative during grooming sessions and vet appointments since they’ll have less fear about being handled.

4. Take Them on Lots of Walks

Even if you have a backyard where your dog gets to run free, taking them for daily walks is both a special treat and an important way for them to get exercise and stay healthy.

Sniffing Makes Dogs Happy

Dogs have a sense of smell that’s approximately 100,000 times stronger than ours, and they really enjoy using their sniffer to explore. In fact, giving your dog plenty of opportunities to sniff new things (or things where the scent changes frequently, like a well-walked path) actually makes them happier and more optimistic.

Exercise

Exercise is crucial for keeping dogs happy and healthy, and they may not be getting enough if you aren’t taking them for at least one or two daily walks. Maybe try taking your dog for one brisk walk every day to get their heart rate up as well as another, slower walk for sniffing.

5. Keep Everything Clean

Even if your dog can’t tell you they’re uncomfortable with a mess, they likely feel better living in a nice, clean environment, so making sure your dog’s favorite areas are tidied up and sanitary is a surprising way to spoil your pup and show them how much you care.

Hygiene Is Key

In addition to an area just looking better, keeping your dog’s food and water bowls clean and sanitized and frequently picking up their poop from the yard is actually an important way to keep your dog healthy and living a long life.

6. Give Your Pup Frozen Treats on Hot Days

Whether you give your dog some frozen yogurt or stuff a toy with peanut butter, pumpkin, or We Feed Raw and then freeze it, frozen treats are an excellent way to spoil your pup.

It’s Fun and Yummy!

Frozen treats are a delightful treat for anybody, whether dog or human, especially on really hot days.

Prevent Dehydration

Low-level dehydration can cause a wide variety of health problems in dogs, and it can sneak up on your pup quickly. Freezing moisture-rich food and letting your dog lick it is a great way to incorporate more water into your dog’s diet if they don’t enjoy drinking from a bowl.

7. Feed Them a Raw Diet

Delicious and nutritious, a fully balanced raw diet not only makes dogs even more excited for mealtime, but it offers numerous health benefits that may help your dog live a longer, healthier life. Balancing a raw diet yourself can be difficult, so We Feed Raw has made raw dog food as easy as possible.

Our pre-portioned patties contain approximately 80% muscle meat (with associated connective tissue and fat), 10% organ meat, 10% finely ground bone, and added vitamins and minerals for a complete and balanced diet that meets AAFCO nutrition standards for dogs of all life stages, including the growth of large-breed puppies.

Raw Is Delicious

Most dogs LOVE We Feed Raw and have renewed excitement for mealtime when switched to our food. What better way to spoil your dog than with raw meat rather than mysterious crunchy pellets?

Raw Food Can Help Your Dog Live Longer

Raw dog food has numerous health benefits that can help your pup live not just MORE years, but BETTER years. Some of the many benefits of We Feed Raw include: