Right breakfast the difference for working dogs

Working dogs are like athletes and need a diet to match, as Jude Gillies discovered when she met Mac the retired truck dog.

Jokes aside about not being able to teach old dogs new tricks, retired trucking contractor Owen Baigent says his faithful old dog Mac has a whole new lease of life.

Baigent puts it down to a new dog food that has given Mac a reprieve from arthritis. Oh, sounds like a commercial... free advertising!

A rising 11-year-old, Mac spent his life on the trucks with Baigent, working with unstinting enthusiasm until one day he refused to put a front paw down.

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The $30 Baigent paid proved to be a bargain and he had Don the huntaway cross for another 18 years.
"In the end he was blind and deaf but he'd go anywhere and work for anyone."

When Baigent started up the transport business after the industry deregulated, he was one of the first in the business to have a working truck dog. "Now most of them have them."

A good dog can save a driver a lot of time, he says, "especially in Nelson where you have a lot of pickups and you have to get to the boat to Wellington or when it's hot and the stock don't want to move". Oh, I don't get it? how dogs a dog save a driver a lot of time??

Two generations later, Baigent's dog Mac, a grandson of Don, proved to be just as faithful and hardworking. A large dog with the short tail and rough, woolly coat of his jill smithfield bobtail breed, Mac was a natural worker.

"He started working at six months old. I wanted a dog that would work hard with the truck in sale yards. This little fella would load four units of stock non-stop. " What? the dog carries this?
And all the other truckies knew Mac.

"He'd work for anyone on any truck, he was so keen. He had such a natural ability and would make friends with anybody.

"He didn't even need commands. He just knew what to do." Dogs can be sooo doggish!

And he went everywhere with Baigent, covering all the South Island and half the North Island."
He was also known at stops all round the country. "People got to know him. He used to get a few treats from the cooks on the ferry and some of the hotels we'd stop at would have a few bones for him."

When he wasn't working the stock, Mac travelled in a box on the side of the truck, "never in the cab". Oh, I think I get it.. it's LIVE stock, we're talking about.. not boxes of stock DOH!

"It's a safety issue. A dog should be totally secured away from the driver. "But open the hatch of the box and he'd be out ready for work. "He was one in a million."

Which is why it was so devastating when Mac suddenly seemed lame.

"One day at the Brightwater sale yards he just wouldn't put his foot down."

While initially it seemed as if Mac had an injury or perhaps a splinter, the vet diagnosed arthritis, a common complaint in older dogs, especially working dogs.

After a series of injections to treat the painful arthritis, the vet advised trying a new dietary supplement to treat Mac's problem and, like magic, he was a new dog, says Baigent.

The joint-supplement dog food contained both glucosamine sulphate and omega 3 fatty acids, a substance that controls inflammation in the joint and blocks genes that produce cartilage-destroying enzymes, says the Vet Centre veterinarian Kelly Powell. If it works for dogs, I'm sure it's good for humans !

"I've had really good results. It increases antioxidants and vitamins and is really good for older dogs," she says.

Powell agrees diet and especially the omega 3 and glucosamine supplements have huge benefits to rejuvenate older working dogs.

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"He still loves chewing on a bone. I think it's a natural thing."
But Baigent is adamant the diet supplements have worked for Mac and not just relieved the arthritis pain but also given him a new lease on life with a shiny coat and extra bounce.

Well, I feed my dog fish oil. I think he loves it. He's always had a shiny coat, so it's hard to say if it's working. But, hey, it's good for you.

"He's his old self again and full of energy and loves jumping up into the ute. "He thinks he's a puppy again."

Even if his working days are over, the value of diet is something Baigent says is easy to overlook.
And Gibbs agrees. He says working dogs are essential to the farming industry. "They're like a tractor, you've got to keep them well oiled."