Engaged in military as well as civilian occupations, guard dogs serve on sentry duty, patrol duty, shore watch, riot control, store and warehouse security and many other similar missions. Whatever the nature of their mission, all guard dogs have one thing in common: their high degree of training.

Every guard dog is trained to maintain a peak performance for the entire time it is on duty. Ordinarily this is for extended periods of time. Such sustained performance requires huge amounts of energy. The guard dog also needs large amounts of energy to cope with the extreme emotional stress that occurs while the dog is on duty. Often, during periods of sustained performance, a guard dog’s energy needs exceed that of a female during lactation.

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What are table scraps anyway? Sure, these are the left-overs of one’s meal. But your meal probably differs from my meal, so there is no clear definition.

A colleague, who regularly feeds his dogs table scraps in addition to premium dog food, told me the following story yesterday. He had fed this three dogs Indonesian table scraps. Two of them, the Australian Shepherds, could handle this without any problems. However, the Portuguese Water Dog got severe diarrhoea. When my colleague woke up in the morning and went downstairs, he discovered the huge smelly mess on the floor. For two days the unfortunate Portuguese walked around with bubbly sounds coming from his stomach and didn’t care so much for food. So what seems ok for one dog, may hurt the other.

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Most dogs used as guard dogs are German Shepherds, with an occasional Doberman Pinscher, Boxer, or Labrador Retriever. The average weight of an adult male guard dog is about 70 pounds. None should weigh less than 50 pounds. To satisfactorily provide a guard dog with adequate amounts of energy and nutrients every day, its food should have the following three characteristics: 1) It should contain approximately 2000 calories in each pound. 2) It should have the nutrients balanced to be fed at about 40 available calories per pound of body weight. 3) The overall digestibility of the food should not be less than 80 percent.

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