# Can I give my vitamin D supplement to my poodle?



## PeggyTheParti (Sep 5, 2019)

Unless you’ve consulted with your veterinarian, I would stick with natural food sources or products specified for dogs. Is her diet fully balanced otherwise?


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## cowpony (Dec 30, 2009)

I would talk to your vet about it, especially since the compound you want to use is a regulated drug. You don't want legal awkwardness. I wonder if there might be a way to boost vitamin D intake through alternative animal sources. I can't imagine all dogs depended on fatty fish for their entire vitamin D intake prior to the advent of commercial dog foods. Were they getting vitamin D by scavenging eggs and the scraps of fat & organ meat discarded during animal slaughter?


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## Rose n Poos (Sep 22, 2017)

A starting point for more research for you...

*Vitamin D in Home-Prepared Diets*

While home-prepared diets may show the greatest variation in canine vitamin D levels, Dr. Howell notes that not every home-prepared diet has to be supplemented with vitamin D. “I’ll refer you back to the Tufts study,” she says. “Animals on balanced home-prepared diets may have sufficient D levels. It’s a matter of feeding foods that contain vitamin D, fostering healthy digestion, and possibly supplementing Vitamin D in a whole-food form or in a synthetic form if necessary. I worry that people may over-supplement unknowingly and cause a toxicity in their pet.”

For this reason, she recommends that owners ask their veterinarians for help with homemade diets or turn to Balance IT, a pet diet-planning website developed by a veterinary nutritionist at the University of California, Davis. Dogaware.com is another source of diet-planning information.

“I’m a big believer in animals getting their nutrients from real food,” Dr. Howell says. “Instead of supplementing with a synthetic form of vitamin D3, I think it’s worth getting some fresh foods into the diet that are good sources of D, such as salmon, *liver, and eggs*. It’s less likely that you will over-supplement if you give a food source of vitamin D rather than cholecalciferol, which is a high-dose synthetic form of vitamin D.

“If an animal with insufficient D levels doesn’t have adequate levels after trying food sources of D, I think it’s worth looking at digestion and then at a synthetic D supplement,” she says. “A conservative amount of synthetic D can bring an animal into the sufficient range. Some popular synthetic vitamin D supplements are from Rx Vitamins and Thorne Research. These products are liquid and easy to dose and administer to your pet. Both are available by prescription and should be monitored by your veterinarian in conjunction with the diet in order to avoid over-supplementation.”









Vitamin D for Dogs - Whole Dog Journal


We all need vitamin D - and so do our dogs. Here's what pet parents need to know about Vitamin D for dogs.




www.whole-dog-journal.com


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## Mylosz (Oct 9, 2020)

Thank you for the posts! I didn't talk to my vet cause the only advice he could give me the last time we spoke was to feed kibble. Vets around here aren't really interested in nutrition and all they say is feed kibble, but for some reason many owners feed homecooked diets (I guess it's because of tradition). As I said there are no vitamin D supplements for dogs available in Serbia. And when I mentioned that my supplement is a regulated drug I thought that as a postive thing because with drugs the content is much more regulated, no chances of contamination and no variation in ingredients. With Vigantol I know that one drop will always have 500 IU D3 and nothing else. I guess I'll have to find another vet and ask him the same question. Thank you all!!


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## cowpony (Dec 30, 2009)

Mylosz said:


> Thank you for the posts! I didn't talk to my vet cause the only advice he could give me the last time we spoke was to feed kibble. Vets around here aren't really interested in nutrition and all they say is feed kibble, but for some reason many owners feed homecooked diets (I guess it's because of tradition). As I said there are no vitamin D supplements for dogs available in Serbia. And when I mentioned that my supplement is a regulated drug I thought that as a postive thing because with drugs the content is much more regulated, no chances of contamination and no variation in ingredients. With Vigantol I know that one drop will always have 500 IU D3 and nothing else. I guess I'll have to find another vet and ask him the same question. Thank you all!!


Ah, ok. I guess I should have been more careful about my phrasing, especially since I don't know how the medical system works in Serbia. Yes, using a regulated supplement sounds good, because you know what's in it. Using a prescription supplement is dodgy unless it was prescribed for the dog.


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## Ava. (Oct 21, 2020)

Amazon has several multivitamins for sale, you can buy some and toss em' into your dogs food.


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## PeggyTheParti (Sep 5, 2019)

Peggy loves an occasional cod liver oil capsule. I wonder if it might be novel enough to get past your pup’s fish aversion?


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