🐾 Dog Food Knowledge: No. 13, Water-Soluble Vitamins: Still Not Without Risk

Water-soluble vitamins do not get stored in the body like fat-soluble ones. Instead, any excess is passed out through urine. That makes them seem safe. But safe does not mean harmless, especially when the real issue is balance.

💧 Vitamin C — Made By the Body

• Dogs produce their own Vitamin C. It helps: Support the immune system
• Heal wounds
• Absorb iron
• Keep cells healthy
• Protect joints and bones
• Regenerate Vitamin E (as an antioxidant partner)

So why are we supplementing it so often? Dogs under stress may need a little help, but the average healthy dog produces what they need. Topping it up every day just means your dog’s body is forced to work harder to push it out. Why would you do that?

🧠 Vitamin B Complex — The Workhorse Group

This group includes multiple vitamins, all essential for energy, nerve function, digestion, and cell repair. They include:

• B1 (Thiamine): Converts glucose into energy. Found in plants, vegetables, milk, fish and meat.
• B2 (Riboflavin): Supports growth and fur condition. Found in dairy and organ meat.
• B3 (Niacin): Helps enzyme function. Found in meat. Deficiency can cause weight loss, blackened tongue, inflamed gums.
• B5 (Pantothenic acid): Converts fats, carbs, and protein into energy. Deficiency may cause hair loss and digestive upset.
• B6 (Pyridoxine): Critical for amino acid use. Deficiency leads to anaemia, poor development, and even death if left untreated.
• B7 (Biotin): Skin, coat, digestion and muscle health. Possibly linked to litter size in breeding dogs.
• B9 and B12 (Folic acid and Cobalamin): Help produce red blood cells.

These are important, but most good foods already cover them. Over-supplementation still burdens the dog’s exit system, and in the long run, can create its own problems.

🧪 What About Prescription Use?

Some vets use water-soluble vitamins to support health during illness, stress or ageing. This can work, but the dog must already have a decent base diet. Vitamins cannot correct poor food, they only assist where needed. Throwing vitamins at a poor diet is like polishing a cracked windscreen. It might look better, but it is still broken.

By now you should start to see the message appear, and this is no exception. Overfeeding through love is damaging, and that damage is always through a neglect of knowledge or a blind belief in marketing that is in our faces daily. With the sole intent for you to believe your poor dog’s organs need more, more and more, and this marketing will let you carry on until your dog explodes. All at the same time, biology sits and waits until the very end where it pops its head up and asks: what is going on in your head? It asks in a manner where it’s frowning and slowly shaking its head.

🧠 The Real Risk Most Owners Miss

Water-soluble vitamins may leave the body through urine, but they don’t always leave without consequences. Every extra dose still needs to be filtered, processed, and excreted. The more we add, the more we burden the very systems we are trying to support.

The real issue is how easily this kind of overload hides in plain sight. A dog might look great on the outside. But slowly, the liver, kidneys, and internal repair systems are getting pushed. That’s why we always preach structure and biology, not faith or fads.

This is also where marketing relies on owners being in the dark. Because as long as people think "it just gets peed out," they’ll keep adding, keep buying, and keep trusting advice from well-meaning but unqualified sources.

If the person giving advice cannot name the 22 amino acids, 13 vitamins, and 14 minerals your dog needs, then they have no business adjusting the balance.

To understand the severity of this blog, which is part of our free nutritional course, understand the following organisations back this up, and they repeatedly discuss, study, or confirm the biological risks involved:

• FEDIAF (European Pet Food Industry Federation)
• NRC (National Research Council, US)
• WSAVA (World Small Animal Veterinary Association)
• AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials)
• EFSA (European Food Safety Authority)
• Royal Veterinary College (UK)
• Published veterinary nutritionists and peer-reviewed journals

These are not opinions. These are biological facts. And the moment someone tells you otherwise, or shrugs it off, ask them if they even know the 22, 13, and 14. If they cannot start with that, they will never protect your dog from this.

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Your dog, if it could talk, would worship you even more than it already does. 🐾