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Energy and Energy Requirements

Now, if we go to energy requirements. I’ve talked a little bit about a lot of our dogs and cats are just gaining too much weight and it’s because they are eating too much energy. We’re going to talk about energy for just a little bit. If we look at this, the maintenance requirement for energy is anything that’s going to support your activities when you’re just kind of sitting still. That’s what’s required for life. I haven’t seen a whole lot of activity out here, just tell me what’s happening as you’re sitting here. How are you using energy if you’re just sitting? He’s maintaining life, but how’s he doing that? He’s breathing. His cells are functioning. He’s maintaining his posture like you do in your chairs. If you didn’t do that you’d just kind of (fall) down to the floor. His vision is working. I assume his heart is beating, that’s going on, that means blood is circulating. I think you get the idea. Even as you go through and just you think about the maintenance part, not really doing a whole lot it still takes energy to do all these things. That’s basically what we call resting metabolic rate. I think somebody’s right, just by having this posture part, he’s probably actually doing more than a resting metabolic rate. Basically, this is when an animal or a human is really at rest, doing nothing. They'll almost be like asleep. But, we need energy to maintain all those functions. It powers the cell metabolism, any kind of movement, growth, keeping yourself warm, those are all things that go into energy. You know an animal eats to provide for their energy needs. And, of course, you’ve learned that they’re defined in units called calories. And we usually work in just calories, we usually use kilocalories when we talk about energy here. Anytime we have energy just because we have the maintenance part that works just great, but you also have to factor in use of energy for growth, for reproduction, work. And you know if the temperatures are cold you’re going to need more energy, if they’re warm you don’t need as much energy. Those things have to factor into it. And age. Generally, as an animal ages, and even as humans age, we tend to not require as much energy, basically, because we’ve slowed down a little bit more and may not be quite as active.

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