Bacteria can sometimes get a bad rap. After all, not all bacteria are bad. There are many good bacteria living throughout your pet’s body that are keeping your pet healthy.
The gut is one such place where good bacteria are hard at work. They are keeping out the disease-causing bacteria, maintaining the health of the intestinal cells and helping to reduce inflammation in the gut.
You can see how beneficial it is to have these helpful bacteria living and thriving in your pet’s gut.
However, certain intestinal diseases may reduce the number of these good bacteria. In addition, antibiotic treatment can also destroy the good bacteria in its effort to eliminate disease-causing bacteria. Even a sudden change in diet may upset the bacterial populations in your pet’s intestines.
That’s where probiotics come in. Probiotics are dietary supplements that contain normal, potentially beneficial live bacteria. The goal with probiotic supplementation is that these bacteria will colonize your pet’s gut and re-establish the normal balance of bacteria needed to keep the intestinal tract healthy.
Consult with your veterinarian if you think your pet might benefit from probiotics. Although probiotics don’t require a prescription, it’s important to get a recommendation for probiotics from your veterinarian since not all brands of probiotics meet their label claims for the number or species of bacteria they contain.