Four Rivers Kennel & Canine Senior Center

Services

Contract research

Custom designed research studies

From small pilot studies to large multiphase projects, our experienced team will work with you to design a study customized to your product and goals.

Nutrition

Nutrition is essential for happy and healthy dogs! Test your latest formulation at Four Rivers. We perform AAFCO adult canine maintenance and digestibility trials, to support package claims. Often, we can also add additional types of testing concurrently including stool quality, bioavailability, or amino acid metabolism.

Comprehensive Health

Four Rivers tests the impact of functional ingredients, nutraceuticals, and supplements on a wide array of health parameters including acute or chronic inflammation, immune response, metabolic health, mobility, coat quality, and more!

Gut Health

Harness the power of the microbiome to improve your products, and target health conscious pet parents! Four Rivers can test the functional benefits of pre/pro/and post – biotics, including stool quality, gut health biomarkers, and microbial metabolites such as short chain fatty acids.

Exercise

Performance and exercise based canine nutrition is our specialty. Our large acreage allows us to free run our dogs over prescribed distances for exercise trials. Possible trials available with a focus on exercise include performance, activity intensity, weight loss, protein turnover, inflammation, mobility, gait, and more!

Palatability

Think Labradors will eat whatever is put in front of them? Think again! Our hand-picked panel of palatability dogs help you determine the tastiest diet or palatant. We also offer aromatic palatability trials to evaluate odor preferences, and chew time or field testing for treats and toys. Our dogs are heavy chewers, can your toy or treat withstand the pressure?

Senior Panel

The population of senior dogs is growing, and so is the need for new approaches to their specialized needs! Unique to this industry, we keep all of our dogs for their entire lives and provide the care and comfort they require as they age. This allows us to use our older dogs in senior specific trials, which provides valuable information on immune function, mobility, cognition, and inflammation in senior dogs.