ProPlan: Fueling Leader Dogs for over 20 Years

“It takes a pretty remarkable dog to make my travels unremarkable, but that is exactly what my Leader Dog Wake does for me. It is incredible.” – LDB Client Calvin V

Travel of any kind relies on fuel. Airliners burn jet fuel, automobiles consume gasoline (or battery-provided electric power for you early-adopters) and locomotives have transitioned from coal to diesel as their main source of propulsion.

Leader Dogs, for more than two decades, have received the energy necessary for their travels from Purina ProPlan dog food.

“We feed exclusively ProPlan products to our breeding moms and their puppies and to our dogs in training,” said Dr. Dave Smith, LDB director of canine health. “It is available worldwide and consistently provides a palatable quality product, which reflects in the excellent coat and body condition of our dogs.”

Nestlé Purina donates the essential nutrition via ProPlan to future Leader Dogs training on campus and to the puppies being raised in 11 prisons throughout the Midwest.

In total, Nestlé Purina donates more than 56,000 pounds of ProPlan annually, and has given more than one million pounds of fuel to our dogs over the past 20+ years.

ProPlan helps ensure that our dogs receive the calories and nutrition they need while also maintaining an ideal Body Condition Score (BCS) of 4 or 5 on the Purina BCS Chart (out of a possible 9). For dogs at an unhealthy weight, Purina ProPlan Veterinary Diet OM or Weight Management food is given in combination with FortiFlora to help the dogs’ digestive tracts and return their BCS to an optimal state for service work. LDB also uses FortiFlora to treat diarrhea in breeding dogs and their puppies, and for dogs who are recovering from surgery.

Because Leader Dog is 100% philanthropically funded, donations like those received from Nestlé Purina give our organization the fuel we need to continue helping people who are blind live unstoppable lives.

From the entire Leader Dog community, we thank Nestlé Purina for the incredibly generous, and essential, gift of ProPlan! Your efforts are changing lives.