My Feline and Canine Nutrition certificate at Southern Illinois University
When I gave my opinion on the Dogs Naturally Magazine course, I mentioned that I also started a Feline and Canine Nutrition course at Southern Illinois University. In today’s article, I’m going to present this program and give my opinion on it.
What is the course like?
Southern Illinois University (SIU) offers two different online options: a non-degree Diploma in Companion Animal Nutrition, and a certificate in Canine and Feline Nutrition.
The Diploma in Companion Animal Nutrition is longer than the Canine and Feline Nutrition certificate as it includes 3 extra courses in companion animal nutrition. It is also more expensive.
I personally chose to take the Canine and Feline Nutrition program, as I’m primarily interested in feline nutrition. Before I go deeper into the explanation, here is some high-level information on this certificate.
The price of the program is 1500$ (which can be paid in two installments of 750$) and it takes 4-6 months to complete it. You can get 2 continuing education units by completing it.
It’s composed of 3 courses:
ANS-215: Introduction to Nutrition
ANS-365: Canine and Feline Nutrition
ANS-445: Companion Animal Clinical Nutrition
Introduction to Nutrition covers the basic principles of nutrition and nutrient metabolism, including the 6 major nutrients (carbohydrates, lipids, protein, vitamins, minerals, and water) and the digestive process.
The Canine and Feline Nutrition course covers the nutrient requirements and feeding during the life cycle (growth, maintenance, gestation, lactation, seniors, and performance) but also food processing, evaluation, and labeling.
The Companion Animal Clinical Nutrition covers the nutritional management of several diseases such as obesity, cancer, diabetes, urolithiasis, dental disease, dermatological disease, hepatic and gastrointestinal disorders, mobility and muscular disorders, heart disease, and critical care.
The whole program is divided into chapters: for each chapter, a PowerPoint file with slides and an audio explanation from the professor is provided. In addition to the PowerPoint, you also have—for each chapter—some reading material from a textbook such as “Canine and Feline Nutrition” by Linda P. Case.
At the end of each week, there’s a quiz to review the subjects of the PowerPoint slides and an assignment on the reading material.
The quiz is time-controlled (it generally takes 8 minutes) with true/false or multiple-choice questions.
The assignment is not time-controlled and contains open questions. Two of the assignments consist of elaborating a home-made diet.
You can fit the work freely into your schedule as none of the classes are at fixed hours. However, it’s not entirely self-paced as every week you have a quiz and assignment to complete. You may however do the assignments and quizzes in advance to potentially finish the course before the 23 weeks.
What did I think of this program?
I appreciated the quality and quantity of the content of this Canine and Feline Nutrition program. In fact, there is a considerable amount of content to learn and study every week. I would say that I spent an average of 8 to 10 hours a week to study the course material and then an additional 2 hours on the assignment and quiz. I found that each part of the course was increasingly longer than the previous one.
I personally didn’t finish the course in advance, so it took me 23 weeks to complete. During some of the weeks, it was challenging for me to find the time to study as I also have a full-time job; however, the difficulty of the assignments in themselves wasn’t very hard. I nevertheless liked the structure with weekly deadlines, as having regular deadlines really helped me to stay focused and motivated, which is something that I have difficulties doing if I don’t have a deadline or some external form of pressure.
The content is science-based and high-quality, the different concepts are well explained. It is accessible even if you don’t have any basis in nutrition before starting the class. If you need any additional explanations, you can ask your questions to the professor.
I learned a lot from this class and it opened my eyes to the impact a diet can have on a pet, especially in terms of clinical nutrition.
As you may have noticed, the content of the course doesn’t focus on raw feeding but really on the science of nutrition. So, if you are just looking to learn how to raw feed your own pets this class goes probably too much in-depth for your needs. However, if you are interested in the science of nutrition and are looking for advanced training this class will be perfectly appropriate.
I liked the assignments as I think they were well prepared in order to verify that the chapters were well understood. The two assignments in which a home-made diet needed to be elaborated were also very useful to apply the newly learned knowledge.
One of the strong points of this program and one of the main reasons I chose to take this one is that it focuses both on cats and dogs. When I looked for similar courses, I was really disappointed to see that many of them were only about dogs, as I’m interested mainly in cat nutrition. In this program, cats are a key subject in the material, especially in the clinical nutrition part in which cat-specific diseases are covered.
Would I recommend it?
Definitely, if you are looking for an in-depth science-based nutrition course and especially if you are mainly interested in cats. As I said before, if you are however only interested in feeding your pet raw, this course may be a bit overkill. In that case, a more appropriate and affordable course could be the one of Raw Fed & Nerdy with the suggested price of $50.
Keep in mind that if you decide to take this Canine and Feline Nutrition program, make sure to have the time to study every week. Of course, this is my personal take on the course, so there will surely be someone who may need less or more time to study every week.
Finally, the quality of this course has nothing in common with the course provided by Dogs Naturally Magazine that I reviewed a few months ago. The quality of a nutrition course can be really different from one to another. So, when you see that someone claims to be “certified” in pet nutrition on social media, don’t hesitate to question yourself: where does this certification come from? Is that really a serious course? Is it delivered by an accredited university? That’s why it’s important for me to present to you the courses I take and certificates I hold, in order to be as transparent as possible.
Note that I’m not affiliated with any of the courses mentioned in this article.