Managing Your Pup's Weight

How to Tell If Your Pup is Overweight?

We hate to be the bearers of bad news but too many people think their dogs are at a good weight when in reality, they are not! We hear it all the time. “He’s all muscle!” No, he isn’t. “She’s just a big girl.” No, she’s overweight.

How do you tell if your dog is fat or not?

• Scales can definitely help but many of us can’t monitor our dog’s weight at the vet often enough, especially in today’s environment. You’ll make more progress if you weigh your dog at home. If you have a small or medium-sized dog, simply pick it up and get on your own bathroom scale. Subtract your weight and you’ll be left with your dog’s. The bigger challenge is with large or giant dogs. Although it’s a bit of an investment, these W.C. Redman home scales are great because they are accurate, stable, and slip easily under a bed or shelf to store. They have a smaller version, too.
• Looking at your dog probably won’t help you at all. Our eyes aren’t accurate assessors of increasing weight in our dogs, especially since such small increases can matter to a dog’s health. For example, a 1-pound gain in a 10-lb dog is equivalent to a 15-pound weight gain in a 150-lb person. It’s hard to comprehend that one pound matters that much but it does!
• Touching your dog is the most valuable way to assess it’s body condition. You can use one of two ways to do this:
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The Knuckle Test

You can use the knuckle test to monitor your dog’s weight although the Tissue Tent Test is more accurate. Here’s how to do it:

1. Make a fist with your right hand.

2. Using your left hand, rub your fingers over the knuckles of your right hand. You can clearly feel each individual knuckle, with little fat between them.

3. Now open your right hand and again run your fingers over your knuckles. You can feel each bone but not as distinctly as before. Most likely, you can feel a small fat pad between the knuckles.

4. Finally, turn your right hand over and run the fingers of your left hand over the undersides of your knuckles. No longer can you feel bones and instead, you feel rounded muscles with little indentations between the fingers.

5. Now run your hand over your dog’s ribcage at this broadest point.

6. Which of your hand positions does your dog feel like?

• If it feels like your knuckles on a closed fist, your dog is athletically thin. This is fine as long as your dog doesn’t get any thinner.
• If her ribs feel like the top of your open hand, your dog is at an appropriate weight but you need to make sure it doesn’t put any more weight on.
• If it feels like the underside of your hand, your dog is overweight and needs to get some weight off.

Tissue Tent Test (TTT)

This method was designed by canine sports medicine specialist, Chris Zink DVM. it is the most accurate method to evaluate your dog’s weight but takes practice.

Watch the Youtube video below for instructions on how to do the TTT.

8 Steps to Help Your Dog Lose Weight Safely and Painlessly

Your routine with your pup should include weekly ear exams and care. When you first get your puppy or dog, first teach your pup to tolerate you handling its ears, moving the flap, looking inside, and eventually cleaning. Use lots of lots of delicious treats before and during this process. If your dog already has bad habits avoiding ear care or if your dog gets a painful infection you might see it become reluctant to let you handle its ears so just start all over again to rebuild trust.

1. Know the calories in your dog’s food. Since your dog is gaining weight, it is getting too many calories so try to replace it with a lower calorie but still top quality food or use one of the diets below. Many “all life stages” foods have 415 or more kcal per cup. If you find a similar quality food with 375 kcal per cup, you have reduced your dog’s calories by 10% without decreasing the amount of food you are feeding.
2. Weigh or measure every meal. It’s easy to put a little too much in the bowl when you are eyeballing it. Know how much food your dog should get, measure it, and stick with it religiously.
3. Have the right measuring tool. Use the correct container to measure your dog’s meals, especially if others in your household feed your dog. Don’t use a large scoop and tell your kids to give “half.” Instead, get a container that holds exactly what your dog should eat per meal and keep that with your dog’s food.
4. Include the calories in supplements in your calculations. Some supplements, like probiotics, have few calories but others, like chews and oils, have many. In fact, fish, coconut, and flax oils are all about 120 kcal per tablespoon. Include the calories in your dog’s supplements in your count and focus on essential ones, like fish oil (minimum of 15 mg/lb or 33 mg/kg of DHA per day), until your dog is leaner.
5. Count the calories in training and other treats. Most of us give our dogs treats each day for training, while medicating, or just cuz they’re wonderful. That’s fine, just know the calorie amounts and include them in your dog’s daily counts. Some treats, like pig’s ears, are very high in fat. Others, like tendons and chicken feet, are not. Carrots, apples, and pears are even lower calorie. So look for yummy, lower-calorie options.
6. Offer low-calorie recreational chews. Hungry dogs are often appeased by having a good chew. So if you are cutting back your dog’s calories, offer fun items like frozen Kongs filled with chicken or beef broth (outside on a hot day, of course), frozen Kongs filled with cut-up fruit, veggies, and a little canned dog food, or even large veggies, like a whole carrot or the stalk from broccoli.
7. Supplement weight-loss dog foods. Some commercial weight-loss dog foods can be effective in helping your dog lose excess weight. However, even on these diets, you may need to feed your dog less than the manufacturer’s recommended amount to take those pounds off. So, be sure to supplement the weight loss diet appropriately or use one of the weight-loss strategies below.
8. Use the Pumpkin or Canned-Food diets. You can also use one of the two diets we recommend that are scientifically tested ways to take the weight off: the Pumpkin Diet and the Canned Food Diet. See details below.

Two Effective Weight-Loss Diets

Use one of these strategies plus the other 7 steps above to help your dog lose weight. Monitor its condition weekly using the scale, knuckle test, and/or Chris Zink’s tissue tent test. Once your dog reaches its ideal weight, never return to feeding it as much as you were before.

High Fiber Diet

In this diet, we replace 25 to 33% of your dog’s normal food with high-fiber, unsweetened pumpkin. Pumpkin is low in calories and high in fiber so it satisfies your dog without calories. Most dogs like pumpkin so eat it readily.

1. Determine your dog’s current food intake.
2. Cut back that food by 1/3 to 1/4. So if you normally feed your dog 1 cup per meal, feed it 3/4 of a cup of food, and
3. Replace that volume with twice as much volume in canned or stewed pumpkin. In the example above, you would add 1/2 cup pumpkin (1/4 cup * 2) to each meal.

Canned Food Diet

In this diet, we replace your dog’s normal dog food with a larger volume of high-quality canned dog food. Canned food has a high water content so again, has fewer calories per ounce than kibble so reduces calories while still keeping your dog full.

1. Determine your dog’s current food intake in cups.
2. Replace all of that food with 30% MORE canned food. So if you normally feed your dog 1 cup of kibble per meal, you are going to feed 1 1/3rd cup of canned food.