Overweight dog

[Janus]

Went to the vets today as our 12 year old lab has become very stiff. The vet has given me a very hard time about her being overweight. She is 38 kilos and 6 months ago she was 35 kilos. She has become very stiff the last 6 months and has taken to just wanting to roam in our large garden and have very small walks of about 15 minutes just a few times a week. If I try and take her any further she lays down and is obviously not happy, So I understand that she has put on weight as she has become less active.

Anyway, she is already on reduced calorie food and it recommends that a 30kg dog has 265g minimum and a 40kg has 330g. I've just weighed her food and she gets 260g a day. So she's really on what I would think is the bare minimum but I've reduced her cup size so she will get around 230g a day and start at that. I've also enrolled in their weight management class.

She's always been large, even as a puppy I bought home a barrel! Does anyone else have a dog that just seems to be overweight but doesn't actually eat that much? We have 2 other dogs that are very slim so it can't be just that I'm a totally useless owner that just happily overfeeds her dog.

The vet made me feel awful and at one stage she actually hugged my dog and said 'I could cry when I see what some owners do to their dogs'. I've never felt so shit.

Any ideas what else I can do?

What about treats?

Nope, she has one little dog biscuit when she goes on her bed at night and that's it. If we have a roast on a Sunday she will get some of the meat but not the potato or Yorkshire pud! Although we haven't had a roast for about 8 weeks so she's not even had that.
About twice a week I give her the very crust of my toast, which measures about 3cms x 3cms.
That's honestly all I can think that she gets.

Any chance anyone else in the house is
Feeding her?

My youngest is 6 and I think the odd bit of food may have gone her way but she'd have to fight off the other 2 much younger, quicker dogs! I have sat down and told him tonight that he must not, under and circumstances, give her any food without asking me first. I'm always home though so I think I'd have noticed if he'd been giving her huge amounts.

She literally sleeps for a vast part of the day now so I think it's her lack of exercise that's certainly not helping. I was thinking of trying hydrotherapy maybe once a fortnight as this would also be gentle on her joints which they have just told me today are very arthritic. They've never mentioned this before today either which I find rather strange.

If she's overweight and there's nothing medical going on which could be causing it then she needs less food.

Feeding guidelines are just that, they don't have to be stuck to religiously and it's absolutely fine to feed less if that's what your girl needs.

I find the guidelines tend to always be on the generous side. All four of my dogs either get less than the recommended amount or something around the minimum of the recommended range.

Is she on anything for her stiffness?

Could be something in her food thats causing weight gain ? Do you feed her a hifh quality kibble ?

Weight will be much more about food than exercise. The amounts are definitely a guideline. My enormous pup could never eat what the food maufacturers suggest she has! I have a nasty suspicious little mind. Do they say feed more so they sell more?!

Try The golden paste company for her joints its all natural and works wonders

Yes, JD Hills Science reduced calorie for joints food, £50 a bag. I did try transferring to something called Tails.com food for about a month but have just moved back to the 'proper' vets food.

Have you considered raw feeding? Dry foods can have a lot of extras (grain, carbs, vegetables) that aren't easily digested and aren't necessary for a dog's diet. She'd get everything she needs from a raw complete diet (ie including bone and offal) and it might help shift the weight? She could probably eat more than just 230g too which seems tiny!

The vet (not this one I saw today but at the same vets) actually recommended this food to me but when I asked the vet today if that was the best food she said 'I don't know, I'm no expert', which I actually looked at her as if she was mad as I thought she was the expert!

I wonder if the nurse I see at the weight clinic will have more knowledge, I see her on Thursday and will be interested to see what she recommends for food as that seems to be the biggest thing to solve at this point.

Our vet actually told us this week that we shouldn't really listen to any vet advice on feeding because they don't get enough training in nutrition to be able to properly diagnose or recommend anything!

Oh great, but they are happy to recommend £50 bag of food (actually sold at nearly £70 at the actual vets) so you think you are giving your dog the best because the vet recommended it! I bet the nurses will have much better info, I shall let you know what they say!

I'm not sure they will say anything other than recommending what they sell. Vets often aren't nutritional experts. There's a site called something like all about dog food as a quick guide.

Thank you I shall have a good look in the morning at that and the raw food and the golden paste. Thank you x

We did the £50 Hills science diet food thing for several months, a long long time ago (previous dog). It made not the slightest bit of difference, and (in my eyes) made the dog very unhappy with her quality of life.

We put her onto good quality food and startedbeing far more careful about snacks , meal sizes and exercise and life was far happier.

Perhaps the wrong thing to do but she was old and didn't have many years left in her so happiness was very important to us.

She developed a love of crunching carrots which at least were a healthier snack than the odd slices of toast she had been getting!

Do you give her a joint supplement . My dog has leg issues and he has Canine Joint Right and it has helped a lot .

Hills science is the worst food out there full of grains addtives and rubbish dogs don't need. I'd avoid anything made by purina or Mars pet foods etc even though its vet reccomended they only do so because they have shares in its sales and it makes them a profit. My dog gets Acana dog food which is only £65 for 17kg and is such high quality
There's a program you can watch called Pet fooled on netflix that uncovers the truth behind these dog food brands everyone uses because the vet said so

You could try her on nutriment to start with op they sell it in some local pet stores and on waitrose its about £2 a tray but really high quality stuff
My pup was actually weaned on the puppy version but she's allergic to pretty much everything these day's and Acana is the only food we've found that she doesn't react badly too

We feed Skinners with Joint Aid to Spuddog, it seems to help his joints and he looks great on it. He too is on a semi-permanent diet as he came to me vastly overweight (22kg spaniel anyone... and when he went into the rescue centre he weighed 25kg!) so like a person, he's prone to getting portly more easily than one who'd always been a racing snake. He weighs about 16kg at the moment (which is fine as he's big for his breed).

For us the trick is fewer treats, crating at toddler mealtimes and more walks. If your ddog suffers with her joints, can you take her swimming? Some vet insurance policies cover a certain number of hydrotherapy sessions if your vet refers you. Its low impact on the joints. Then you can build her walks up gradually.

Hills isn't a totally terrible food but you can get far better quality for far less.

Take a look at www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/the-dog-food-directory.

As general guidelines:

1. Go for nothing less than a 3 out of 5, but ideally the higher the better.
2. Look for one with a named meat source as one of the first three ingredients and avoid anything with maize or wheat as many dogs are intolerant.
3. Be aware of tricks used in the ingredients list to make it appear like there is more meat. For example James Wellbeloved has the same total rice percentage as Skinners Field and Trial - but because JWB splits it into "brown" (20%) and "white" (19.7%) varieties, lamb actually appears as the first ingredient. Rice appears first on Skinners' ingredient list as they only use brown (40%).
4. Avoid anything that says "meat derivatives" as this is just whatever is cheapest. Similarly "cereals" could be anything.
5. Take a good look at the ingredients list - the fewer highlighted in red, the better but try to avoid them completely. If you do pick a food with reds, the lower down the ingredient list, the better.
6. Ignore the reviews - this is about finding what's right for you and your dog, not what didn't work for someone else.
7. Get the best you can afford but be aware that price is not an indication of quality - there are plenty of poor foods with a top price tag (for example Hills and Royal Canin, which people are led to believe is good because vets sell it - it's not the worst food out there but you can get better for the same price, or less).

As a rule of thumb, almost everything you buy in a supermarket (Own brands, Wagg, Pedigree and Bakers) is nutritionally poor - filled out with wheat or maize which dogs do not need nutritionally and many are intolerant of - though some supermarkets have started to stock better quality stuff like Lily's Kitchen. Look at the ingredients, not the brand name.

You can get foods with joint aid added (Skinners F&T Turkey for example). I'd also look at a supplement called YuMove.

When looking to lose weight, cut down the kibble and bulk it back out with carrots.

Feeding guidelines are always way too much, my current dog needs half what the recommended amount on the bag says a dog his size should have to stay at a healthy weight.

Also there are studies that show that some breeds are better at keeping weight on with less food, labs are one of them.

you want to feed her less, and weigh it, every time, using a cup or doing it by eye often means they're getting more than you think.

Have you seen the what hills do to dog food and what its done to people's pets 4.5 is the lowest grade id feed my dog and she'd never get anything with rice or grains of any kind in it its all cheap fillers they dont digest or get nutrition from.

Meat and meat by-products, vegetable by-products, grains, vegetable protein extract, oils and fats, minerals, seeds.
Additives per kg:
Vitamin A (25330 IU), vitamin D3 (1490 IU), iron (176mg), iodine (2.6mg), copper (22.3mg), manganese (78.5mg), zinc (150mg), selenium (0.4mg), with natural antioxidants
Lots of lovely by products in that hills food and grains galore