what does your dog weigh ?

[thefootofourstairs]

and how much food do you give in a day ?

12.8 kg and 250 g of raw food per day or 160 of grain free 80:20 good quality kibble.

34kg he has 400g of a good quality complete food and 2/3 cans of wet food depending on his appetite/ activity levels each day split in to two meals.

7 kg. He has about 3/4 can Lily’s Kitchen across 3 meals plus a few high quality very small bone shaped biscuits and a couple of slices cooked chicken, chopped either as training treats, in kongs or in hide the treat puzzles. Sometimes he also may get pieces of cheese or sausage as treats.

40kg and has a plastic cup full of very high quality soaked freeze dried food.

Adult Cav 7.5kg Entire - 75g of 80/20 grain free (green dog brand).

Previously on different food I had a real difficulty balancing keeping weight on with not feeding so much it upset his tummy - that was 125g of good quality grain free.

Cocker Puppy currently weighs 5.5kg and has 110g per day of the 80/20 grain free (green dog).

When puppy came to me he was on nearly 200g per day of Royal Canin!

6kg and eats 70 grammars of James wellbeloved dry kibble and gets kitchen scraps that are suitable

Usual weight is between 16 and 20 kg (but she feels too skinny at 16 kg for my liking) and she gets a cup and a bit of kibble if Orijen or 2 cups if Lukullus.
She's currently 1.5 kg under her ideal range as she's been a bit ill so gets egg/cheese/gravy with her food as she's a fussy git who refuses to eat more than her usual amount of kibble. she's also getting some wet Lukullus during the day or a bit of doggy porridge and liver cake.

7.4kg and about 120g of grain free food. She occasionally has more if she’s hungry and had a busy day (daycare) she’s never greedy with kibble and will leave it in her bowl for hours if she doesn’t want it and her weight is stable so I don’t mind giving her a little extra occasionally.

Haven't weighed him in a couple of weeks but he's around 12kg and is getting about 600g of raw food per day plus an egg, chicken wing or other snack! He's 5 and a half months.

18kg beagle.

He's lost 5kg in the last 7 months by being on a strict diet. He gets a quarter cup of biscuits per day - soaked in water before he's given them - some red meat/chicken/tuna/salmon, and then vegetables. We boil him up a lot of pumpkin, sweet potato, broccoli, spinach, beans etc. and that forms the bulk of his food.

We layer it in his bowl. So the biscuits and meat get mixed and are put at the bottom of his bowl, and the veggies are on top. He's not fussy and will eat it all regardless, but this makes it more of a treat for him.

We were feeding him far too many biscuits in the past. That was the problem. And the overload of biscuits was causing him to drink excessive water and he was always bloated. The vet has said that the portion suggestions on the bags are always too generous. Most of their diet should be in the form of lean meat and vegetables.

6kg and about 100-120g of kibble but I’m hoping to start introducing raw from the week after next.

Oh, and we feed him twice a day. So an eighth of a cup of biscuits morning and night. Roughly a table spoon of meat, some chicken etc. and then two-three tablespoons of veggies.

38kg and 200g of dry food twice a day.

Weimaraner is 44KG he’s 9 now & not very active.
Collie cross is 36KG.

They graze throughout the day. And get raw fed every other day.

it seems my boy is only having a small amount compared to some of yours i think .
He weighs 7.8 kg and is a bit portly ( the vets words) .
He is 2 years old and i've had him 3 months . I wasn't sure how much he was being fed by the previous owner so i started off feeding him what it recommended on the bag of kibble and then reduced it to see if he could lose a little weight .

i reduced it to 60 grams a day , but he hasn't really lost any weight . surely if i give him less than 60 grams that would be far too little and he'd be starving !
60 grams seems a very small amount as it is and less than others seem to have . I'm beginning to wonder if he has a health issue or something .

Different food will have different recommended amounts for the same dog. Could you up his exercise as well as reducing the amount. Maybe also look at bulking it out with appropriate veggies so he feels fuller.

Lots of kibble is full of cereal and carbs and some dogs can find it difficult to maintain a healthy weight on this alone. Could you try a good quality wet food or switching to raw?

60g of food sounds so small, the poor thing must be starving! If he was on raw for his weight he'd be having about 150 - 200g per day so about 3 times as much.

Remember that the amounts on the packaging are just guidelines, some dogs will need more and some will need less. I think on the whole they tend to be a bit over generous. If you're worried about volume you could replace some of his dry food with wet as the high moisture content in wet means it's less nutritionally dense and so you can feed more for the same amount of calories. Just as an example, the Millies Wolfheart Countryside wet food has less than half the amount of calories per 110g as the Countryside dry food.

Making him work for his food will make it last longer, get him moving a bit more and also be more satisfying for him than eating it out of a bowl if he only needs a relatively small amount.

You can put it in treat dispensing toys (the Kong Wobbler and Nina Ottosson Dog Pyramid are popular in this house), scatter it out in the garden for him to search out and even make use of random stuff you'll probably have hanging around the house. My lot had a great time the other week when I mixed their breakfast dry food ration into a pile of torn up cardboard that was waiting to go out into the recycling

There's a couple of FB groups (Canine Enrichment and Beyond the Bowl) which are full of great ideas.

I'm feeding him barking heads at the moment , they have canned food too , would that be better for him then ? Not sure i fancy raw tbh

thanks cornflake i will have a look

You need to reduce the calories so it isn't that wet food will necessarily be 'better' for him but you will be able to feed him more volume as Cornflake said than with kibble. So whilst you are reducing the calories when you use wet it has greater volume and can help the dog feel fuller. A bit like eating a biscuit or eating a massive bowl of soup. The soup is going to help you feel fuller and stop munching on other stuff :)

I feed half wet and half kibble so he gets the best of both worlds, crunch, smell and volume.

My schnauzer is 11.3 K and has 100g kibble with a small tin of mackerel or sardine fillets, or a handful of roast chicken (only fed once a day). Vet says to watch her weight as its creeping up.

36kg dog eats 1kg of raw food a day, spread over 2 meals. Couple of gravy bones some days as a treat and a marrow bone occasionally

My 10 month old puppy is 7.5kg and is on about 90g of Akela 80:20 a day. This is served up in two meals with a 1/3 small 150g can of wet wheat free Lillys Kitchen mixed in at each meal.

We started adding a bit of wet food as he wouldn't eat the dried out of his bowl at all. Would only eat it from his treat ball and then only in the evening when he was probably very hungry after not eating all day.

What should he weigh though? You don't feed according to their actual weight you feed according to the weight they should be.

Also the quality of the food makes a huge difference. - see my post above about my 7.5kg dog who has always struggled to keep weight on - to maintain nicely on his new 80/20 food he only needs 75g. Similarly my puppy who was on 200g of royal canin, which is full of fillers, but only needs 110g of 80/20 food to thrive.

I also strongly disagree with butfirsttea - you dog is plainly NOT starving or he'd loose weight fast. Of course raw weights would be significantly higher - they include water weight, which is separate to kibbles weight. It is this view that a fat dog must be starving if they only eat enough to stay fat, that has lead to such a dog obesity crisis.

Finally what else does he eat (treats are calories too!) and how much exercise does he get? He plainly is still getting more calories than he needs, either through input (foods in) or output (physical activity). He either needs treats stopping or exercise increasing or both.