Fussy overweight dog

[Addidog]

Hoping for a steer in the right direction.

Dog approx 6kg overweight, gained it in last 7 months after neutering and illness that now means life long daily steroids. He’s not quite 2yrs.

He hasn’t been very active for 4 of the last 7 months but last few weeks we’ve seen improvements in energy levels and he’s managing daily walks again of over an hour and is playful running for ball etc. He is already struggling with the warmer weather so it’s vital he drops some kg before the summer heat really starts.

He’s increasingly fussy with dog food (loves human food 🙄). I’ve changed and he loves it for a few days then refuses. I’ve tried various different and it’s mostly always the same - loves for a few days and then decides it’s not for him. He loved his current food for a few days, licked the bowl clean. Now he’s turning his nose up and eating minimum.

Given he’s done this a few times now I’m going with fussy eater. I’m now offering for a certain about and then putting away. Then offering again later. The waste in both food and money is starting to frustrate me.

I’ve cut down the treats so he now gets treat (cocktail sausage) twice a day for the tablets. A small handful of small treats during a walk and 2 other treats (variety of chew treat that doesn’t disappear in a second) usually when I’m trying to distract him or leaving the house.

He has frozen treats too, usually a mix of plain, oralaid and yogurt and fruit.

Does this sounds right, keep with one good and when he’s hungry he’ll eat it? He has wolfed it down when it was new so he can’t have hated it!

Stick to one food. I would recommend dry food, that way you dont have to throw it away if he refuses to eat it. He wont starve himself.
Quit all treats. Why would you feed treats to an overweight dog? Unless you really need it to put medication inside just cut it out completely.
When my dogs get treats on walks or in training, then i deduct this from his meals. They get one extra treat a day like a bone or something, but if they were overweight, thats the first thing i would cut out. He will probably be more keen on his boring food if you stop feeding him all sorts of other crap.

Your dog has successfully trained you to pander to his fussiness and feed him treats instead of normal dog food while he gets fatter. Who’s a clever boy?

Stop the treats. Stop the pandering. Drop his portion size by 50%. Put the food in his bowl at the normal mealtime. If he turns his nose up at it, take it away again and give him nothing at all until his next scheduled mealtime. Then do the same again and repeat for as long as necessary until he eats what he is given and is grateful for it. Dogs are opportunistic scavengers. He won’t starve.

That sounds like a lot of treats for an overweight dog. My lab gets similar minus the frozen treats and I'm trying to get her to maintain weight as she's struggling to keep weight on.

How much of his bodyweight is 6kg?

That's such a lot of treats. A quarter of that cocktail sausage would probably be enough to get the meds in and then drop all the rest. Dry food in bowl does not need to be discarded if uneaten imo. Would offer same again at next meal.

When you dog is hungry enough, he will eat all the food you put down.

Because you basically feed him his food quota via treats, he doesn't need to engage with the non-treat food.

Fussy overweight - there is your answer.

He is not hungry as you are giving him to many treats.

Stick to one food, weigh out the amount he needs each day and do not give him anything else to eat. He can have his food as treats throughout the day.

Yup. Cut out all the treats bar sufficient to hide the pills. Measure the dry food and take a handful of the kibble to use as 'treats' and distractions. Dog will look disappointed and shocked for a couple of days and then get used to it.
Be tough, it's in their best interest.

^^As above.

Your dog is not fussy. You're filling him up on treats, which is why he's so overweight.

He doesn't need cocktail sausages for his pills, they're full of rubbish and very fatty.

If you need something for pills, buy some 'pill pockets' or tuck the pill inside a small piece of carrot or apple or any other vegetable or fruit you think he might like.

Ha ha thank you all for your quick and unanimous advice!

I’m going to stick with the food I’ve got for now and be brutal. Embarrassing I have cut down the treats recently as getting frustrated with the fussiness.

He's a medium sized dog and looks overweight opposed to obese, the weight gain is just under 1/4 of his total weight. Vet hasn’t been too concerned thus far, he’s weighed every month.

thanks once again

Even cutting his treats down, you’re still feeding him too much.

With an overweight dog I would definitely be giving just their food until they started eating that again. No toppers, no different flavours, no cooking chicken for it or making up gravy or anything else to make it ‘attractive’. Don’t offer it again later, if you do two meals a day - offer breakfast and if he doesn’t take it, don’t offer anymore until tea and if he refuses that, no more until breakfast the next day. Our dogs are lean but dog1 tried this and we still cut everything out. She lasted 1.5 days and has never tried it again. We have a small amount of stinky, high value treats in the treat bag for walks but it is topped up with kibble. For our dogs, their kibble is a treat. They’ve both just had their tea but if I opened the kibble box both would run in and would be prepared to do some training for one extra piece of kibble. A treat doesn’t have to actually be a different treat.

Our dogs (15kg and 23kg) have two meals a day. They will have a handful of treats for training and walks during the day, this is mostly kibble. They will have one chew a day and most days it’s a carrot. If we go out, they get a small biscuit. If we need to distract, we’ll do a Kong but mostly use kibble and it comes out of their breakfast or tea allowance. They may get a bit of meat or cheese a couple of times a week, if we give them cheese it’s less than a finger nail. At the minute, we’re weaning DD so both dogs are managing to scavenge bits of vegetable that DD has thrown on the floor. My dogs are really active, so for a dog that is not currently up to exercising you definitely need to cut back.

If you feed dry food try watering it down and removing water bowl so that he eats and drinks at the same time and then put water bowl back down after he's eaten.

My dog had to stay with friends while we were homeless for 12months and he came back almost doubled in size he is meant to weigh 6.5kg and was nearly 11kg when I took him to the vets. I provided everything he needed but they would always buy extra food and treats because he conned them into thinking he was starving even though he was like a barrel. Anyway he is 11 now and I've spent the last 3 yrs trying to get the weigh off him, we got down to about 9kg and really struggled to get any more off him. I've put him on skinners light and senior in January and he is now down to 7.3kg. Since January I've stopped all treats,human food and I weigh his biscuit so he can't be overfed ,I'd recommend you do the same until you get his weight under control.if you want to 'treat' him on a walk use some of his dog food biscuits. I think maybe you should find a good quality diet dog food. What dog food have you tried?

thanks again. It is helpful to read.

I’m going to stick with current meal plan (raw) for now as in short term I think his coat is looking better for it. Plus I have it in the freezer and can’t cope with starting yet another! I’ve started to keep a diary and will ask vet to look over at at next weigh in (for medication purposes).

Im going to mix some chopped carrots in with the small treats for dog walks. Sadly I do rely on treats sometimes - mainly if I need him back quick smart or I need to get the ball off him quickly.

We used to give ours a whole carrot as a treat and he would gnaw on that, plus the odd apple which is a bit higher in sugar

Also we used to scatter feed, throwing the dry food around the garden at meal times, then he would have to scavenge for it in the garden and it took him ages to find every last bit.

My dog was very tubby when she came to live with me. Vet advice was as per my post. Dog was aghast as she was used to lots of treats and leftover food. I cut it all out. A nice slim, well proportioned dog emerged from the flab.

It's the natural state for most non-herbivore mammals to be hungry more than we actually need to eat.

same for humans, dogs, cats and almost many other species - if we eat whenever we are hungry we will get fat, because evolutionarily we are adapted for an environment where we need to hunt, scavenge or otherwise work for at least a few hours to gather the wherewithal for a decent meal. When food is plentiful enough to be able to eat more than we need we put on fat because lean times will come and we'll need to survive them. Modern life is too affluent for healthiness.

Herbivores are also hungry pretty much all the time but grass is generally so low that they can and indeed need to eat constantly in order to get enough energy.

Your dog is suffering the consequences of all this. He needs to learn to be ok with being hungry, to be distracted by activities other than eating. You need to start being firm about only giving him the food he needs, not the food he wants.

If he’s raw fed, weigh out his food and bear in mind he’ll need less than before he was neutered - then reduce it by the amount you need for walks/training and make sure what you’re using for that is decent food. Put his tablet in some of that weighed out food instead of a sausage, freeze some in kongs instead of the chews and other treats.

Thanks again everyone. The vet hasn’t been too concerned so far but since he’s starting to improve health wise it would be good to help him further by dropping some kg before summer heat.
I’m going to be stricter and cut down even more, adding some veg alternatives. I’ll weigh more and keep a record so I can reassure myself that he’s not starving!!

He won’t starve. You might think he’s starving if you write it down because of what you’ve been feeding him but he won’t starve. It takes months to starve a dog. While you get him back on his food I wouldn’t do off lead walks if you struggle to recall him. A lead walk can be just as tiring but he’ll need to do some training, practice walking to heel and using praise as a reward. Practice leave it’s when a dog comes near. Not treating on walks will get him back on his food quicker. Lead walks will also mean he has no other access to food that he might come across on a walk.

Work out how much he requires based on the food guidelines and reduce by 10% if you are dropping treats on walks, 15% if you are including treats. Give it a couple of weeks to see how that works and reduce further if necessary. You can always up it again after, if needed. With the exception of a few breeds, looking at them from the side you should be able to see where his rib cage ends but not see individual ribs. After his rib cage ends, his waist should taper in nicely. He’ll be starving if you see his ribs, hips and spine. If you get to that stage, you just gently increase the amount of food he needs, again by 10% and see how you get on for a few weeks and increase again if necessary. This site will show you what you should be looking for to get your dog to an ideal weight. You can see it’ll take a long time before he’s starving.

Don't know if I'm mean but my dog gets no treats at all apart from a the occasional piece of carrot or melon.

Obviously, when she was young and we were training I used treats but constantly giving dog all these extra bits and pieces isn't necessary.

If you're raw feeding OP and you need to give pills just wrap the pill in a piece of whatever he's eating.

I have a similar Jack Russell, she’s incredibly fussy and started to get that she would only eat treats and dinners I’d cooked myself.

She had started to out on weight which exacerbated her already limpy back back leg so I decided I had to do something.

I saw an advert for Butternut box and joined up using a referral code. She loves the food and I can choose the lower fat options.

Shes looking much trimmer and as the food is good quality she doesn’t keep nagging for treats.

I used a referral code and got 50% off my first box and 25% off my second and to be honest I share the code now and again and occasionally someone signs up which drops the price of the box even further.

Anyone can share a referral code so it becomes quite cheap if you can get others to sign up. There’s no long term obligation and you can cancel when you want.

my code is below if anyone wants to give it a go

butternutbox.com/Amanda1532

Do you work for Butternut box Sleepyheadforthewin

No I don’t work for them, I lm impressed by the food and it helps if others use my referral code as I also get a discount as well as the new person that signs up

We've recently had our lab on a diet, cut out all treats, use only carrot (give it to him whole as that then helps the amount of time it takes to get through. Whatever food you are using, make sure you weigh it at all times and are feeding the correct quantity.

We found doing longer walks/ training when dog was hungry helped no end as he'd take part of his food rations as "treats" and I takeaway that from his food.

He still eats way too much snacking wise so cutting back!!