Vet recorded my dog’s weight incorrectly and now her progress looks wrong :(

[WugZilla]

Took my dog to the vets a few weeks ago regarding her itching and vet pointed out, quite fairly, that she is significantly overweight.

I had weighed my pup in the waiting area (they have a scale there) and she was 11.6kg.
Vet weights her and she is 11.6kg and says she needs to lose 3.6kg to be 8kg.

I got home and weighed her on my own scales incase there was a discrepancy with my scales so i could track her loss accurately. 11.6kg.

Today I weighed her and she was 11kg (yay!)

The vet said to call regularly to update her weight if she is making progress so I rang and said that.

I told her she was 11kg and she said 'oh shes gained a little hasn't she?'

I said, no she has lost 600g.

Apparently her weight at last appointment was recorded as 10.6kg. I told the lady that is a typo and it was definitely 11.6 as she was weighed 3 different times that day.

I asked if she could change it and she said she couldn't. Only thing she could do was to record her current weight of 11kg.

At beginning of the year she was 11.9kg, she then lost a little to 11.6 and is now 11.

I just feel annoyed that she has been slowly but surely losing the weight but now her vet record makes it look like she lost a kg and regained it!

I know its not a big deal in reality and I shouldn't care but I don't understand why they can't just change it? Last time we were there he pulled up her weight on a little chart with a steady line trending downwards and now the chart is going to be all wrong 😅

I think I'm annoyed because I had the same thing at my other vets a few months ago, shes been around 11.5kg for years and he said shes gained a few kg in the last 6 months! They had her down as 9kg last year, never happened! And he was quite short with me when I said that is a mistake and shes not gained anything.

She's still hugely overweight so it doesn't matter if it's 11.6 or 11kg. They will just glance at the notes and think "fat dog". Keep going with her diet. She doesn't care about the numbers but her joints and heart absolutely will feel the difference once she gets to a healthy weight.

Honestly - if this is the worst thing that has happened to you today, i'd class it as a great day and go celebrate.

She needs to weigh 8kg she doesnt.

Just keep going until she does - who cares what the starting point was.

I think it does matter that if they glance at her records it looks like she has had a significant loss, gain and loss rather than her records reflecting the steady, consistent progress.

And the reason she gained the weight is because she was completely immobile for close to 9 months because of an accident, operation and recovery. She was an extremely fit and active dog until that happened. She turned 8 years old and that happened. So immobiliy combined with her age and my inability to control her treats whilst she was 'on hospice care' culminated in this.

I know I will get it in the neck for allowing it but for a good long while I was told that she wasn't going to live beyond the issue and that I should take her home, make her comfortable and let her enjoy her remaining time.

And I did do that but she kept going and kept going and still I was told that 'she has months' now, its inevitable, keep her comfortable etc, week after week. But she wasn't deteriorating the way they expected and she wasn't in pain.

So I overfed her, yes. I acknowledge that.

But at a certain point she started physio and thats when her weight started to come down and even though she still can't go for outdoor walks, she is now mobile around the house and the garden and that is helping even more with her loses.

I understand your frustration with the vets. They once recorded something incorrectly in my dog's notes and I was told it couldn't be amended as it was a legal document. The best they could do was put a note in the records, acknowledging the previous error.

I am sorry your dog has been through so much and been immobile for so long. It's so good that she is able to get around again and losing the excess weight will benefit her hugely.

I follow a nutritionist and her advice is that the sooner you can get the weight off, the better. There isn't really any benefit to doing it slow and steady. So if you can bring yourself to do it, it might be better to drastically reduce her intake for a few weeks.

Good luck. I hope your dog continues to defy the odds.

Keep your own records. It's what I do with my dogs.

Then other week, we took our muscly and young Staffordshire to the vet for his yearly check. He's extremely fit, active and has muscles everywhere. The vet took one look at him and said "he looks OK but don't let him put any more weight on". We just looked at her. She then looked again and said "ohh actually I can see some definition there...". (you don't say!)

They also keep pointing out that our elderly dog is overweight. She is a little bit but only because she is getting older and doesn't like walking anymore, but they keep asking if we overfeed her - no, we don't! Literally this dog used to run through hills with us for hours, but dogs age very rapidly and she can only now manage short walks.

Keep going with what you're doing, you sound like a great dog mum.