Dogs have several lifestyle-related problems similar to humans. Obesity is perhaps the most familiar and common among them. Poor physical fitness comes in as a close second.
While we lament dogs’ shorter lifespan compared to ours, it also protects them from certain problems. At least those that accumulate over time. Partly because of this, and partly due to dogs’ different metabolism, obesity is not quite the same health issue for dogs as it is for their owners. Still, obesity is rarely beneficial, and putting a dog on a weight loss regime is just as sensible as it is for the owner.
The Reason for Losing Weight
However, it’s important to remember that when you’re slimming down a slightly chubby dog, it’s not about losing weight for an overweight dog. It’s about body image, where the owner is reshaping the dog’s appearance to be more pleasing to their eye.
Depending on the case, it can be either insignificant or heading to another extreme. The extreme involves slimming a normal-weight dog down to fitness or bodybuilding condition, where body fat is reduced just to make the muscles visible. It’s the same as a six-pack in humans, which doesn’t indicate strength, fitness, or even health, but only a low body fat percentage.
The other extreme is more psychological. The owner projects their own desire to lose weight onto the dog. When their own diets don’t work, they slim down the dog. I don’t care about the owners, and if a severely overweight dog loses weight, I’m not overly concerned about the owner’s deeper motivations – the main thing is that the dog loses weight.
But if a dog that is already at a suitable weight is put on a diet due to the owner’s self-image, it’s always a mistake.
A little roundness doesn’t cause any health issues for a dog. Frankly, most house dogs are much better off with a little extra fat under their skin. They’re usually not as greedy to steal everything possible (though that also depends on the dog’s temperament) and although the saying “fat people are jolly” doesn’t hold true for humans, for dogs, sufficient weight slightly reduces aggression. Or if it doesn’t reduce it, at least the weight removes the irritability associated with hunger.
Weight also has a purpose. When a dog has energy reserves, it can better withstand occasional stress peaks. A thin dog is more prone to overexertion when playing on the beach and running in the water. Good physical fitness otherwise predisposes to overexertion. With poorer fitness, one tires faster and stops playing. A fit dog continues longer than it should.
There is another reason for a non-athletic body fat percentage. A dog is not as sensitive to occasional stomach upsets concerning dehydration. Not every half-day of not eating requires a trip to the vet. A dog has buffers. When the weight is low, regardless of how fit the dog looks, it’s on a knife-edge regarding all changes.
A competitive greyhound is not exceptionally sensitive to overexertion symptoms because of breeding and extreme performance, but because its hematocrit, which indicates the number of blood cells and also the amount of fluid in the plasma and the whole dog, is high due to low fat content. A greyhound can’t withstand dehydration because its entire body is close to problem limits due to competition performance.
The hematocrit of an ordinary house dog is around 40%, meaning it can tolerate quite a bit of fluid loss before requiring a drip. A trained greyhound has a hematocrit of 60%, which is worryingly high for a regular dog, making it unable to withstand dehydration at all. And all of this, in addition to physical fitness, comes from the body’s low fat percentage.
All of this means that aiming for normal weight is fine, but losing weight just for the sake of losing weight is almost always a bad idea – or at least you need to be aware of the risks.
The Amount of Food Matters
We had an 11-year-old Russell lady. I had let her get fat. The weight had accumulated from eating, as it always does with healthy dogs. Food with too high a fat content for an old dog whose metabolism had already slowed down with age. In addition, she got Oltermanni cheese, at least when people made their sandwiches. The lady also got to lick the pots and bowls because pre-washing is an ancient right for dogs.
Over time, the calorie amounts rose so high that the short-legged Russell started to resemble a mix between a dachshund and a lapdog. There were two things that made me, an expert in dog nutrition, wonder about my own dog’s weight: the stairs to the second floor started to be a problem, and jumping onto the bed was no longer possible. And if you now ask why of all the people in the world my dog was allowed to become a feeding pig, the answer is quite clear: because even the shoemaker’s children are without shoes.
The Russell didn’t gain weight because of reduced exercise, but it did contribute. She gained weight because of too much food. This is a basic thing that needs to be understood. The solution is the same as in many other cases. Do the opposite of what caused the problem.
Eating According to Consumption
An old wisdom is that when you eat less than you consume, you lose weight. Conversely, when you eat more than you consume, you gain weight.
These claims are true, but they are also often misunderstood. It’s assumed that losing weight happens when you start moving more, and unfortunately, that’s not the case. It’s because exercise increases consumption less than what is obtained from food.
It’s no coincidence that aging causes weight gain – at least in healthy individuals without metabolic problems. It’s all about the speed of metabolism.
Metabolism is everything that involves changing things into something else. Turning sugar into calories, proteins into muscles, or fat into cell membranes. The speed at which the body can do things is the rate of metabolism, and it’s measured by energy, calories, consumption.
Basal metabolism is what the body does when at rest. The energy consumed then is the basic calorie consumption that is ongoing all the time. It can increase when stressed, exercising, or being sick, but the speed of metabolism rarely drops below basal metabolism.
I often use the example of a car engine and its idle speed. When the idle is high, more fuel is burned even if nothing is being done. The same goes the other way. When the idle is lowered, fuel consumption also decreases, as long as the engine is kept running.
The speed of basal metabolism is a highly individual thing. Some people’s engines just tick faster than others. Although it’s possible to change the level of basal metabolism, in practice, it’s always constant for that individual. For the same reason, one person can eat anything without gaining weight, while another gains a couple of extra kilos just thinking about food.
Understanding the idea of basal metabolism speed is essential because it explains most of the weight gain.
A growing teenager can eat roughly as much as they want (within reason) and not gain weight. This is due to growth, where the speed of metabolism and consumption is high. New bones, muscles, the nervous system… everything that is called growth is being built.
As growth slows down, so does the speed of metabolism. In old age, the engine can’t work as much, and the body’s renewal and repair slow down, reducing energy needs. The food that previously maintained normal weight starts to cause weight gain.
When a teenager gains weight, it’s not due to computers, gaming, and inactivity. They cause poor muscle fitness and lousy coordination. Weight gain comes from all the snacks consumed throughout the day.
Human athletes tend to gain weight as they age. Even though healthy lifestyles are deeply ingrained in muscle memory, they still eat the same portions as during active training periods.
Especially aging powerlifters are (sadly) notorious for this. When 5000 kilocalories have been consumed daily while punishing the iron, as age progresses, the iron decreases, but the calories don’t – and muscle growth turns into waist expansion.
I started gaining weight the moment I stopped training greyhounds when the sport died out in Finland. It wasn’t because the forest walks stopped. Inactivity caused other problems, but not weight gain. Weight gain started when I ate two plates of food instead of one. Or snacked on half a kilo of strawberry jam at night because I wanted something tasty.
Weight gain is always due to increased eating, not anything else. And it’s corrected by reducing eating, not by anything else.
Digestion is Not Metabolism
It’s regularly encountered the thinking that the functioning of the intestines is metabolism. The metabolism is so fast that the food doesn’t digest, and therefore a garbage bag is needed as a poop bag.
Digestion is not metabolism but the breaking down of food into smaller parts. Of course, a fast and wasteful intestine makes weight gain difficult, but that’s a different matter. It can certainly be used as a tool by choosing poorly digestible foods. On the dry food market, all light foods are based on this in practical terms.
The stomach acid and digestive enzymes in the intestines are the fork and knife. They break down the nutrients provided by food into small enough pieces to be transferred through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream and then to the liver.
Only then does the liver begin the first (and most important) metabolism-related tasks, such as building proteins, modifying fats, or producing glucose from amino and fatty acids.
The Importance of Exercise
People try to lose weight for themselves and their dogs by exercising. It never works. If you eat a gram of fat, you need to find the nearest domestic equivalent to a skyscraper, i.e., a 20-story building, and briskly climb to the top floor via the stairs to burn it off.
In long-duration exercise, dogs have it easier as fat users, but the owner must move quite vigorously for almost 40 minutes before even beginning to use stored fat as energy. And even then, not many real fat grams are used.
A competitive greyhound runs the maximal sprint performance in the animal world (okay, there are a couple of faster ones, but not in households). That approximately 30-second anaerobic full-speed exertion tires and causes many other things, but it doesn’t lead to weight loss.
A racing greyhound’s daily energy consumption increases by about 8% due to that extreme performance. If the mentioned dog had eaten 800 grams of meat with 20% fat, it would need a couple of tablespoons more meat on a workday.
The fact that athletic dogs are slimmed down by increasing exertion is not related to weight loss per se. Competitive dogs are already slim, and their starting points are always different from ordinary overweight dogs.
When a racing greyhound’s trainer complains about losing a race because the dog was too fat, they are talking about something completely different. If a greyhound has a kilo too much for competition, the dog is still about 1.5 – 2 kilos below normal weight when considering the body’s healthy and normal fat percentage.
And even then, tightening is not done solely through work. Food is also reduced at the same time.
Exercise only leads to weight loss if it is aerobic long-duration exercise with sustained high intensity. An overweight person can’t do it because the muscles can’t carry the extra weight. The situation would be the same as asking a marathoner to put on a 10 – 30 kilo weight vest and then run 42 kilometers fast. That means that the exertion that improves muscle and cardiovascular health comes into play only after the weight has been reduced. Never before.
Ordinary fitness exercise doesn’t slim down an overweight person, neither human nor dog. If you don’t believe it, you can ask swimming pools or the Nordic walkers on jogging paths.
A Russell requires relatively more energy than, for example, a King Charles Spaniel. Part of it comes from metabolic differences caused by breeding, but practically the difference comes from the different ways the breeds move and behave at home. Terriers move more at higher speeds.
But that also only applies on a general level. What do you do when a Russell, in its normal everyday life, only knows how to move by running, starts to gain weight? You take it for walks, even in the forest, because exercise increases consumption?
In fact, that often either reduces consumption or keeps it the same. Anyone who has to work on their feet walks the required 10,000 steps a day easily. Yet they don’t lose weight, and in fact, their fitness doesn’t improve either. It’s because the food is over the daily consumption, and the body has already developed to the point that daily consumption can develop. The same applies to dogs.
If the work doesn’t increase significantly beyond what is done otherwise, nothing changes. If a Russell runs back and forth between the kitchen and the living room at full speed, or goes along the property boundaries in its activities, a forest walk doesn’t change anything. Only the environment changes. Of course, the dog gets more stimuli, but it doesn’t relate to weight loss.
Additionally, the exertion must be regular, at least every other day. Once a week doesn’t improve fitness and even less lead to weight loss – but it can certainly reduce stress.
In short: if the dog (or owner) doesn’t get properly out of breath every day, the exertion certainly won’t affect weight.
Energy Conservation Mode
When energy is reduced too much, the body shifts into energy-saving mode. Energy conservation mode is a real phenomenon, but its significance and when it happens are much more contested.
In energy conservation mode, the body’s hormonal function reacts to the impending famine that a severe energy deficit predicts. All body functions begin to slow down, i.e., basal metabolism is slowed down. This is intended to regulate and conserve the body’s energy reserves, practically stored fat.
In energy conservation mode, endurance weakens. Fatigue is the body’s way of signaling that it’s enough and the pace needs to slow down. At the same time, weight loss slows down because fat is no longer used wastefully. If the calories from food are theoretically sufficient, the conservation mode doesn’t kick in, even if consumption exceeds intake. Where the threshold lies is individual and unknown, but usually, for this reason, drastic energy cuts are avoided.
Whether the same happens with dogs is unknown. Some assume that the concept of energy conservation can be transferred from humans to dogs, while others are more skeptical. I belong to the latter group.
I’ve never seen anything in dogs that suggests energy conservation mode. I also know that it doesn’t prove anything, and selective observation is always a lurking risk, even if it’s recognized. Dogs have always lost weight similarly, regardless of breed and size, when food is reduced. The more calories are cut, the faster they lose weight.
Of course, there is a lack of energy, but that’s a different matter and can be directly explained by the energy deficit. Whether basal metabolism slows down significantly so that with a larger calorie deficit, weight loss is slower than with a more moderate deficit is a question mark. Investigating this would require animal experiments of such a nature that they are no longer conducted in the civilized world.
The issue is quite academic. It doesn’t matter whether a dog goes into energy conservation mode or not because it loses weight. And to prevent the dog’s life from becoming miserable, weight loss is not done in a week with overweight dogs, but over a period of several weeks. There is rarely, if ever, a genuine justified reason for rapid weight loss.
Diseased Obesity
A dog can gain weight for reasons other than just excessive food. Dogs, like humans, have several metabolic or metabolism-affecting diseases that cause weight gain. Hypothyroidism is probably the most familiar.
In that case, weight loss is done only very moderately, and the disease must be addressed. If the disease is chronic and incurable, then obesity is a symptom and must be accepted.
Spayed females, and occasionally neutered males, are a problem concerning weight gain. For them, it’s a condition comparable to a disease. It’s secondary whether the dog’s pear-shaped body is caused by excess cortisol produced by the adrenal glands or the reduced estrogen due to the removal of the ovaries by humans, as the problem is always a malfunctioning hormonal system.
Even though people don’t want to think about it, spaying or neutering causes a hormone deficiency, which is the same or equivalent to that caused by a genuine disease.
The disruption of hormonal function is one of the many reasons why the removal of sex hormones without a justified reason is a very bad idea. The fact that even veterinarians don’t react when the operation is done because the owner doesn’t want the dog to have a gender, the dog’s natural behavior is disturbing, or there is a phobia-like fear of disease, means it’s an unnecessary surgery prohibited by animal welfare law.
The weight gain of spayed dogs is the most common single reason to seek weight loss advice. That’s what happens when one of the most important hormones related to metabolism is removed. A female’s metabolism slows down by an average of about 20%.
In simplified terms, it means that the calories received must also decrease by a fifth. Often even that is not enough because the animal becomes lazier. Soon, the situation arises where the amount of food needs to be halved to maintain some sort of beach body.
Such a large reduction in food quantity inevitably means that the amount of fat must be reduced to the limits of deficiency. At the same time, without tricks, protein intake also plummets. The amount of protective nutrients, vitamins, and minerals should be increased.
The additional need doesn’t come solely from reducing food quantity but from the slowing of metabolism. Less is done over a longer time, so a larger portion of nutrients is removed before use.
Regarding the functioning of the body, the female is made equivalent to a 12-year-old in one fell swoop. But everything is fine because spaying is harmless and risk-free…
In short, that’s how life is. The moment spaying was accepted, it was accepted that the body behaves like a chronically ill and aged one. Then you must also accept obesity.
Practical Weight Loss
For humans, losing weight is difficult because success and maintaining low weight require a lifestyle change. It doesn’t matter if you buy a gym membership in January after Christmas indulgence if the foundation isn’t changed. That’s why every diet program and meal replacement diet is guaranteed to fail. Everything else is changed, at least temporarily, but not the lifestyle.
I have, as the lyrics of a certain song suggest, the backbone of a gummy bear. I can’t reduce the use of fat in my diet or start a lasting candy ban. I just don’t want to. But what my character strength allows me to do is reduce the amount I eat. I no longer eat until I’m stuffed. Two sandwiches are enough for breakfast; I don’t have to eat the whole bag. I don’t need a quarter kilo of cheese on the bread; a couple of slices are enough to give flavor. Sweets can be eaten sometimes, but not a kilo of licorice every day just because Rusta sells ship-sized packages.
It’s always about quantities, even for the dog.
I managed to slim down the Russell to more tolerable measures in two weeks. It’s easier to grow a backbone when actions don’t affect oneself. Of course, if you’re sensitive to the dog’s begging, life can become more difficult, but then it’s best to remove the dog from the kitchen when people eat.
Fat is King
We do many things by eye. I don’t weigh the dogs unless there’s a specific clear reason. It’s enough for me to see what the dog looks like. I also don’t weigh and measure foods because I know by eye how much I give, and the amount also changes based on sight. That’s why I don’t know exactly how much the dogs eat here, and in general, measurements are only done for Katiska’s articles.
Because of this, we now have to settle for the fact that the Russell ate perhaps about three deciliters of 30/20 dry food (we’ve had meat out of the diet for some time due to availability issues).
The amount of food could have been reduced to two deciliters. However, I’m a realist. When you drastically cut a third of the food amount from an old female, regardless of how justified the lower food amount would be, I don’t want to upset an aging female. They tend to retaliate, one way or another.
A compromise was made, and we got dry food with 14% fat and gave about three deciliters of it.
The starting point was about 27 grams of fat.
- If only the food amount had been reduced by a third, the fat would have been 18 grams, and at the same time, carbohydrates, as well as proteins and all protective nutrients, would have dropped.
- When we gave lower-fat food, but the amount remained the same, the fat was 20 grams, only 2 grams more than in the other option. The amount of carbohydrates increased slightly, but it’s manageable, as is the protein amount, which would have been roughly the same in both ways. But now the amount of protective nutrients remained the same.
Of course, cheese and other extras were cut. Not entirely, as there should be a candy day. Weight loss doesn’t mean asceticism, not even for dogs.
When it’s said that a dog is slimmed down by reducing the amount of food, it genuinely means reducing the amount of fat. If a lower-fat (which is different from fat-free) option is chosen, the total amount of food can remain the same.
This weight loss was done with dry food, but meat is no different. If the dog previously ate 500 grams of meat with 22% fat, switching to 15% directly means cutting energy by a third – a 30% reduction in calories is quite a lot.
When there’s an option, meaning weight gain isn’t due to excessively large portions by any measure, always choose lower fat first. Only after that is the portion size reduced.
The Number of Feeding Times
When it comes to a healthy dog, it’s always moved to one feeding per day. There’s no genuine reason to feed twice. With one feeding, it’s much easier to know how much the dog eats.
A client’s dog hadn’t lost weight, even though the fat percentage had been reduced. The reason was in two feedings. A dog weighing around 10 kg received two generous deciliters of dry food per meal twice a day because otherwise, the food portion seemed very small. When it was moved to one portion, which was three deciliters, the weight started to decrease.
Two changes were made there. The first is obvious. A deciliter of food was removed from the diet. The second is something that isn’t often considered. A smaller amount of food digests more efficiently when given in several portions, and more is wasted from a larger amount in one portion. That’s the real reason why weight gain is done with multiple smaller portions, although, of course, the amount can also be manipulated upward in that way.
Not all dogs can handle one meal, even if they are healthy. It’s about the anticipation of food created by habit, which triggers digestion and stomach acid secretion, and finally, discomfort. Empty stomach vomiting is familiar to many. It can be managed by giving a small breakfast. But breakfast doesn’t need to be half of the day’s food portion and calories, as most people do. Few people eat a continental hotel breakfast themselves, and neither does the dog need it. A small piece of food is enough to prevent nausea, and it doesn’t have much significance for the day’s calorie intake.
Extending the Food
Increasing the portion size with some low-energy food is occasionally practiced. Often there’s no need for it, but many owners of spayed dogs do it. Because the dog’s hormone balance, which also regulates energy use, has been disrupted, just reducing fat isn’t enough for weight loss anymore, as it would require almost fat-free food. If smaller portions are given, the supposedly sufficient fat percentage of the food isn’t very comforting because the portion is the size of a toy dog.
When the bowl’s content is at the level of one mouthful, the mass of the food must be increased. Otherwise, the constant feeling of hunger drives the dog crazy first and then the owner.
Anything will do. It can be salad, grated carrots, or the world’s most useless diarrhea and stomach upset food: chicken breast, a little rice, and cottage cheese. Kidneys are not a bad option if you can get them and the smell doesn’t bother you. Beef tripe is quite low in energy and can be used. Sauerkraut is nowhere near what many imagine, but it provides a totally low-energy addition for the dog – although quite expensive if bought ready-made.
If you want to extend the food with porridge, it’s best to use oats or barley. They digest less well than rice and also have slightly less carbohydrate. However, potatoes are not diet food.
Supplements
Supplements are usually used in weight loss for one reason: to speed up metabolism. They waste money because they don’t do that. If you want to speed up metabolism, you start moving, but chili, green tea, or leucine won’t slim you down. They only fatten the wallet of those selling weight loss supplements.
The only real reason to use supplements is the same as in weight gain or normal maintenance. Supplements are used when something isn’t obtained sufficiently from food. It means, in all simplicity, that if the amount of food providing protective nutrients is reduced, the need for supplements should be considered.
In weight gain, supplement amounts are usually calculated based on the target weight. Then the amounts are correct again when the weight is right. In weight loss, the same can be done, or the supplement policy can be reconsidered when the weight has dropped to the desired level.
Both ways are equally right or wrong, depending on the approach. Still, it’s a fairly insignificant issue and shouldn’t be worried about for too long. Just focus on losing weight; that’s enough. Still, those using dry food must understand that complete food ceases to be complete when significantly below the recommended serving size.
Fat supplements may be necessary if problems arise due to low fat – whether due to a low amount of food or a low-fat percentage. Then otherwise unnecessary vegetable oils should be used. It’s often claimed that a dog doesn’t utilize vegetable oil as well as animal fats. The claim is not true; both absorb equally well. The difference comes from their structure, which is why vegetable fat and animal fat behave differently in metabolism concerning energy.
It’s harder to fatten with vegetable oils because they convert to usable calories more easily than they would convert to stored fat. So the claim that a dog doesn’t utilize oils means that someone hasn’t succeeded in fattening a dog with cooking oil. This can be used in weight loss by increasing the proportion of oil in the total fat.
Low-Carb and Ketosis
Low-carbohydrate diets, paleo diets, and the use of ketosis have nothing to do with dogs. They often don’t relate to humans either, but are just an easier way to accept and implement a lower-energy-content diet through a mental shift.
Generally, all the mechanisms and health effects associated with special diets are pure nonsense. In humans, it’s a choice, and it’s everyone’s own decision how much religiosity they attach to their eating. However, a dog doesn’t choose for itself, so the owner’s responsibility for their pet’s eating is then greater than the responsibility for their own actions. On the other hand, if the end result is correct, the motives for it are secondary – still, it’s always better to build actions on facts, not beliefs.
Carbohydrates are not dangerous for dogs. They are just energy, and sugars do nothing else in the body. They can retain a little water, but concerning weight gain, it doesn’t matter. When people say they managed to slim down the dog’s water retention by switching to a meat-based diet, they genuinely slimmed the dog by cutting its total energy. There’s no more complex mechanism behind it.
You can’t get a dog into ketosis. Therefore, keto diets are a waste of time through the keto approach. A dog’s liver makes the necessary sugars on its own, and for that reason, a dog is not as dependent on carbohydrates in food as we omnivores are. Sometimes it’s an advantage to be a carnivore.
However, if you absolutely want to follow a low-carb and keto diet for your dog, it’s possible. You move the dog to a meat-based diet, also known as raw feeding. But it’s worth remembering that meat itself doesn’t slim down the dog. It only succeeds by cutting fat grams.
- If a dog eats 30/20 dry food 350 grams, it gets 70 grams of fat and about 20 grams of carbohydrates.
- If a dog eats 600 grams of 12/20 meat, it gets 120 grams of fat.
Food and Feeding Advice
I regularly encounter feeding plans where the dog’s feeding is done according to Excel. The dog’s energy needs have been calculated according to NRC recommendations, and then feeding has been built based on energy calculations from analysis. It looks convincing. But because it only looks convincing but isn’t practically so, such plans eventually come to me – weight gain when trying to slim down, weight loss when trying to gain weight, or going wrong in other ways.
The problem is twofold: the dog’s energy needs are calculated incorrectly, as is the energy provided by the food.
We don’t know what the true energy needs of that individual are. Resting needs can be guessed anywhere between 300 – 600 kJ/kgME, and the guess is always correct. But the chosen value quickly doubles or halves the portion size. And the margin of error doesn’t stop there. We have average estimates of how much certain work affects energy or how much a coat increases calorie needs. But they are just rough estimates of general guidelines. A precise plan should be made for the dog – and it can’t be done with formulas. No recommendation tells you how to calculate a terrier’s energy needs. Or whether a Newfoundland’s laziness is considered higher than its coat.
How food corresponds to calculated energy intake is theoretically easy to calculate. But truly understanding the matter requires the insight that calorie calculations and total energy tell about the composition of the food, not the energy obtained from the food. The worst mistakes are made when NRC recommendations are transferred to raw feeding without realizing the impact of the absence of carbohydrates in the food. In this regard, it’s advanced course material, and no dog owner needs to think about it. But those making feeding plans for money must understand it. As well as the little fact that energy is not obtained from proteins, even though they contain energy. That’s the fact that keto diets are based on: cut the energy from carbohydrates, which is not replaced by fats.
The calculations go even more wrong when digestibility of foods is not considered, or precise calculations are made with Fineli values. Often, the recipes for foods aren’t even known, and the product descriptions don’t help much. Every food calculation is then just a clever theoretical calculation exercise. They don’t reflect reality, and they shouldn’t be used to implement reality.
I intervene in the matter for one and only one reason. It’s your choice if you want to pay for a guess, but slimming down a dog is done by reducing the energy that fattened the dog. And it can be done by considering real food with a real dog using simple indicators – like fat grams. A guess about your dog’s energy needs and an assumption about the food’s metabolic energy as energy received by the eater are not such indicators.
Need Help?
It’s easy to slim down a healthy dog. However, you might need a little mental support to convince you that you’re not starving your furry friend. Sick dogs, like those with intestinal issues or suffering from yeast, can be more challenging. The food can’t be changed because the symptoms flare up.
A lot can still be done, but since they must be done dog-specifically, and even if two dogs have similar outward symptoms, the solutions are completely opposite. Don’t worry about it then, but you can alway ask in Poochie Talk foru,. Let’s find out if the dog absolutely needs a weight loss regime, and if it does, let’s create one.
