How Do You Tell If A Dog Is Right Weight?

sneg said:
I have an underweight dog - I can see Kita's ribs well and her spine is also easily felt, even visible. However, she eats food meant for active dogs, gets lots of treats and raw bones. She just doesn't gain more weight (prtially because her active life).
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Active and young sighthounds are often a little ribby. I know a man with a tremendously fit working sighthound that looked like a bag of bones, it turned out that he was feeding her too many of the animals she caught and that was just too much protein for her system. It is hard to get the right balance because when sighthounds are in the right weight range they gain and lose very easily. I do think it is worth trying for the optimum weight because an overweight dog loses a lot of the joy of living but an underweight dog is susceptible to illnesses and has less energy resources to deal with problems.
 
Mouse is skinny again... We spent the week helping my Mom pack and move stuff to storage, and Mouse dropped weight in that week! She was looking soooo good! But one week where she wasn't sleeping on a lap all the time, and BOOM she's scrawny again! Now I'm having to up the amount of food and high fat extra's again. I really should be feeding her 3x per day, but I think that would ruin my other two.
 
People don't understand when I tell them that Isis can out eat all my other dogs by a mile. She eats more than Kratos and she is only a 50lb Boxer! Kratos has 100lbs on here. She also started losing weight this past couple of weeks, she is already really thin and it has gotten worse. My poor skinny girl! Kratos has started getting a little fatter on the ribs and it's been bugging me. I guess I need to up his walks a little!
 
Sara, your method to occasionally skip a meal, to increase perkiness/metabolism in a dog, was spot on. :D I've noticed this, both in my dog,
and in my own self!! rofl, i thought of your advice the other day, thinking "why am i so extra-energetic today??" and chuckled as i realized, i'd skipped a meal! lol.

anyway, Buddy is getting closer and closer to his more ideal weight, and this weight loss is increasing his perkiness, too.
he does not LOOK chubby, but, his ribs and spine are still very hard to palpate.but, *almost* palpable, almost....soon.
 
Awesome! I totally found that skipping a meal now and then worked. It also increases my dogs drive to work for food :) Not that they miss food, mind you... they'll just get more the next day (I might feed once one day, and 3 times the next) Except for Mouse, on a meal skip with the other dogs, I'll often give them a cookie or a chewy then feed Mouse.

I have totally the opposite issue with Mouse... I cannot keep weight on her! I finally had her looking healthy, no bones visible... Then we spent a week packing up my Mom and such... Mouse was in constant motion throughout the week (gotta keep tabs on what's goin' on doncha know!) She looked anorexic again!!! We're working on building her up again.... It took months to get her weight up... then in a matter of days, she was back to skin and bone!!!

I dont even walk her! She goes for "walks" in my coat in the winter, and in the summer, my backpack. Her mangled back foot causes her some pain, and when I was walking her regularly, she developed a sore on that foot, and developed massive muscles on her good leg, and lost muscle on her bad, so she now spends 15 minutes every 2 days swimming in my bathtub :sneaky:. She doesn't like it much, but get's excited when I bring out the food! LOL
 
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