I can’t believe how many people thinking themselves qualified to give advice on dog nutrition, have no concept of adjusting the amount to feed by the condition of the dog. Recently somebody bashed a certain dog food for making their dog fat although they weren’t overfeeding it.
Now maybe the ratios of fat, protein, and carbohydrates makes some difference. No matter what the back of the bag says, if your dog is too fat, it needs less food, more exercise, or both.
I see question after question where some experts berates the OP for not supplying the age, breed, brand of food, phase of the moon, etc. when asking how much to feed. All I need to know is that they are asking help for deciding how much. Then I can paste in How To Tell if Your Dog is at a Healthy Weight – Long Live Your Dog and they can figure it out themselves. I do agree on the instructions being the place to start, and often suggest having the vet confirm their judgement.
Somebody please sticky this. So in the future whenever someone starts a thread asking how much to feed their dog, the OP can be first to reply with his link.
I eagerly clicked on the link in the OP because I’m used to small dogs, but just adopted a big one and I’m not sure if I’m feeding her enough/too much.
There’s nothing on that website that says, “For a dog X age and Y weight, they should eat Z amount of kibble twice a day.” There’s no little calculator for you to plug in the details, maybe it differs by breed for all I know. There’s three pictures: a too-thin dog, a just-right dog, and a too-fat dog. Fine, my dog is somewhere between just right and maybe a little heavy.
Then I noticed the site is a Purina website so what they recommend is that you feed the amounts listed on their bags of dog food. I don’t feed Purina because it’s crap. I also think that the amounts listed on the dog food bags may be overestimating a bit, so you go through more kibble, so you buy more kibble, so Purina gets more money.
So, do you have a link that doesn’t have a vested interest in feeding my dog as much corn and chicken by-product as possible without making her sick and fat? Really, my comment is: that site isn’t helpful at all if you don’t know wtf you are doing with your dog.
I agree with this, except change “a bit” to “a metric assload,” at least for the foods we buy (Innova/ Blue Buffalo) and the beasts we have. I have two dogs that I barely feed more than half their recommended food serving, and one of them is still chubby (the other is the correct weight but tends toward thinness no matter what we feed her). They are much more sedentary than they were when they were younger, so maybe that’s it, but the recommended amounts certainly aren’t going to work for all dogs. The same goes for the amount of canned food we feed our cat, who is also a bit overweight.
If we fed them the manufacturer-recommended amounts, my fat dog and cat would barely be able to walk. The thin dog would be fine, but that’s because she self-regulates. The chubby two only are as thin as they are because we cut their rations if they get up above the “little chunky but still has a waist” phase.
People should be with it enough to see that their dog is getting fat or bony and adjust accordingly. And really, that’s what you have to do no matter how sophisticated your calculations are. Animals all have their own quirky little metabolisms just like we do, and what’s right for one dog of a certain age, breed, and activity level is too much or too little for another one. Feeding guides are just rough guidelines and are therefor NOT set in stone rules.
Brand and formulation of food very much does make a difference in how much food is appropriate. The more nutrient dense and digestible a food is, the less you should be feeding.
People don’t know enough not to overfeed themselves, let alone their dogs.
I don’t think you can go by weight alone; it is too breed-specific. My dog is a Bichon, and I got food-volume advice from a Bichon website. It seems to be working; he’s juuuust right.
Heh. I would love to have someone benevolently standing over me monitoring my weight and adjusting my food intake like I do for the beasts. It’s way more work to have to look at nutritional information and calculate myself.
I’m not sure the cat agrees that my servings to him are appropriate (even though I haven’t fully eliminated his gut), but the dogs don’t seem to care much.
I’m surprised this is a problem. I’ve always had pets, I’ve always free-fed them, and I’ve never had a problem with them becoming overweight. Both the pugs fit right in the “Ideal” picture in the OP’s link, and my vet agrees they’re not overweight at all.
I’m not trying to be snooty here - I guess I’m just wondering what the trick is. It’s seriously never been a problem with any pet I’ve ever had. We just put the food down, they eat what they like. They get some treats, but not tons, and we do feed them people-food as treats. Not a lot of it, but (for example) if we’re eating steaks for dinner, both the pugs get several small pieces - altogether about as much as would be in a small human bite of steak.
Most pet dogs I see are either fat or obese. Somehow, many people think that if you can feel or (gasp) see ribs, the dog is starved, or at least needs to be “fattened up.” (It’s a pet, not an animal you’re fattening up for slaughter.)
And that food=love.
And that “fat and happy” is a good thing. :rolleyes:
And that what the bag says will work for all dogs.
My three dogs are all on the lean side; but they have differing metabolisms and I feed them accordingly. I was at the vet a couple of days ago with my JRT mix (rabies shot and license) and a guy was in there with a 130 lb black Lab. The poor thing was almost as wide as it was tall, rolls of fat, waddled and probably couldn’t jump or run to save its life, but the owner was clearly proud that he had a humungous big dog. It was at least 50 lbs overweight and as we were leaving at about the same time, I saw he had to boost the poor thing into his van because it couldn’t manage to climb in under its own steam.
Athena, it seems to go back to the individual dog: we have two we could theoretically free feed without problems, but the Pyrenees is just a big fuzzy pig. He will eat anything not nailed down, and is smart enough to eventually remove that nail. Since mobility problems would essentially be a death sentence for him (I’d never be able to lift him for potty breaks, vet visits, etc) we feed all three dogs individually and by measure. (We also have to keep the kitchen garbage outside, and all non-canned foods in upper cabinets. We used to store the kibble in a lower cupboard with a childproof latch, until we learned that babyproof /= Sebastian-proof.)
And the amounts we feed have more to do with the dogs, their ages, and their activity levels than overall size. Jo, the smallest at 55 pounds, eats 25-50% more than Mojo or Sebastian, because he is naturally hyper (malinoise) and he works. The German shepherd, at 70 pounds, eats the same amount as the 120-pound Pyrenees, because he’s still more active despite his age. It’s up to pet owners to figure out what works for their critters.
With my adult dogs, it’s been pretty easy for me to keep them at a healthy weight by (as the OP suggested) starting with the recommendations and then adjusting based on how my dogs handle it.
However, I had more difficulty with growing puppies. I guess I’m not as clued into what looks like a healthy “puppy fat” pup and what’s overweight. And then there’s the whole “how fast are your large breed dogs growing issue”. So I did ask a lot of questions when they were young.
I agree with this 100%. I’ve been in the vet’s waiting room and had people ask me if my younger dog is a rescue because “he’s so skinny.” He’s a perfect weight. I’ve confirmed it with the vet who has told me to keep him exactly where he is. But you can feel his ribs and see a vague hint that ribs are there. I suspect that many people have no idea what a healthy weight looks like.
We feed Pedigree to our dog. I have been to the extreme dog sites (dogster.com) and asked what is the best food I can get at Walmart because we are poor and that’s all we can afford. We get told to go to the nearest seed and feed store, which apparently also carries better dog food. Thanks, but we’re still poor. And he’s still skinny after 4-6 cups a day.
We have been accosted by a stranger at the dog park who asked what we feed our dog and when I replied “Pedigree” he responded “oh that’s terrible.” (Note that he never asked our names or the name of our dog.)
To answer the OP, we could leave the whole bag open on the floor and he’d just eat what he wants, when he wants it. All dogs are different.
Captain would pork up like your Aunt Edna if we free fed him - all dogs are different. He’s a perfectly healthy weight, though. I’m sure people end up with fat dogs the same way some people end up with fat kids - killing them with “kindness”.
With the exception of my current dog, we have always free fed and our dogs were always a healthy weight. We had to stop this with Georgie as he would eat every last food morsel left out, his food, the cats’ food, and then beg for more as if he was dying of starvation.
Since we started weighing out his food and giving it to him at a specific time, he’s doing much better weight-wise (still needs to lose a few) and doesn’t beg so much.
I have less trouble denying my dog than denying myself. The vet said she needed to lose about five pounds and asked how much I was feeding her. Then he said try - and told me how much to reduce it. I measure out the new amount, the dog loses five pounds and stabilizes there. Done.
I like giving her treats, so she’ll get them occasionally. But that urge is nothing like, say, craving chocolate.
Hmmm, I spent a year trying to convince our vet that I wasn’t overfeeding. Finally she agreed to do a thyroid test and realized I wasn’t lying to her or myself.
My dog is losing the extra weight now, which is great, but it makes me sad to think about how much I was restricting her diet (vet’s orders) toward the end of the ordeal.
This is my whole point. Would be canine nutrition experts demand all sorts of figures. You only need 2 data points, what you are feeding, and where your dog fits.
As for the rest of your post, cites please. Can you direct me to an article in the JAVMA or Journal of nutrition showing it is impossible to use the amino acids in processed corn or chicken by products to meet the guidelines at http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/ResourcesforYou/ucm047120.htm
Perhaps a cite questioning the AAFCO standards or one explaining how a food certified as meeting them and passed limited feeding tests is crap?
Or is anything made by a large company and inexpensive at Walmart crap by your defination?
Moving on
I know I eat too much. I just have much more will power when it comes to cutting them back.
Dogs float in and out of my family’s care. At a year, Zephyr left at a lean 69 pounds. When he came back at 4 years, he was 92 pounds, but still had somewhat of a waist. With 2 little kids in the family, it is hard keeping him down to 70 now. I hate to think what the ones with a spare tire weigh. When I have a smaller, lean Lab out somewhere that may be 50-60 pounds. it is hard for me not to roll my eyes when people tell me about the 90 pound Lab they have at home
.
Puppies are a moving target, but about the same profiles work. When Holly, female yellow Lab, came to me at 7 weeks, her waist was missing. Fattest puppy I had seen in years. I held her to 1 1/2 cups and by 11 weeks I was pleased with her waist. I was beaten unmercifully by the field trainer over her belly. She had no tuck up. The trainer hadn’t seen her at 7 weeks.
Yes, I even had a Lab that was that way and as typical of them the one Shepherd.
The feed store? Yes they have some good prices on foods with ingredients that sound better to people. But many of them are made by Diamond. Diamond’s past QC problems have killed more dogs than anybody but Menu Foods. Pedigree is widely and successfully fed all over the world. It is high in grain, ordinarily no problem. My light eating Lab did better when I switched him from Purina to a knock off of Iams. You might try it or Purina 1, or as I so often advise ''Quit while you are ahead.
Dogster? It is full teenage snobs with rich dadies. Well the whole net is.
It isn’t the average dog owners that started this rant. It is those wanting to advise them who are clueless about cutting back if the dog is too fat.
One final note. I used to have a link to a picture of a Saluki. The owner carried a note from her vet to keep the RSPCA off her back.
I didn’t see why there were so many warnings about how hard it was to keep my dog’s breed thin. Then he got neutered (I know people say that has no affect, but that’s the only thing that changed) and his weight started going up. Now I have to make sure to have a steady supply of pumpkin for him so he doesn’t feel like he’s starving.
So when did he get neutered? I have found I have to cut back intact dogs before they are a year old. Those not as well trained might not notice the difference as soon.
