Is my Dog Overweight?


Your dog should never be overweight. It places stress on the joints and causes all manner of conditions which can seriously affect your dogs health and can contribute to cutting your dogs life short. How to tell if its overweight or not is not too difficult.

1.  Does it look overweight


If you look at your dog and are completely honest with yourself you will know that it is carrying some timber. The problem is that for humans there seems to be some tolerance to obesity which is why we are heading for a health crisis! If your dog looks overweight it probably is overweight!


I found a great blog post on the web at reddmolosserdogues.com which shows a diagram of the degrees of over or under weight really well. Click here to go to the blog to see the diagram!


2.  Can you feel his/her backbone?


You should be able to run your fingers along the spine and feel the indentations of the dogs spine, coated by a covering of fat and skin which doesn't stop you making out the spine. If you cant feel it and there's a big layer of fat especially at the top of the shoulders as in the boxer here then your dogs overweight.


3.  Can you feel his/her ribs?


The way I had it described to me was its like having a Biro in your pocket. If you rub your fingers along your dogs side from the shoulder backwards, the ribs should be easily felt and all of the ins and outs made out! If you cant feel them then your dog is fat by the degree you cant feel them. If you can just make them out then your dog is probably OK but might need tweaking during the summer months, a bit of winter fat isn't a bad thing especially for working dogs.


Use your hand to feel


I found a brilliant description of how to tell what the above should feel like! You run your hand across the back of your knuckles and the sensation you feel of flesh and solidness is the correct feeling. If you run your fingers across the back of your knuckles but on your palm, that requires a bit more pressure to achieve the sensation of what lies underneath! Rub your fingers behind your thumb on the palm side and you cant feel anything! Go to successjustclicks.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/fit-fido-or-fat-fido/ to see exactly how to do this!


4.  Has the dog got a waist?

Can you see the dogs belly tucked up behind the ribs and a nice flowing in after the ribs as in this picture here! You can see the difference with the boxer above who is like a big barrel and has no definition anywhere!


So please, using what you have read here, look at your dog with honest eyes and if its too skinny then feed it up a little and if its a working dog, let it rest a bit more in warm, quiet surroundings undisturbed. If its a porker, then cut the food down, or change it to a less calorificaly dense food which we'll discuss at a later date and exercise your dog more!


This has been taken from my page Feeding Your Dog which I will use to discuss feeding your dog, how and what to feed!


Good luck, as always get in touch if you need any help!


Cheers 


Steve