Need to loose weight!

Naya

Naya

Moderator
Location
Bristol, UK
Not me.......(well, maybe a bit), but Harley. She’s had reduced walks on and off for over 6 weeks now due to her paw being sliced then finding out she has arthritis in her paw. We’ve been and had bloods taken today and they’ve upped her ‘Onisor’ medication for 2 weeks as she’s still limping quite a bit. She’s 31.2kg and the vet would like her around 29kg, but also wants us to reduce walks to 2 x per day for 15 mins max at a time. She is very muscular and has a deep chest. I do agree that she needs to loose weight, I just am at a loss as to how! The vet is referring us for hydrotherapy which will help.
She currently has 50g of wet food for breakfast, 50g wet food (was 75g until 2 weeks ago) & 50g kibble for tea. A dried fish skin after her walk and 5-10 small biscuits in the evening. Every other day she gets a frozen bone which has 0%fat natural yoghurt and sardines. She occasionally get some dried beef lung or dried tripe when recalling her.
Any suggestions? I can’t up her walks or exercise, so please don’t suggest that.
 
HAH

HAH

Moderator
Location
Devon, UK
You could mix 50% of her wet food portion with water or low salt stock so she’s getting half the meat but it seems a good portion? And with her kibble you could do similar - soak it in stock for 5 mins before using 50% of her usual portion?
 
Stacia

Stacia

Location
Malvern Worcestershire
I would give her only 5 small biscuits, if possible, you could break them in half so she thinks she is having 10! I am having the same problem with Rourke, despite reducing his food by an inch in the mug I measure his kibble in, he put on weight with the restricted exercise. Now he is on even greater restricted exercise, so instead of a full mug of kibble he has half a mug and just an inch slice of wet food. He does have three biscuits to go to bed and a few little bits of kibble as rewards.
 
Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
Though only anecdotal (sample size of ONE), I've been amazed at how switching Carbon to a fish-based homemade diet has changed his body composition. When I was feeding raw with cooked veggies, I was having a tough time controlling his weight and he always had a bit of the buddha about him. :p Once I switched from raw to mainly fish (everything else the same), it was actually hard to keep weight on him. I stopped having to worry about it at all, which was great.

The last two weeks of our travels, he was on a salmon-based good quality kibble as it is too much of a pain to try to travel (especially in hot weather) and keep to fresh food. Though he had slightly more exercise during those two weeks and I was feeding a very small amount of kibble a day (about 3/4 cup), he still started to get his buddha look again. He also thought he was dying of hunger...more than usual. ;)

Maybe even substituting one meal a day would help? You can do lots of volume (fill her up) for not so many calories. Carbon's typical meal is 1/2 grocery store bag of frozen broccoli or mixed veggies (cooked), small boiled sweet potato (you could skip this to lower calorie count), 2 fish filets (anything boneless will do - I get these frozen too, Morrison's has the best prices), fresh apples/banana (again optional to lower calories), a raw egg every other day or so, salmon oil. As all this is soft, it makes great frozen Kong filler as well.

He also gets the equivalent of 1/2 a chicken breast a day in training treats (various protein sources).

Because of his heartworm, Carbon is getting less exercise than when he was on raw but still slimmed down and stabilised. Honestly, I wish I could find the willpower to do his fish diet as I'm envious of the results! :)
 
snowbunny

snowbunny

Location
Andorra and Spain
Emily_Babbelhund said:
Though only anecdotal (sample size of ONE), I've been amazed at how switching Carbon to a fish-based homemade diet has changed his body composition. When I was feeding raw with cooked veggies, I was having a tough time controlling his weight and he always had a bit of the buddha about him. :p Once I switched from raw to mainly fish (everything else the same), it was actually hard to keep weight on him. I stopped having to worry about it at all, which was great.
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This is also true. When I cook for my lot, the "base" is white fish, chicken breast and veggies. I add minced red meats and liver on top for the three of them that can have that, so they get a good nutritional profile. but the times I have stuck to just the white fish/chicken and veg mix, I couldn't feed Shadow enough of it to keep weight on!
 
Selina27

Selina27

Location
Herefordshire, UK
Emily_Babbelhund said:
Interesting! Really, I need to put myself on this fish/veggie diet
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Me too!

@Naya , I sympathise with your issue for Harley, looks like you have some good advice here though. I agree with those you've suggested replacing the biscuits with a kong with something low calorie. I find with Cassie that if the kong has just the tiniest bit of sometning tasty like the oil from sardines she spends ages licking it!
 
snowbunny

snowbunny

Location
Andorra and Spain
Wow, I just looked at how much Carbon gets, and had to laugh, because my lot get nothing like that much :D

I buy 4kg of white fish of different varieties, four chicken breasts, use half a large butternut squash, a kilo pack of stock vegetables (normally one large parsnip, four carrots, a couple of short sticks of celery, and a small turnip, and then I add about 300g frozen French beans. I can't feed broccoli, kale, or anything similarly dark and leafy. That mix lasts the four dogs about two weeks. I would say that the girls would get, over the course of the day, maybe half a fish fillet each, then they get normally a chicken carcass at lunchtime. They get a small slice of cooked, frozen liver on top (about 5% of the diet) and I sprinkle some raw red meat mince on top. I also use a range of JR Pet Products "pates" for training, which are 100% single source protein, to add a mix of protein profiles to their diet.
 
Emily_Babbelhund

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Location
Regensburg, Germany
snowbunny said:
Wow, I just looked at how much Carbon gets, and had to laugh, because my lot get nothing like that much :D
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Wow, isn't that interesting? I looked at the weight on his frozen veggies and he's getting 1kg a day - though that's frozen so I would imagine the equivalent in fresh would be less. To me, it seems that Carbon gets a tiny amount of protein as it is probably 1/10 of what I gave Brogan (he ate 5 whole chickens a week plus liver, eggs, sardines and other stuff).

Squash is a good idea. I've not been able to find sweet potatoes here in Germany, so will see if I can find some squash instead.

Is there an issue with broccoli that I should know about? Or is it just the gas it causes in some dogs - which can be reason enough! ;)
 
A

Aitch

Location
Buckinghamshire UK
Alex has just gone onto the fish based diet as he is a porker. I feed about the same amount as @snowbunny three times a day. My dogs get an awful lot of exercise though so I do have to step back and take a "stranger's eye" look at them fairly often.
I do have to say that Alex absolutely loves eating this way.
 
Naya

Naya

Moderator
Location
Bristol, UK
We have started Harley on her diet.
We are using white fish and lots of veg (thanks @Emily_Babbelhund for the suggestion. She’s always liked some veg, but was never over keen. For the past 2 days she sits & stares at the fridge as she knows there is a tub of cooked carrots and green beans.....she goes nuts when I get it out to give her some! I’ve also changed her frozen bones to have a lot more water and a very small tin of fish with 2 spoons of natural yogurt (makes 10 frozen bones). She’s been eating every meal with gusto and is even licking the bowl about 10 mins later to make sure it’s all gone. I’ve also brought some Tumeric which we are sprinkling in her meals each day. We’ve also been breaking her biscuits in half (now less than the size of your small finger nail) and adding a few carrots for her evening snack. Fingers crossed this all works.
 
Natalie

Natalie

Naya said:
We have started Harley on her diet.
We are using white fish and lots of veg (thanks @Emily_Babbelhund for the suggestion. She’s always liked some veg, but was never over keen. For the past 2 days she sits & stares at the fridge as she knows there is a tub of cooked carrots and green beans.....she goes nuts when I get it out to give her some! I’ve also changed her frozen bones to have a lot more water and a very small tin of fish with 2 spoons of natural yogurt (makes 10 frozen bones). She’s been eating every meal with gusto and is even licking the bowl about 10 mins later to make sure it’s all gone. I’ve also brought some Tumeric which we are sprinkling in her meals each day. We’ve also been breaking her biscuits in half (now less than the size of your small finger nail) and adding a few carrots for her evening snack. Fingers crossed this all works.
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Sounds a good plan, it's all hard work isn't it, to keep them slim. I buy a lot of frozen veg now, both for us and Monty, he won't eat much raw but will happily eat frozen veg, either still frozen or defosted which will have been blanched. I find this really convenient and probably cheaper as I buy from Aldi.
 
Loraseal

Loraseal

Location
The Hague, The Netherlands
I think you have loads of really good information that is going to help Harley. Also one other key area is the snacks. I use lots of dried fish cubes If he has lots of snacks during his short leash walks I will reduce the weight at meal time. I make frozen kongs of hand made bone broth. The broth is good for the bones and the Kong keeps him busy and entertained
 
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