overweight retriever - help!

RedBern

Floyd - 3 1/2 year old male retriever, according to the weight charts he should be between 28kg and 36kg. However, he is currently 40kg:eek: He looks porky and needs to lose at least 4kg. He's been on a diet (no snacks/treats) for about 5 weeks and have lost 2.5kg but we seem to be stuck now.

We feed him Bakers complete - the chart on the back says that for 25kg - 45kg dogs he should have between 380g and 580g - so we're currently feeding Floyd 400g a day plus a can of Winalot because he doesn't like just dry food! . He is walked for an hour off lead in the morning so has a good run and a swim - half hour in mid afternoon and 45minutes on-lead in the evening. He's scavenging anything he can get hold of at the moment. He's been wormed recently - but he seems starving.

Any suggestions on how to remove 8lb?

pink_piggy17

You may as well be feeding him on newpapers! Bakers is absolute rubbish, it is full of feed bulkers, colourants and other harmful additives. it is mostly cereal based with not much meat, the first ingredient of dogfood should be meat. You need to switch to a good, natural brand of food now. Good brands are royal canin, hills science plan etc. They may seem expensive but as you feed a smaller quantity of food (since they have better ingredients you need less) it works out the same cost as feeding a crap food like bakers. Winalot isn't much good either, I think it only has something like 4% to 8% meat content.

If he doesn't like dry food, one of my dogs doesn't either so I feed her "naturediet" it's a pate style food that they love, it's natural ingredients, it only contains meat, brown rice and vegetables and a few added vitamins and minerals. You can buy it online, they have a website: www.naturediet.co.uk

as well as being empty calories, supermarket foods such as bakers can cause hyperactivity, skin allergies and even worse diseases such as cancer in dogs. It's like living on takeaways yourself.

also, you could always look into feeding a natural homecooked diet yourself or if he eats raw meat you could try the BARF diet (Bones And Raw Food)

Also, which wormer did you use? Drontal Plus is the best. Bob Martins tends to be a bit useless.

MrsTinks

I'd check with your vet and find out how much more weight they think he ought to loose - many vets to a weight clinic (well their nurses do) for free and that will give you a much better idea of what you need to feed him.
Personally I think looking at the amounts you're probably feeding him a maintenance amount rather than a "loose weight" amount
But I don't know the nutrition or calories in Bakers or Winalot - I'd maybe cut him down by 100gr of Bakers and half a tin of Winalot a day if he really won't eat just dry food...
Most of the foods like Bakers etc always tend to overstate the amounts you need to feed your dog anyway and you're feeding a full tin of food which would probably be half a days intake minimum for him on top. So already you're feeding about 100-150% of what he needs to maintain - it's only because he's so active he's managed to loose weight
Or even better instead of Bakers complete which is full of colourants and empty calories etc get him on something like Arden Grange, James Wellbeloved or Burns.

suki1964

Although Im no fan of bakers, if hes happy on it then so be it - feed him it - BUT at the lower end of the weight scale. For him he should be at no more then 360 grammes once hes at target weight so to get him there - try 320 see how he goes. If hes really hungry and being a lab he will be, then add boiled cabbage as a filler (no salt). This was recommended by the vet who cares for my sisters lab. That poor dog got so obese he started to take fits. And up the exercise. If you cant face any more in the long walks/runs department - go get a chuckett and a couple of tennis balls and find a hill - soon get his heart working and the weight off

Good luck

supermezzo

Carrot is also a good almost 'empty calorie' filler too. Chunks of carrot in his food will make him slow down and chew rather than wolfing his food so he'll feel fuller sooner.

foreign_correspondent

It still sounds to me lke your dog is on too mugh food - some dogs arent really that bothered abut food, whereas others are naturally greedy - I always get the greedy ones and have to ignore the pleading looks!! My dog also loves carrot, slices of apple and tomatoes so I often gve her bits of those as treats.

when I was a kid the vet recomended cabbage to my friends fat lab - he had a big bowl of cabbage and dog food with gravy over it every evening - he lost weight but his farts were legendary!!!

pboae

Anover vote here for carrot. My dog is permanantly on starvation rations to keep his weight down. He gets a large carrot with his breakfast, and another with dinner. The trick is to give them the biggest chunks they can handle (my dog gets them whole), so they chew them which helps them feel full, but the swallow fairly large chunks so they don't get fully digested which reduces the amount of sugar they get out of them. It makes a big difference to him and he seems to feel full after his dinner.

supermezzo

Frozen mashed carrot in a kong is a good way of keeping them occupied too rather than rawhide or 'treats'.
( The current carrot fan behind me as we speak mawling his kong to get every last bit out of it).

simontheiceman

OK - KISS principle - here goes - you want your dog to lose weight - I have an almost guaranteed method if you stick to it. Its called 2 days food over 3. The idea is that you know what he is eating right now and therefore you know how much he will get through in 2 days. The simple part is to spread that amount over 3 days; thus missing a 1/3 of what he is eating right now. If you stick to this it will work.

Do not be tempted to change diet, I lose count of the number of pets which have put on weight after a diet change. Also do not get your pants pulled down by the "light" diets. Virtually every dog which goes on these will put on weight, I would explain why but I cant be bothered at this time of night.

Make use of the weight clinics at the vets - My nurses do some of them but I personally supervise some of the worst offenders! It ought to be free to get your pet weighed but if they need a diet food that wont be free. On that note I rarely find I need to resort to diet foods (I find them a bit rubbish). The diet drugs are really bad value for money - I have trialled them on selected patients with no success at all.