Weight Gain & Older Dogs

Video Transcript

So one of the problems that might be common for an older dog is weight gain. So the dog because of sometimes lack of exercise but you're still feeding them the same amount or often times there's a lack of exercise or decrease in activity level and in fact they get fed a little bit more because feel bad because they're not as active as they normally or once were. We're going to take a look at Hannah here as an example. Hannah is in the process of losing some weight. You can in the back here that she's quite wide. You can see she's got quite a large belly right here. Because of her age, and she's actually recovering from surgery 7 months ago, her exercise level certainly was decreased, but it's important, especially for a large breed dog like this, that she is actually thinner than she should be normally even when she was younger because she doesn’t have the muscle mass or the strength of bone to carry her body around. There's actually a chart that is put out by Purina and it shows this is a lab, another breed that tends to be a massive body breed. Not quite as big as a rotti, but certainly a fairly good size body. You can see most people's dogs typically fall from 7 to 9. If you look up here in the 4 to 5 range, this is really the ideal and healthy body weight for your dog. Even though you might think well it looks a little bit thin, this is healthier for your dog. There's been research, there's been studies. Followed dogs from birth through death, and the study was over 13-14 years and it showed very very clearly that dogs that were a little bit on the leaner side lived longer and had fewer health problems. So weight is something you really want to watch out for in your geriatric dog. As their activity level decreases, you need to decrease the food. One of the things that you can do is add vegetables. If you don't want to be giving your dog a half a cup of dog food, but that's all they really need to eat to maintain their health and their appropriate weight, then you can add graded vegetables. Ideally, you would like to be able to feel the ribs and you'd like to be able to see a bit of a waist and their should be a tuck up right down here in front of the loin. Watch the weight of your geriatric dog and if you find that they're getting heavy, then you want to take the appropriate steps to gradually bring that weight down.

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