Hi, my name is BusyBee and I have a confession. I let my dog get fat.
As our readers know, we here at the Dog Snobs feel strongly about keeping dogs in good shape and not letting them get to manatee-type proportions. As such, you can imagine how hard this is for me to admit this not only to myself but to all of you.
Mr. T is a stocky boy to start and has never been a particularly lean dog, but a particularly busy summer at work, shitty weather, and a slew of other lame excuses led me to realize a few weeks ago that my formerly fit specimen of a dog has gotten…err…fluffy. Sure I had noticed his harness was getting a little tight and that his usual amount of neck rolls had increased, but it didn’t dawn on me just how heavy he had gotten until I saw a particularly unflattering photo someone else took of him. While my first instinct was to say that the camera adds 10 pounds (oh wait, I already used that excuse for my own selfies), I quickly became horrified and embarrassed.
Nope. Just fat.
Now, I know some of you are probably judging me at this point (and that would be your right), but I would like to think that the difference between myself and the people we generally shame for having fat dogs is that I *know* my dog is fat and I’m taking immediate steps to stop him from getting even fatter. From cutting down his meals (Mr. T is pretty sure I’m starving him) and upping exercise, my goal is to get Teddy down to his healthy weight, which is about 5 pounds less than he is now.
Next stop, puppy weight.
I refuse to be one those people who flatly refuses to acknowledge that their dog is fat, comes up with ridiculous excuses (“It’s just his winter weight”), or keeps feeding my dog until I have to roll him down the hill. I won’t let my dog be a statistic ( or more realistically a fat dog meme), dammit, so here we go on our weight-loss journey.
So if you have it in your hearts, forgive me for letting Mr. T get a little too fat and happy. I’ll work on forgiving myself next.
The Dog Snobs 
This week, we did our first tracking sessions since May… I had to let out the harnesses for two of my three girls…. 😦 Dieting and exercise it is…
EEK!! Had to take Leo, my GSD, to the vet today for (yet another) ear infection. She weighed 60 pounds! That’s 10 pounds in only four months!!! No wonder her tracking harness was too tight. Some of it’s that she’s finally maturing and filling out, but some of it is just plain old not paying attention to how much she is eating between meals and training sessions. Bad owner. Bad, I say!
It happens … Luckily, it is not difficult to remedy! I wish it was as easy for me when I gain a few pounds .
#need crowbar proof human kibble dispenser with a tattoo on my head that says do not sell fast food.
Oh been there…. “No, that CANNOT be a roll around my Doberman’s waist! No! You cannot refer to her as a “sausage!” GAAH!!! Actually, if I could lose weight as fast they them, I wouldn’t be considered an over=stuffed sausage. Sigh.
My two Aussies gained 4 pounds over the summer cleaning up the high calorie puppy food when our new cattle dog puppy left it behind every morning. I didn’t realize how many extra calories they were getting. Needless to say they are now on diets, puppy eats in the laundry room and they think they are being starved.
I Forgive You! 😉👊
I SO feel your pain. I have a pit mix who is prone to weight gain – she is perpetually 2 lbs overweight. Even as experienced owners, sometimes it sneaks up on us – when she was on crate rest following heartworm treatment, I KNEW I had to watch her girlish figure, and I did, but she still gained 8 lbs. No worries, though – a little less food and a little more exercise and problem solved. Mr. T will be back in shape in no time.
It happens to the best of us. I’m a nut about keeping my dog lean (Not myself so much…) but when his knees started to fail him and we had to reduce his exercise, I didn’t cut his food back enough and it wasn’t until my best friend pointed out that his tummy didn’t tuck as much as it used to that…well, it was like he suddenly snapped into focus for me and I was mortified that I had let him get chunky ON TOP OF HIS BAD KNEES. >.<
Turns out, he needs half the quantity of food that he ate a couple of years ago to maintain his figure.
when i first started feeding raw 13 yr ago i did not have a great scale and i was feeding many different types of bone/meats.. most of the lists said..oh, don’t worry about a couple extra ounces of food.. which is fine for a 50+ pound dog.. i have 12 pound dogs. those ounces added up. i took my dogs into the vet for something and they weighed 16 and 18 pounds… i said..oh no..that can’t be right.. re-weighed them.. it was right. i brought them home and weighed them on my scale. yup.. two sausage dogs. i got a better digital scale and have weighed every meal since. they weigh 12 pounds again. fat just sneaks up on you.
Shit happens. To all of us – canine and human alike.
My coonhound will gladly trade places with mr.T, I just had to take in his harness again for him losing weight. The sad part is he has been on crate rest since mid-may. I have increased his food, he is getting sympathy treats galore from everybody, but has still lost 4 pounds this summer! He just has a super fast metabolism and burns calories like crazy, by literally doing nothing all day. He lays on the couch watching tv all day. So if you want a new dog to fatten up, I have the perfect candidate for anyone to try.
Ohhh it happens!! I have chow chows… My male was getting a little bit bigger then I would have liked only a couple of kgs. But my bitch fixed that quick smart… A week of smelling lovely to my boy when she was in season and poof he didn’t want to eat anymore…. Not ideal but did the trick. I thought my bitch was getting a little bigger than usual but we have had a cold winter in the south east of Australia (well cold for us) and a nice bath and I think wow! They aren’t as big as I thought they were. I’m sure Mr T will be fine :). Good luck X
It can happen so quickly, Archer’s raw fed and very lean, but he hurt his shoulder recently and was on short leash walks. Two week later he was two pounds heavier, just like that.
Good on you for admitting it. My canine-in-laws are all minis and as broad horizontally as they are vertically. The people in charge won’t acknowledge anything wrong and even FORCE FEED THEM if one doesn’t want to keep that weight up. Oh, and they are free-fed TREATS.
My Bassett Fauve Anna has put on 5 kilos since she was desexed! I am now walking her and feeding her less. I didn’t realise it until I had to pick her up! Shame on me.
She is also raw fed and doesn’t get very much at all but I think we are similar, we both look at food and it goes on our hips. I love my dogs at hate the thought of being responsible for her getting ill.
Beth Australia.
It happened to us, too! And I felt so, so guilty about the extra weight on my GSD’s joints. 10 lbs overweight is a *lot* when you should weigh about 65 lbs. We totally forgive you. It’s so easy to let happen, especially since you see your dog every day.
Fortunately, after about five months of dieting and increased exercise, my dog is at a decent weight again (although I’d like to take two or so more pounds off). Forgiving myself has been much harder than getting the weight off, really.
Total sympathies from the Mum of two Chollies – no, not a new designer breed 🙂 – these are “Chunky Collies”. My older BC is almost 9 years old and is at the upper end of the dog range, despite being a bitch. She sits naturally at 23.5kg. (Vet is comfortable.) Woe the day that I weighed her and found the scales stopping at 26.5kg. Now she is back to 23kg and looking to go a little lighter due to her arthritis. My younger BC should be around 13.5kg (she is considerably smaller than my older one). We are getting there is all I can say. Still, definitely, a chollie.