Pudgy Pets - Anyone succesfully gotten a dog to lose weight?

Please tell me how you did it.
My mum has pembroke corgis that I sort of consider mine too, because we used to all live together and I see them all the time and walk them too. One of the three sisters is really fat. Partly it's because she has a tiny frame (we call her a mini-corg) but her belly is too big and she weighs a ton when you pick her up. She has lost a bit since moving to a more rural area just because they all have more room to run around, but she is very greedy. She watches food like a hawk, steals bits from the others after wolfing her food in about two seconds, hoovers crumbs, begs from everyone, and gnaws on bones all day long. It doesn't seem fair to take all their bones away just because of her. I love this girl to bits, she's only 1 1/2 and is really funny, clever and cute. I want her to live a long healthy life. Advice plz....

I reduced my dogs' weights just by - literally - giving them less. Not all of them but when I feed them, just twice a day, I supervise so that no-one nicks food from the others.
I shouldn't think bones would matter much to her weight, and they're great for the teeth.

Although they hoover, I don't ever give them treats; and I measure their food - it's dried - to the gram. In fact, the last time I lost weight it was realizing that I took better care of them than of myself.

They're all 13+ now, and fit and healthy, although they've slowed down and sleep a lot.

Give her less food. Measure the amount you give her. The bag of dog food will tell you the correct amount to give her. Feed her once a day and don't feed her table scraps . It is not healthy for her to be overweight anymore than it is for us.

Yes, I would consult your vet. My vet recommended that my dog lose weight. She is on a special "diet" dog food. I make sure she gets enough exercise from walks and I limit any table scraps I feed her. I have to say that now that I'm eating only 1350 calories a day there is not much scraps I give to the dog LOL! My dog is 9 and has lost weight over time she has so much more energy too now that I have her walking more.

Yes...I worked w/ my vet--I have two beagles one was the perfect weight, one was way overweight...finally figured out that one wasn't eating all of her food and the other was eating hers and finishing the other one's!

We cut down on their dry food and mixed in green beans to help fill them up (we measure both the dry food and the beans). At first we needed a teeny bit of wet food to mix it all together (they wouldn't eat the green beans by themselves....now they love them!)

BUT!!!! Check w/ your vet...I have heard veggies are not good for all breeds. I can only tell you what we did.

Beagle #2 is now the same weight as Beagle #1!!!

My dog is and has always been the perfect weight (lucky dog.) But I remember my vet saying that ice cubes were the perfect dog treat. If your pet likes to eat them, they are good for hydrating, and zero calories so they do not affect his diet. Sometimes, I will mix the water from a can of tuna with just plain water and freeze it in an ice cube tray. My dog thinks they are heaven.

I have a very food loving beagle and a corgi mix. I separate them while eating or else the beagle would steal the corgi's food. The beagle was starting to become overweight so we cut back on his food. To help him feel fuller, I supplement his food with veggies, mostly green beans but other things including lettuce, tomatoes and pumpkin puree.

I have 2 dogs. A yellow lab and a mixed breed lunatic. ;) I love them both terribly and only want the best. I saw the lab was getting a little waddle in her walk and when we took her to the vet she was up 6 lbs! My husband and I are very regimented with their food. We measure using measuring cups and they only get 2 treats a day. When they get up and when they go to bed. So I was totally perplexed. It turns out my dad who'd visit my dogs on his lunch hour was feeding them practically 1/2 his sandwich: ham, cheese, mayo, bread. :devil: I let him know, food was not a way to show them love.

I'm going to tell you the same thing: FOOD DOES NOT EQUAL LOVE.
Advice: Until her weight gets under control, I'd forgo the daily bones to all the doggies. :( I know it sucks to "punish" all the dogs just because the little needs to lose weight, but really they won't miss them too badly. It's probably best to segregate them during feeding if she's stealing food from the others.

Also, it's important that everyone in the house is on the same page. If you're trying your hardest to keep her healthy but your mom or someone else is sneaking the dog treats, everything your doing is a waste of time.

You didn't mention exercise. Does she get regular walking?

Thanks so much for the replies!
I love the idea of replacing some of her meat with vegetables. We did ask our vet before about giving them veg, and he said go ahead, it's good for them. I think that will work better than just giving her less quantity because she'll have something to occupy her mouth a few minutes (ok seconds) longer whilst the others are chowing down. I'm going to talk to my mum about this, and be more regular about monitoring them eat. One is not very interested in proper food, only treats (I say she's like a kid who only wants sweets not food) and if I'm not careful she'll let Little Chubby finish hers.
AbbySinthe, they all get 2 walks a day, a long one in the morning and a shorter trip at night. She loves her walks, she's just my little greedy one :).
Yeah, I need to keep asking people not to give her bits. I'm afraid they do all come and sit in a ring around people, wagging and looking cute. It's very true that food doesn't = love. I could ask people to tickle her tummy instead.
Sometimes, I will mix the water from a can of tuna with just plain water and freeze it in an ice cube tray. My dog thinks they are heaven
You know the mind of the dog, my friend. My dear departed GSD Una was aka Una the Tuna ;)

I have a very food loving beagle and a corgi mix. I separate them while eating or else the beagle would steal the corgi's food. The beagle was starting to become overweight so we cut back on his food. To help him feel fuller, I supplement his food with veggies, mostly green beans but other things including lettuce, tomatoes and pumpkin puree.

Hah, same here. My beagle wolfs down her food, but she's basically learned that she's not allowed to go after the corgi's food. We watch them eat and if the corgi doesn't finish before moving away from the the bowl, we pick it up and call him done.

They eat the same food (high quality Natural Balance), but we watch their weight. For a while, the beagle seemed to be gaining weight, so we reduced her from 1 cup/day to 2/3 cup/day (split into 2 feedings). She also jogs with me three days a week plus play time and nightime walks. She seems pretty stable at a healthy weight right now.

My cat is also on a diet, but because he never finishes his food in one sitting and is fairly sedentary, he's on a "diet" cat food.

It's more of a long term thing, because they eat so little to begin with that you just have to watch for appearance trends.

I knew it had gotten bad my mum referred to 'Little Fatty' and the dog looked up and wagged.

The vet I work for recommends feeding twice a day, a reduced calorie/diet dog food, preferably a script, such as Science Diet R/D, cutting the amount of the dog food and supplementing with green beans.

We had a Golden Retriever lose 30 pounds on this diet. The owner also kept a can of green beans open and used them as treats.

I'm glad to report that our Little Fatty is slimming down a bit. Her ground clearance has visibly increased (and she has 2-inch legs). This has been a combination of less biscuits (cough *mum* cough) and vegetables. The other night I was at my mum's place and she was eating leftover stir fry veg (albeit reluctantly, after realizing that nothing else was on offer). Seriously, she is such a great dog. She has an awesome sense of humour and if you want to 'mad' her (mess her up) she plays along and pretends to go crazy and play-bite you with this wicked look in her eye. It's the cutest thing ever.

I forgot to mention I have Corgi's too! Love'em. Ruby has gotten a bit tubby, due to my DH feeding her tater chips.

We've cut that out, cut back a bit on dog food and we're going walking during my lunch break.

My dogs have dropped twenty pounds each by switching them to a grain-free formula and reducing their food by a third. My vet told me that bagged dog foods' feeding charts are for active to highly active dogs - which mine, well, aren't. He said that in general, giving them about 2/3s the minimum amount is plenty for a fairly inactive dog.

I reduced my dogs' weights just by - literally - giving them less. Not all of them but when I feed them, just twice a day, I supervise so that no-one nicks food from the others.
This, but also I should mention that the vet put my dog on purina veterinary diets. Nothing against this food, but I'm sure that feeding with other foods could still result in weight loss if you pay attention to the calories. My best friend, who hadn't seen the dog in a while, came over and said the poor thing was built like a tank.

Mine is a border collie. When I left for college, the parents didn't walk her much and my dad gave her WAY too many snacks. A border collie should weight about 45 pounds, she weighted a whopping 93. This was 3 weeks ago when we took her to the vet and got the new dog food. Feeding her 2 cups of this per day has resulted in a 5 pound weight loss. The vet says that it may take a year to get her down to a reasonable weight and then we can have her maintain it. I think this is about 1000 cal/day right now of dry food, then she can get a few hundred calories of snacks (with no snacks, she can eat 3 cups of food/day instead of 2 cups/day). We have also been taking turns walking her several times a day, a couple of short walks plus a longer one in the middle of the day.

Basically, pay attention to the snacks, because these can add up. There are lower calorie snacks you can feed, look on the websites for them for an idea of calories. Some have a lot more than you'd expect. Try to avoid human foods/table scraps too for weight loss.

My dog won't go near green beans, but I have heard that it works wonders for some dogs.

As a vet..here is my 2 cents...yes cutting down on the snacks and how much the dog gets fed may be enough. You would be surprised how quickly calories add up with kiddles and treats. If the dog loves them...raw baby carrots are a great treat. Also, like some one states earlier...loving your pets does not = feeding them to death. Studies have shown that dog's that are a normal body wt live 2-5 years longer than obese pets. They get many of the same issues as human. Increase the exercise (just like us). Keep the pets seperate when feeding so she doesn't get the other pet's food. Take away the bones for a while...yes it sort of sucks for the other pets...but honestly too many bones for dogs in general aren't good. But in many cases...perscription diets are needed. And exact measurements are needed. Sometimes everyone needs tough love even if its the pet needing it. Make sure you are always measureing the food with a measuring cup (liek us) and minmize snacks. And watch fatty dog foods and treats. Just like us...we need to minimize calories. As a vet i do believe in the perscription diets..i have seen some sucess with minimizing the amount of fodd the pet gets..but sometimes...we all need help and the prescpition diets help by increasing the fiber and decreasing the calories. Just like when we are trying to loose wt. Good luck!

Fred was always fit until a few years ago when I went thru a divorce. I moved in with my parents. My dad insisted on keeping the cat food on the floor.. Fred would eat it up! He quickly packed on the pounds!

As soon as I moved into my own place- he was no longer getting a steady diet of cat food and the weight just melted off. Dad was amazed at how much longer the cat food was lasting after we moved out too!

Although I have always fed a high quality kibble, I did try a raw meat diet on Fred for a while. After a few months on that, he was in the best shape I had EVER seen him in. I tried kibble again for a few months and already can see a little bit of belly flab again, its not fat, just some flab...so back onto the raw.

Advantage of the raw is his teeth were also cleaner.

My dog would not have lost weight if not for being on his thyroid medication. He had to take 2 little yellow pills every day & the weight melted off. He went from looking like a blanched pecan to a regular dachshund in about 6 months. (He was a rescue & the former owners also fed him canned dog food, we switched him to dry food, too)

My dog while growing up was a chunky girl.....then we found out she had no thyroid, and she dropped all the weight once she went on a pill.

My brother's dog got fat and the vet told him to feed her green beans. She LOVES green beans and she lost all the weight she needed to.

I have a friend who makes her own "dog food" for her dog. Mostly it's whatever she's got in the house, working off a list of foods that are good for/safe for dogs. Lots of beans, rice, tomatoes....not sure what else. Her dog will eat just about anything given to her. She said her vet seemed fine with it.

I'm glad your pup is taking off some weight! The veggies do work so stick with it.

When my old girl got pudgy, I reduced her food and supplimented canned pumpkin in it's place, I also reduced the number of snacks. We were fairly active so the weight melted off, she ended up losing 7 pounds and being a healthy 37lbs until she passed in February at 15 1/2 years.

I have a bassett hound, and they are known to be a bit chubby,,well mine is more than a bit chubby. We cut back her food, and she only gets baby carrots for a treat. She was doing really well, you could even see a little waist on her until she developed further skin issuses than what she already had and re-occuring bladder infections. The poor girl even developed an allergy to the meds for the bladder infection so we had to put her on another med to stop the itching that was making her skin raw. After 6 months of bladder infections they put her permenantly on perscription dog food to help reduce struvites in her urine that cause bladder infections. So now we are infection free but the meds for the itch is known to cause weight gain...so we are no further ahead. Has anyone dealt with this kind of situation before?

My dog is starting to get a little pudgy too. He's a springer spaniel and most of the older ones I've seen around are fat. I switched him to lower calorie food and he's never gotten many table scraps. A saying I read once keeps going through my head "if your dog is overweight you aren't getting enough exercise" :lol: I think that is the root of the problem.