How to Know Your Dog’s Weight is Healthy

Knowing your dog is at a healthy weight can be challenging but here are a few good pointers to help.  You can either buy a chart like the one you see at your vet’s office indicating size of dogs as it relates to over and under weight or you can do this simple test at home.

Place your hands together at the thumbs making a small bridge to place over the dog. Place your thumbs on the spine of your dog and gently lay your fingers down along your dog’s side.  If you are able to easily feel each rib, likely your dog is too skinny and needs more food.  On the other hand, if your fingers cannot feel ribs at all and you have to press in to find ribs, your dog is overweight and needs to start loosing weight, to avoid potential health issues. If, when you place your thumbs together along the spine and your fingers are gently placed on the dog’s side, you can feel ribs but they are not protruding, likely your dog is in good shape.

A dog at a good weight should have an hourglass shape from front to back when you are standing over your dog and looking down.  If you look down on the dog and you see nothing but ribs, hips, shoulder blades and spine sticking out, your dog is too skinny.  When you look down, if your dog looks a bit like a straight tube, your dog needs to increase exercise and decrease intake.

When looking at your dog from the side, the dog should have a nice tuck at the loin.  If there is no tuck, your dog is too large and needs to loose some weight.  Some clients send their dog to us and do the Get Fit program to make it happen. If it appears that the bottom of the loin and the spine are almost touching, this is not a healthy tuck.  This dog is too skinny and needs to be fed more.

I always recommend people feed their dog according to its own needs regardless of what the bag of food says for quantity.  Like people, dogs are individuals and some have a much higher metabolism and thus need more food to maintain a healthy weight.

Happy Dog = Happy You!

Julie