Food for an overweight dog?

Lucyxxx

Hi, we have an overweight golden retriever male. He's around 4/5 years old. Does anyone know the ideal weight for a golden of that age? We got him weighed when he was last at the vets but we never asked how much he should weigh.
We are thinking of getting Burns High Oats for him (he's on Madra now, I know it's not great). I got a free sample and am giving it to him later on. Does anyone know if this would be a good food to help him lose weight? It seems good because there's a lot of fibre in it but I'm jsut not sure yet. We have started to increase his exercise also.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.

suziwalsh

Burns is great, much higher quality.

Just decrease amount of food and increase exercise.....you can always get him to work for his food by playing games or training with him....:D

Try not to give him treats....try fill him up with some fresh veg or give him raw carrots/apples etc

cocker5

Lucyxxx wrote: »

Hi, we have an overweight golden retriever male. He's around 4/5 years old. Does anyone know the ideal weight for a golden of that age? We got him weighed when he was last at the vets but we never asked how much he should weigh.
We are thinking of getting Burns High Oats for him (he's on Madra now, I know it's not great). I got a free sample and am giving it to him later on. Does anyone know if this would be a good food to help him lose weight? It seems good because there's a lot of fibre in it but I'm jsut not sure yet. We have started to increase his exercise also.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.

I can second burns... its excellent... just for a bit of a treat i add a tin of sardines (mushed up) on saturdays its great for their coats too!

Maybe not high oats... would try the regular one first

try http://www.zooplus.ie/shop/dogs/dry_dog_food/burns

they deliver within 3-4 days, ive used them for 3 years excellent service

summer_ina_bowl

Burns is definitely a good choice, my dogs thrive on it. The High Oats would probably be the right choice for weight loss as it's high in fibre so would help the dog feel fuller faster and for longer

tk123

We're in the process of switching our guy to Burns High Oats too! He was on the regular one but needed to lose more weight so I decided to try it! Our guy is a GR too - he's currently 30kgs - he's having problems with his legs at the moment though so needs to lose another 3 or 4 kgs. We were told that our guy should have a slight waist and we should be able to feel but not see his ribs.
You have to be strict with it OP - cut his treats right back until the weight is off him. Take some of his daily food allowance and put that in his treat jar each day and use that for the treats and nothing else - he'll still be delighted once it comes from the jar. :pac: Also make sure if you are giving treats that you allow for this in the food - at the moment our guy gets about 150grams of food a day, one big Bonio and 4 or 5 gravy bones broken up into little pieces for our walks/training. For a treat he can have a drop of marmite/peanut butter on his kong/nylabone, some slices of pepper (he loves them ), a strawberry or a slice of apple, and for a really special treat a couple of times a week a dental chew. Our guy is restricted in what excercise he can do at the moment so we can't run him around etc to burn the weight off - if your guy is ok then up is excercise too - especially swimming.

EDIT - if you can get him swimming throw some pieces of food in for him to get and make him move around

paultf

I use to feed mine Burns chicken and brown rice. On this they lost alot of weight. My older cocker Darby was slightly overweight and went from 14kg to 11kg in the space of 9 months.

IMO he lost too much weight and looked skinny.

At the moment I am gradually moving them over to Red Mills. I use to think if a dog needed to lose weight put them on Burns or a similar food that loses weight, or even a so called Light food that the manufacturers provide. Now I believe if a dog needs to lose some weight use a regular food but cut back on the recommended feeding guidelines and exercise more. For example Red Mills recommends 180g/day for Darby - I give him 150g. So as I am feeding less I can afford to give a couple of treats.

PS I had been in touch with Burns in the UK. They believe an underweight dog is better off and they claim research shows that they live 2 years longer. Darby lost alot of weight on Burns and one w/e got very sick. Now I don't know if this has anything to do with Burns but he had problems with his anal glands and a liver infection. When he was on Burns, the guidelines are 10g/kg - I was giving Darby 130g. When I got in touch with Burns they thought the problem was caused by me overfeeding him and that I should only give him 100g!!!! The Burns nutritionist I was speaking to said she had a 12kg springer that was getting 4 hours exercise a day and she was feeding him 75g a day with no treats!!!! This can't be right?

I started a thread on a UK forum (Burns would be popular in the UK) and alot of people said their dogs lost too much weight on Burns so they switched to other brands.

http://www.cockersonline.co.uk/discuss/index.php?topic=74328.0

Lucyxxx

tk123 wrote: »

We're in the process of switching our guy to Burns High Oats too!

Thanks for everyone's help. tk123, where are you getting the dog food? We have tried everywhere (zooplus.ie doesn't do it) but nowhere has it. They can only order it in at a higher price because it's just for one person. Will probably have to go with this. Thanks.

tk123

Buy from Zooplus.co.uk Lucy! It works out cheaper and the shipping is faster from the UK site. Also you get 3 packs (so 9 in total) of these chicken chew roll things at the moment with the big bags of Burns - they're low fat our guy loves them Our guys poop's have been a bit softer with just some of the high oats mixed in with his normal Burns one so I'm just going to switch him back to the normal one and cut the portion back slightly. His little life jacket came today :pac: so I'm going to be able to do some swimming/hydrotherapy with him at home to build him up and it'll probably help him slim down a bit more. I reckon he's 28-29kgs (going to wait til he gets his boosters at the end of sept to weigh him) so we're almost there.

Juliet

Try Royal Canin Obese. I use it for my collie cross who has hip dysplasia and ii's good. It's prescription only and you only use a small amount but it must swell when it hits the stomach as it keeps him satisfied and he is a guzzler!!

no1girliegirl

A Golden Retriever should be about 30-32kg, You can get special food fromthe vet for them, Royal canin golden retriever food. What ever food you feed your pet should be ok if your feeding the right amount and giving the right excersice, once you dont go giving treats, tipbits or adding other things to the food, if its a complete food you shouldnt need to add anything to it, not even gravy.

pokertalk

bitch would be anywhere from 55-65lb
dog would be anywhere from 65-75lb
so up to 34 kilos is fine with your one

tk123

I got our GR down to 26kgs with regular Burns and he still gets treats for training - we can feel his ribs now but not see them so I think he's just right. He gets about 180g of food per day and then his treats eg for when we come back from our walk in the morning or when we're practicing his training - eg some broken up gravy bones, the aldi biscuit things he loves, a bonio for after our morning walk.

Tranceypoo

Your vet should have told you when your dog was weighed that he was overweight and how much he should lose, I changed vets last year and the first thing she did was put him on the scales and say 'he needs to lose 3 kgs' , the vet I had been taking him to before rarely even weighed him. Anyways, she gave me a measuring cup and told me 2 cups of this much each day, no treats, if he gets treats, cut back on the food etc etc. I've got him on Barking Heads 'Fat Dog Slim' chicken & rice in the mornings and their 'Fusspots' salmon and potato in the evenings, I tried a few but he loves these ones and has lost 1kg, whoopee!!
BTW you can get Barking Heads in Petworld, www.barkingheads.co.uk

erem

Our dog was overweight about a year or so ago, we'd been feeding him the Baker's stuff. He was always quite hyperactive as well so it was a bit of a puzzle as to how he was overweight! We did a bit of online research and discovered that the Baker's food had far too much protein content for a family dog i.e. a non-working dog. It had 21% protein or something similar. A few websites we looked at recommended using a food with as low a protein content as possible. Our vet then recommended feeding him a low fat food so we now give him PRO PAC Low Fat food. He dropped the excess weight and our vet recommended even after he did to keep him on it to maintain a healthy weight, so we did. He's very happy with it, eats it no problem and he has calmed down noticeably as well. It is expensive (a 15kg bag costs €60) but it lasts us a couple of months. Once we have a happy and healthy doggy though we don't mind paying it!

lorebringer

Pro Pac is also a good food (that isn't really heard of) - quite a few vets stock it.

Other good brands that do a low fat version are James Wellbeloved, Royal Canin and Arden Grange.

toadfly

We feed propac senior (green bag) to our 17 year old and he is doing brilliantly on it, great food.