Gun Dog Forum

8 years old, feeding him Diamond Naturals Extreme athlete. He's around the 60 lb mark, true season weight should be around 52 lb.
This dog is fat and stays fat! For the past 2 months I've cut his daily feed by 30%, but that hasn't really helped. He gets ran almost daily, so lack of exercise is not an issue
Do I need to switch from high protein/high fat feed to a lesser feed?

Cutting the amount of feed does help and is how you solve this problem but you have to cut back enough which can be a considerable amount but will depend greatly on the amount of exercise that is involved. Don't give up as it will take time and you are doing the right thing.

Ezzy

For dogs and humans , the principle is that to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you eat. At 8 years of age, even though he runs every day, ( how long, how far?) he may not be burning the calories he used to. That food is 470 calories a cup.

I like extreme athlete but it is calorie dense. They get fat on it unless they are hunting hard multiple days a week. I change feeds in off season or if I'm not going to be able to go hard for a couple weeks.

It could be a thyroid issue as well. How does his hair coat look?

Lesser feeds make no difference other than how much you feed. When someone says they have to go to lesser feed or the dog gets fat is saying nothing except that he can't cut back to what the dog needs to maintain it's weight. There is no set amount of any feed that a dog needs as all dogs and their environment as well as there activity is different. All it takes to correct the problem is adjust the amount you are feeding amd of course that is a smaller adjustment if you do it before the dog gets completely over or under weight. Watch your dog and feed only what it needs and not what it wants.

Ezzy

Keep cutting the food down & he will lose wt. It's that simple.

If your dog is that fat with exercise, you were way over feeding to begin with. A 30% cut might still be too much, or might be right at a maintenance level for your dog. What works for my dogs is that we use a cup to dole out food so we can measure - no eyeballing amounts or guesstimating. Take into account any table scraps fed, and treats. Then we add more exercise every day.

We feed Diamond EA, high protein and fat.

You can use frozen or canned green beans to add bulk to the dog's dinner without adding many calories, or you can compare labels and go with a less calorie-dense food. But you have to check the clorie count on the bag, because lesser/cheaper food doesn't mean fewer calories.

shags wrote: You can use frozen or canned green beans to add bulk to the dog's dinner without adding many calories, or you can compare labels and go with a less calorie-dense food. But you have to check the clorie count on the bag, because lesser/cheaper food doesn't mean fewer calories.

We've generally supplemented the volume of green beans for the amount of food cut back when reducing what they eat (offseason etc.). If getting canned green beans I'll generally get no salt added.