How to Determine a Dog's Healthy Weight

It's crucial for dogs to maintain a healthy body weight if they want to live an active, healthy life, and it's your duty as a dog owner to make sure they do. When it comes to your pet's weight, the frequency and intensity of its activity sessions, as well as its daily food intake, should be taken into account.

When compared to the typical dog lifespan of between ten and thirteen years, the findings of a thorough study conducted by Purina Pet Food and experienced animal nutritionists in 2002 revealed that dogs can live almost two years longer by eating a properly controlled diet. Maintaining your dog's weight at a healthy level has obvious advantages, but how do you tell if your dog is the right weight?

If you are worried that your dog is underweight or overweight, you can contact a veterinarian or pet nutritionist to receive a precise response to this question, but there are a few easy techniques to determine whether your dog needs to make a change in their way of life.

Profile Analysis

• As a rule, a dog's abdomen should be higher up than its ribcage, so that from their front legs their underside gradually inclines up toward their rear.
• A steep incline suggests that your pet is underweight, whereas a shallow incline or no incline at all indicates that your dog is overweight.
• The best way to check your dog's profile is to lower yourself so that you are level with your dog and view it from the side.

Rib Examination

• Another way that you can easily tell if your dog is overweight is by placing both your thumbs on your dog's spine and opening your hands over its ribcage.
• If your pet is at a healthy weight then you ought to be able to feel their ribs under their coat and skin, but if there is too much fat then you will not be able to.
• Make sure that you look with your hands and not just your eyes, as a dog's coat can easily obfuscate its ribcage.

Overhead Inspection

• With a healthy body weight, a dog will have a shape similar to that of an hourglass figure, and you ought to be able to see it by standing just in front of its face and looking down.
• Ideally you will be able to see its waist tucked behind the ribs.
• If you can see the outline of your dog's individual ribs and the waist is noticeably more narrow than its ribcage, then your pet is underweight; however, if the waist is in line with the ribs or bulges out past them then it is overweight.

If you discover that your dog is overweight or underweight, you should change its lifestyle accordingly. If your pet is underweight, you can be over-exercising it and feeding it food with insufficient calories. In this situation, a specifically formulated working dog food would be great because it is made to give dogs a sufficient amount of energy and also contains a variety of vitamins and minerals that will help them regain a healthy weight while also increasing their physical output.

If your dog is overweight, on the other hand, you should go forward by boosting its daily exercise routine and adjusting its diet to one that consists primarily of light dog food. Now is the moment for dog owners to aggressively combat canine obesity, as nearly half of dogs in the UK were reported to be overweight by veterinarians in 2014. Try feeding your dog grain-free dog food to see if it helps with digestion and reduces bloating if you notice that particular foods seem to upset your dog's stomach.

Today, browse our selection of delectable dog chow for all kinds and sizes.