How much dog food should I give my dog to maintain a healthy weight?

It’s alright to increase the food since she’s thin. I like to increase the amount of food at each meal if they are very hungry. I would also feed three meals daily until she’s at a normal weight. Very active dogs need much more food than usually recommended to grow and stay at a good weight. I adjust the food depending on your dog, not what it says on the bag. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach to help you care for Bruno.

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! For Opie to lose weight gradually and at the same time eat an appropriate amount of food he should be eating about 1,000-1,100 calories per day. How many cups you feed him will of course depend on the caloric content of the food you feed him per cup. That information should be in the back of the bag or possibly online. Exercising him like you are doing will also be key so you are already doing a great job. Keep up the good work! Good luck and have a good night!

Although its a little hard to tell from the photo both of your pups look to be lean with good muscle mass. To assess body condition what you want to look for are a waist behind the ribs when viewed from above, and that you can feel but not see the spine and ribs. Young active dogs are certainly apt to be a bit leaner. You could certainly consider a diet for active large breed dogs, especially for the Dane mix. To figure out how much to feed you need to know two things. First, you need to find out how many calories are in a cup of your current food. This is sometimes written on the bag or you can go online to the foods website and typically find it. It would be written kcal/cup for dry or kcal/can for canned. Second, you need to figure out what the energy requirements for your dogs are. This will be different for different weights of dogs and for dogs with different lifestyles. A good website to go to to help you with this is the Ohio State University Pet calorie calculator. If you Google OSU dog calorie calculator it should pop up. This will show you how to calculate the energy requirement for your dogs based on their weights, and let you know what factor to multiply by for their lifestyle. Then basically when you know how many calories they should be taking in per day you can figure out how much to feed. Keep in mind if you do this and change the amount you are feeding, if you are seeing weight loss or excessive weight gain you will have to adjust the plan as it's not a perfect system. I hope this helps and thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach!

The feeding recommendations are averages for all dogs. They can vary widely based on metabolism and energy level. Based on the picture you posted of Oliver, his weight looks perfect. If you are feeding him 1 cup twice daily, but his weight stays at 16-17 pounds and your vet says he is a good weight, then I wouldn't change anything. But I find that most dogs need less than the recommendation on the bag as they get older and their metabolism and activity decreases, so be sure to monitor his weight carefully. I hope that was helpful! Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! Physical activity would definitely help. However, a lot of it comes back to the diet that is fed. It is not necessarily about the amount of cups but it is more about the caloric content in each cup. You can follow the recommended amount of food in the bag (though they tend to recommend a higher amount than needed) or preferably have your veterinarian calculate the needed intake based on the most current weight. I recommend you try the Science Diet metabolic weight management diet which works great for weight loss. Good luck and have a good night!

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Bruno. If you veterinarian has found him to be healthy, then I recommend feeding a high energy food. Purina ProPlan Performance diet is formulated for athletic dogs. This or something similar should help him gain and maintain weight. I hope this information helps!

That depends on the food that you are feeding! Different types of dog food will contain a different number of calories per cup of food. I recommend starting with the feeding recommendations found on the bag of food you are using. There will usually be a grid that has the body weight and daily food amount. I recommend dividing the daily food amount into 2 feedings, AM and PM. Some dogs have a higher or lower metabolism than the average dog, so after feeding for a month, I re-evaluate and see if we need to increase or decrease that feeding amount to get them to their ideal body weight.