My dog has long fur. Should I adjust his weight for feeding?

Suggested serving sizes are recommendations for the "average" dog and vary greatly depending on the ingredients and nutritional value of the food. If your dog keeps a consistant good weight, is healthy and has a shiny hair coat, then you are doing everything right. When in doubt take him to your vet for a weigh in and Body Condition Scoring. Usually this is a free service offered by your veterinarian,

No. If the dogs are at a good weight and body condition score, you are feeding them the appropriate amount of calories. When pets become overweight or underweight, that is a sign that something needs to change. Please feel free to post any additional questions.

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Smokey. The average American dog is quite overweight. So if you have one at a healthy weight, it will usually look too thin. You want a thin covering over the ribs when you run your hands along his sides. He should have a waist the curves in from the top and size views. There is a one through nine scale of body condition scores. A healthy weight is a four or five. Every dog food contains a different amount of calories per cup. At six months of age, he should still eat puppy food. Look at the side of the food bag for feeding recommendations. Keep in mind, these are typically too high for most dogs. His weight looks great in your picture, but it obviously hard to tell for sure. Your current feeding amount is likely adequate. I hope this information helps! https://www.justrightpetfood.com/blog/dog-body-condition-score

Congratulations on getting Price to lose 5 pounds! That is certainly an accomplishment. Sometimes it can be a little difficult to determine an accurate weight from a picture, but I suspect that Prince has a little more weight to lose. I am attaching a couple of links below that may be helpful for you to determine his Body Condition Score. https://petobesityprevention.org/pet-weight-check/ https://www.petcoach.co/healthy-weight-calculator/ Having a dog neutered does not change their appearance, but it can decrease their metabolism, so they need less calories, Since Prince has been stuck at 24 pounds for the last few months, I would recommend decreasing his food slightly from 1/2 cup to a heaping 1/3 cup twice daily. The general goal with weight loss is to decrease the total calories by 10-20%, so hopefully that little change will be enough to get Prince to his goal weight. Good luck! I hope that was helpful. Thanks for using PetCoach.

Hi there and thanks for posting on Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. 7kg is 15.4lbs which is rather hefty for a 7 month old Shitzu. Typically, Shitzu's when they are adults should weight between 8-15lbs. The Happy Dog Grain Free Food is good, but I would feed less perhaps. If there is a guide on the package as to how much to give, I would advise on following their recommendations. At 7 months, she should be less than 15lbs. As always, nothing can beat a hands on veterinarian exam. If you are concerned about her weight, having a veterinarian take a look at Hazal and accurately assess based on her body condition score, if she is truly overweight or not. Sometimes it can be hard to say without an exam. I hope this helps and thanks for posting!

First, I think it is important to determine Malia's ideal weight for her size. If your vet says she is underweight, then you may need to make some changes. But if she a good weight at 32 pounds, then eating a couple cups of food a day should be adequate for her weight. My 30 pound dog only eats about 1 cup per day. Don't forget that it is much healthier for a dog to be a little lean. If Malia is underweight, then you may need to look at foods that are more dense in calories. You can consider some of the super premium foods like Natural Balance, Wellness Core or Orijen which tend to have more bio-available calories in each cup. You may also consider The Honest Kitchen which is a dehydrated food and dense in calories. https://www.thehonestkitchen.com/ Good luck! I hope that was helpful. Thanks for using PetCoach.

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!