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Can homemade dog food help my overweight pug lose weight safely?

Updated on September 23rd, 2025

Pet's info: Dog | Pug | Male | neutered | 8 years and 7 months old | 22 lbs

Thoughts on homemade dog food? My vet says my pug is 4lbs overweight. I take him on three 45-min walks a day, and feeding him 1 cup and 1/3 of limited ingredient commercial dog kibble. I've been watching this lady on YouTube who feeds her pug mush (chicken, veggies, and brown rice) and her pug looks amazing and even has muscle. I would love to have my pug look like that and was considering feeding him homemade food. Is feeding homemade as bad is it really is?

2 Answers

Most Helpful Answer

Answered By Lauren Jones VMD

Veterinarian

Published on May 29th, 2017

Feeding homemade diets can be perfectly fine as long as the diet is very carefully balanced with appropriate vitamin and mineral supplements. Dogs can develop a variety of conditions related to different nutritional deficiencies. If you are considering a home cooked diet for Cowboy, look into balanceit.com. This website has a number of different recipes created by boarded veterinary nutritionists and they also sell the necessary supplements for each recipe. They are based out of the UC-Davis Veterinary School, so it is a reputable source. :-) Keep walking Cowboy and monitor his portions closely. It may take time, but he should be down to a healthy well-muscled body condition before you know it!

1Pet Parents found this answer helpful

Related Answers from Veterinarians

Answered By Jennifer Summerfield, DVM CPDT-KA
Veterinarian, Certified Dog Trainer
No, there is nothing at all wrong with feeding a homemade diet - this can be a very healthy option for many dogs, especially if they have food sensitivities or other issues. The only tricky part is making sure that the diet is nutritionally balanced, which is more complicated than you might think!

If this is something you're interested in, I would strongly recommend doing a consultation with a veterinary nutritionist who can help you formulate a diet for Cowboy based on the ingredients you want to use, his current weight, etc. There are a number of nutrition services such as www.petdiets.com that can do this online, so I would encourage you to look at some of these options :)
1Pet Parents found this answer helpful

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If you are looking to formulate your own homemade diet, check out www.balanceit.com to create your own diet for weight loss. This website is easy to use and I send my clients to this site quite often if they want to make a homemade diet. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have. I am also available via consultation as sometimes it is much easier to talk over the phone about advice.

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