Why eating Dog treats is good for obese dogs

This is something that most dog food companies and many dogs treat companies would steer 180 degrees away from. Telling people that dogs can get fat !

In fact the sole purpose of dog food is being a profit centre and grain delivery system. You might think that its all about vets providing you with optimum health, but if that was true, your dog would only be eating meat. But there is a valid reason why obese dogs can benefit from healthy (low fat, long lasting) dog treats.

I write this article after returning from the vet who suggested that my dog should lose a  kilo or two.  He is a nine year old spoodle and this is the age when many dogs suffer arthritis and joint issues and excess weight only compounds this.

Now you might be thinking as a seller of the world’s best dog treats its inevitable that my dog would get fat. But the reality is that he has been the same weight for about five years,  21 Kg. And since he walks off lead twice a day mostly, he has adequate exercise. But yes, 1-2 Kg is his new year’s resolution, mine is greater.

The reason that my dog is larger than ideal is because his owner are weak, and we are feeding him too much ‘dog food’.  You see in an ideal world dogs catch and kill their own food, eat the whole animal and keep fit enough to catch more. They don’t laze about a home and get fed dog food that is created to bypass their regular stopping mechanism.  And in the next article I will explain what feeding too much dog food means in terms of a raw dog food diet … however this is about the 97% of you owners out there ..

Feeding your dog commercial ‘dog food’ and obesity

As most people don’t walk their dog regularly off lead for exercise and socialisation benefits it is often difficult for many dogs to keep the food in plus exercise equation balanced.

However if you do feed your dog pellets/ wet food, its simply a matter of reducing the cup size you serve.  Drop 10% and re-evaluate over a week if you dogs weight is going in the right direction. Drop more in the second week if you still don’t have the balance right and so on.

If it seems your dog is suffering too much, not losing weight or still gaining weight on very little food there could be a health issue like hypo-thyroid disease that a vet can detect. We are not vets. Check with your vet before going on any low energy diet.

HOWEVER,  once you have found the right amount of commercial ‘dog food’ you may find that your dog is scoffing it very fast, because the makers make it too easy to eat on purpose. And they also make a very unnatural recipe (baked, added sugar oil and salt) so that the food is just too Moorish and your dogs natural stopping mechanism doesn’t work.

That means if you have dropped your dogs food 20% already say, their brains and their stomachs are going to think they are nowhere near full, and they will keep ‘bothering’ you for a long time until you cave.

Your best solution is always adding a healthy MEAT based dog treat, that is long chewing. Even if its something like fish skins that have relatively low energy value … they will be much better off chewing this than inhaling more dog food pellets or chewing your furniture or rubber toys they might end up swallowing.

Just make sure for every gram of the ideal amount of dog treat you add, you take one gram of ‘dog food’ pellet.  For foods that have approximately the same fat content (and same type of fat) this approximation will not gain your dog weight, but will have them be a lot more satisfied.