Canine Nutrition - Body weight and feeding amounts

Feeding guidelines on dog food packaging are just that - guidelines. You need to adjust the daily amounts up or down, depending on the caloric requirements of the individual dog.

This is influenced by many different factors, age, body size/weight (the larger the dog, the less kcal per pound of body weight are needed to maintain weight), activity level, ambient temperature, metabolism and so on. Dog food manufacturers can really only take age, size/weight and, to an extent, estimated activity level into consideration for their feeding recommendations, since the other factors vary too much and most owners are too subjective when it comes to assessing them.

In this regard, even activity level is iffy - a rather sedentary person might think that their dog is "active" when all the exercise it gets are two quick walks around the block for going potty and some play time indoors, while someone else who owns a dog of the same breed/size takes it along as a jogging partner for several miles each day and then plays fetch with it in the back yard for another hour.

The ideal weight of a dog is assessed from the body condition. There are some charts out there, such as for example this and this, but going only by a visual aid isn't helpful enough for many people.

Here's an easy method that you can use to evaluate your dog's body condition:

Curl your left hand into a loose fist. Don't clench, just fold the fingers into your palm until they touch it. Run the fingertips of your right hand across the knuckles. If your dog's ribs feel like this, he is underweight and you should adjust the daily feeding amount upward.

Next, run your fingers across the back of your hand. If this is how it feels when you run your hand over your dog's rib cage, he is overweight and should lose a few pounds.

Now run your fingertips across the front of your fist, below the knuckles. This is how a dog's ribs feel if he is at ideal weight.

Of course results will vary a bit depending on how thick a dog's skin and coat are, but it's a good rule of thumb. Performance dogs with a high activity level often are even a bit thinner than what would be considered normal, but generally speaking it is healthier for a dog to be a bit underweight than a bit overweight.

Normally I would recommend that people talk to their vet about their dog's weight at the annual wellness exam, but going by what I see at local dog parks, it seems to be a sad trend that even many veterinarians aren't truthful about dogs' weights, either because they are somewhat overweight themselves and don't make an unbiased assessment; or because they don't want to offend the person and risk losing a client by telling them their little sweet pea is getting too many cookies and could stand to lose a few pounds.

I'd like to mention this link to the results of a study done by Cornell University:


If you have a dog who needs to lose weight, I'd suggest reducing the amount of food they get by about 15 to 20% as a first step. Don't just go by eye and scoop, weigh out the daily portion, since volume measurements can be deceiving. Keep a diary of your dog's weight and body condition and weigh weekly at the very least to track progress. You don't want your dog to drop a large amount of weight in a small time frame, slow and steady is much better.

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