Hey,
Happy Wednesday!
Earlier today I had an online health check. Part of it involved pricking my fingers and "milking" my blood into some vials. Yet this wasn't the most uncomfortable part of the
process.
The
worst bit was weighing myself.
I'm
usually an active person. I love to run and hike, and will play any sport you ask me to. But I had knee surgery three months ago, which made doing all this somewhere between impossible and tricky for several weeks.
Stupidly, I didn't balance out this inactivity with a reduction in food and booze, and so gained a lot of weight. I'd semi-ignored this obvious fact, but today I had to stare at the numbers and say them out loud to a stranger on a laptop screen.
Honestly, it gave me a jolt to take some action, but it also made me feel
pretty bad about myself.
Can you imagine if dogs could understand pounds and kilograms? The number of times I’ve taken my dog to the vet and they’ve said, right in front of him, “He needs to lose a few pounds,” or in the case of one particularly outspoken clinician, “He’s too fat.”
Luckily for dogs’ mental health, they
don’t have a concept of what their weight should be or what they should look like — they're happy being them.
However, weight is crucial to dogs’ physical health. It’s linked to everything from heart health and muscular conditions to
diabetes and skeletal issues.
In fact, a long-term peer-reviewed study found, on average, that a dog at its ideal weight will live almost two years longer than an overweight dog.
And while they don’t know this, we as dog parents do, so it's our responsibility to keep them in good shape.
But what weight should your dog be?
There are general guidelines for certain breeds but they’re incredibly vague — a bit like the Body Mass Index (BMI) for humans that only uses your height and weight, and totally ignores whether or not you’re built like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Dogs, like people, come in various shapes and sizes, even within breeds. So how
did that blunt vet know my dog needed to drop some weight?
Well, vets use a more detailed and vastly more accurate method called the Body Condition System (BCS). There are two systems: the U.S. one scores 1-9, the European one 1-5. Both work.
You can read about the BCS and see how the pros gauge your dog’s weight here. It’s something you can easily do at home.
Then you can take steps to get their weight ‘just
right’ — which, going by my dog's reaction to his reduced portions, aren't always easy.
Remember, we have plenty of Best Dog Food lists, which might help you find the right food for your dog. There are breed-specific lists, the Best Dog Foods for Weight Loss, the Best Dog Foods for Picky Eaters, and much more.
We’re trying to update these lists more frequently now so check them regularly. And please remember, if a dog food you use isn’t on a list, that doesn’t mean it’s no good — you can always search for its individual review.
I hope that helps. I’m off to try to reach my ideal weight…
