You don’t want your dog to be skinny. A skinny dog doesn’t look good, less energetic, and might be a sign that the dog is sick or diseased. There are a few ways to help your dog gain weight. Replacing dry food to wet food, lots of treats, good physical activities, and even homemade food. It’s also a good idea to bring your to a vet, to make sure your dog isn’t sick or anything and if that’s the case you should follow the vet’s recommendations before getting to the food part. you may refer to this article if you’re taking care of a pup Helping A Malnourished Puppy to Gain Weight and also keeping your dog happy playing indoors
Here are 7 advice to treat your skinny dog and gain healthy weight
1. New feeding schedule
Dogs’ way to process food is different from human, but it’s similar at the same time. For example, it’s not recommended to eat before bed, as your body will store the nutrients as fat and make you gain weight. Using this knowledge, you can use it to your advantage when it comes to helping your dog gain some weight.
Usually dogs eat twice per day, if it’s the same way with your dog there is a trick that you can do. Give your dog a smaller portion in the morning and a larger portion at night. This way your dog will get fatter because all the food they consume before bed. And at the same time conserve more calorie from doing any activities during the day.
Another method to ration their meal throughout the day. Feed them a small portion of food but more frequently, this way you can spread their meal to 3 or 4 meals a day. The nutrients will be provided to your dog for the whole day and hopefully will help them gain weight. Reminder that don’t allow your dog to be active right after they finish. Wait a minimum of 30 minutes after eating before you let them exercise.
2. Food with high protein
it is known that food that contains high amount of protein or fat is very important. The nutrients in this kind of food play a big part in dog’s growth and development, especially for young dogs. These foods can be expensive but will be very worth it and your dog will thank you for that.
This method will increase your dog’s weight over period of time, it’s a common method to increase dogs’ weight. Keep feeding your dog with high protein food and you will notice that your dog is getting fatter and healthier preferably within a few weeks since started.
If you already found a higher protein percentage food you can start adding it right away to your old dog food. The formula is simple. Start with only 10% of new food and 90% of old food and increase the percentage of new food as you go along, eventually old food will not be needed anymore or already fully consumed. This usually take 10 -14 days and your dog may experience stomachache but this is normal and if you’re still worry you can bring them to the vet for more detailed information.
3. Pumpkin and Sweet Potato
Pumpkin and sweet potato are excellent food to help your dog gain weight. Using this method you can help your dog gain weight without adman protein to their diet, just add some pumpkin and sweet potato and you’re good to go. They boost fat and fiber and more kg for your dog, and the nutrient will also prevent them from getting stomachache. It’s preferable to buy canned sweet potato and pumpkin.
Reminder to read the instructions on the back of the packaging and observe your dog as you feed them sweet potato and pumpkin for the first time
4. Bring your dog to a vet
If you want to be safe about your weight, you can bring them to the vet to determine what the cause of your dog being underweight is. All kind of diseases can make your dog lose appetite and losing weight in result. Dangerous diseases such as cancer, lack of pancreatic enzyme, diarrhea, liver and colon problems can be deadly, and the sooner you take them to the vet the better. If it’s not diseases than you can relax a bit and stick to the methods listed in this article. read also how to Take Care a Pregnant dog. Since pregnancy can alter a dog’s weight.
5. Compare your dog’s weight to other dogs with the same type of breed
Different breed resulted in different physique. Just because your dog doesn’t meant they are underweight. There is a chance that your dog may not be underweight only other dogs are overweight. Another case is that your dog burn more calorie than what they are getting. At the back of dog food packaging look how much calorie for each meal is and then compare with the average weight of your dog’s breed. Some breeds are bigger than the other and the bigger they are the more food they need to balance the calorie intake, you can find all these information on the internet. The easier way to do this is to increase the portion by 25% of each meal.
6. Replace dry food with wet food and vice versa
Eating the same kind of food every day for a prolonged time can be boring and you must know that feeling. It’s the same with dogs, eating the same kind of dog can make them lose appetite and eat less. This is why changing wet food with dry food and vice versa once in a while is a good method to make them eat more. Keep in mind that canned food contains less calorie than dry food. For the same amount of food, wet food only contain ¼ amount of calorie compared to dry food. This is because 60-80% of wet food is water. That means just because your dog eat more wet food doesn’t mean they gain more calorie or even lose some.
To get rid of this problem, you use wet food as a temporary replacement for your dog. Once in a while you can serve your dog wet food instead of dry just for the sake of variety and see how your dog respond. If your dog get their appetite back after losing it from eating too much dry food then you’re doing the right thing.
7. Homemade food
Homemade food is another solution to give your dog more varied food to get their appetite back. One of the famous recipe is from Founder’s Veterinary Clinic of Brea. This recipe is created for dogs that weight at 10 kg and can be divided into 2 for 2 dogs weight in at 5kg each or you can double it for dogs that weight at 20kg. The recipe is consists of 100g of cooked skinless chicken meat, 1 cup of brown rice, 1 cup of peas and carrot, 1 table spoon of vegetable oil and ¼ teaspoon of salt. Mix them all and cook. read also caring puppy at home for beginners
With these easy 7 advice to treat your skinny dog and gain healthy weight, hopefully your dog can be more energetic and avoid losing weight.