The American Beagler Forum

ive got a dog ive had for 6-7 years now.. he has always been overweight.... ive cut his portions down to a cambells soup can of food a day for the past 2 years. i get him out and exercise them about 2 times a week and all day on mondays... ive never been able to shed any weight off him... is there something i can do or change to shave some of his weight off or is this just his makup???? i have a littermate to him and they look nothing alike.

im considering trying the raw diet on him to see if it will help him any at all? anyone have any ideas i can try?

Cut back on his Food...We Feed one cup to 1 1/2 cup a Day 3/4 cup in the AM and 3/4 cup in the pm to most of our Dogs..
We adjust the intake to each one as needed We have one that can just look at Food and gain Weight!!!!
to cut the weight on a dog you can use NO SALT GREEN BEANS just mix em with a 1/4 cup kibble twice a day until the weight goes down then adjust the food accordingly they seem to like the french cut the best!!!!

ill give the beans a shot...... ill try cutting his food back to 1/2 cup regardless being he is so big... the sooner i can shed it off him the better...

Just a shot in the dark, but have you ever had his thyroid checked? That could cause weight gain even though the dog isn't over eating & getting plenty of exercise ...

no i sure havent.... and infact i had never thought of it... im glad you posted that... if the feed adjustment doesnt do the trick, i will have him checked...

Buy a can of Potted meat. Feed him that, then use the can to feed him out of. My Dad's Ole Potted meat can diet has worked for him and me for years!!!!!!!! When he gets close to what you want him to weigh slowly up his feed in real small increments until he levels off. You already know a Campbells can is too much, so it will be somewhere in between.

We have a beagle with a weight problem also. When we got her two years ago she was an undernourished stray at 23 pounds. She gained a few pounds and was doing ok but, this past fall she blew out her knee and had ACL surgery which caused her to add a lot of weight rapidly to where she was 36+ pounds. We started her on a diet with Hills Science diet RD (restricted diet) and she's been losing weight pretty fast. She's on a trial weight program with the Hills company. We also give her frozen green beans for treats and limit her other snack intake also. We keep a pre-determined amount of small treats (4) available to her each day in a bag so when they bag's empty, she doesn't get anymore. She's down to 32 pounds in just one month. They figure it's going to take six months to get her back to her goal weight of 25lbs. The vet also mentioned if the diet didn't work, he was going to test her thyroid. He said he comes across a few beagles with screwed up thyroids and medication takes care of the problem. We also had another beagle that had seizures all the time and we originally had him on seizure medication, but after reading some info on the subject we had his thyroid tested and that turned out to be the problem, we stopped giving him the seizure meds and gave him thyroid meds and the problem went away. I guess it can affect a lot of things. Good luck, Tom.