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Am I starving my dog?!

moniechris

Well-known member
So last night after I fed Cody (usually half a cup of "Chicken Soup for the dog lover's soul" and a little bit of low sodium chicken broth), I sat down and read the back of the bag...To my surprise (actually, absolute shock) it reccomended that I feed a dog Cody's weight 2 1/2-3 1/2 cups a day!!! That seems like an awful lot of food...I have been only giving him about a cup and a half!!! Am I starving my poor dog?! He is huge (16.6 lbs at 4 months) so he is growing fine and is in no way skinny.
My feeding routine is as follows:

In the morning I give the boys a kong treat ball filled with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter or yogurt, an half a cup of kibble

At 4pm they get another 1/2 cup w/ chicken broth.

Then at 8pm they get another 1/2 cup.

Cody is such a pig that he will eat himself to death if I left the bag out, so I have been worried about him gaining too much weight. Am I feeding him enough?!!!
 
I don't think you're starving him - he is a good weight. A lot of these pet food companies recommend feeding more so that you'll buy more!

Joanna
 
I use the same Chicken Soup etc. dog food and I am feeding them less than what is on the bag.

Pippin is 3 years old, tall and weighs 27 pounds - I am trying to get him lighter - he is getting the start of a waist, but I want him a little lighter to help with his luxating patellas and his grade 1 heart murmur. He is getting 1/2 cup in the morning and 1/2 cup in the evening.

Luke is 4 years old, normal height and weighs 20 pounds - I am trying to get him a little lighter - he is getting 1/2 cup in the morning and 1/4 cup in the evening. When I got Luke 6 months ago he weighed 17 pounds and he looked very skinny, ribs and all. His hair was short., because it wasn't growing. He was a stud dog and 2 females were in heat so he wasn't eating. He was neutered this past May and the breeder said to give him 1 1/2 cups a day, but he went up to 21 pounds. I am now trying to get his waist back. His hair is now growing in and it is in the awkward phase where is sticks straight out on his back. He looks very funny.

Merry weighs 19 pounds and she is shorter than Luke. The vet said she could still lose a few pounds, so that her waist is more pronounced. She also was just diagnosed with luxating patella, so getting the weight off her bones will help. I changed her food intake from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup per morning, no dog food in the evening. She does get treats during the day & evening too.

Jolly will be 5 months old this week and he is eating 3/4 cup in the morning and 3/4 cup in the evening. I mix in a little canned Chicken Soup for the Puppy Lover's Soul dog food to get him to eat. Otherwise he doesn't concentrate on his food and doesn't eat hardly anything. He is still skinny and gets lots of treats for learning his commands.
 
I think it's widely accepted that manufacturers recommend too much food. Provided your dog is fit and healthy and has enough flesh to cover his/her ribs, so you can feel but not see them, the the amount they are getting is fine.
 
You might be surprised to hear this but Kosmo eats 1/2 cup of food per day!!!! He gets 1/4 in the morning which he rarely touches and then 1/4 in the evening.. :yikes He's thin but not too thin and the vet said he's growing perfectly. ;) I do give him little "substitutions" though.. like last night we had fajitas and he got a bit of lettuce, cheese, and a small piece of steak to go with his kibble. After he snarfed that down he just got plain kibble, but was OK with that.. ;) Cody sounds like he's gonna be pretty big! :flwr: All the more to love right? icon_whistling
 
arasara said:
You might be surprised to hear this but Kosmo eats 1/2 cup of food per day!!!! He gets 1/4 in the morning which he rarely touches and then 1/4 in the evening.. :yikes He's thin but not too thin and the vet said he's growing perfectly. ;) I do give him little "substitutions" though.. like last night we had fajitas and he got a bit of lettuce, cheese, and a small piece of steak to go with his kibble. After he snarfed that down he just got plain kibble, but was OK with that.. ;) Cody sounds like he's gonna be pretty big! :flwr: All the more to love right? icon_whistling

Everyone seems to feed more food than I do. All of mine normally eat beween 3/5ths up to 1 cup of food per day.
 
How much is a cup? I feed Merlin about 110 grams of complete per day. Oakley gets about 100 grams split into 3 of his puppy food
 
Thank goodness!! I was so worried!! I thought the bag was way off and I guess I am just a bit overly paranoid about their weight because of MVD. Both of them are super healthy now and I want it to stay that way!

merlinsmum: I don't know how to convert grams to cups...I think it depends on what you are measuring...I was curious and looked it up and I believe that 100g of dog food would be right around a cup...I think?

Yes arasara, Cody will be a big boy. lol He will most likey be around 22lbs, just like Wesley. They are a great size though and I wouldn't trade them for anything. (They think they are kittens though and climb all over me like they weigh 2 pounds instead of 20). They still have that cavalier lap dog mentality though they don't anywhere near fit in my lap!!! :roll: :D
 
Shelby gets 1/3 cup and Jake a scant 2/3 cup of Ca Natural. The also get an occasional biscuit and some veggies in the a.m. The bag recommends way more than feed either of mine. Shelby is a teeny bit chubby at 19 lbs and Jake is perfect at 24 lbs. Yep, I've got a couple of big ones!
 
Bentley (3yo) has just short of 1/2 cup in the morning and at dinnertime. He was 19lbs last time at the vet, and I think he could stand to lose a pound
Clancy (13wks) is eating 1/2 cup morning, noon, and dinnertime plus whatever treats he earns for good deeds done during the day.
I add a touch of pumpkin in the morning and a touch of nonfat plain yogurt at dinnertime. I also dust their food with a probiotic each time they eat.
They are both piggly-wiggly's and would eat however much I place in front of them!
I feed my Cavalier's Canidae and my other two eat Chicken Soup.
 
to know if you're feeding the right amount, since individuals vary in terms of activity, metabolism, bone size, age and other things, i think the waist is a good indicator of whether the weight is healthy because it shows the proportion of the fat to the body.

i've found it kind of hard to gauge as Zack's hair has grown out since his summer cut. He often looks thick in the middle to me. so i worry that he's putting on too much weight. I think he still has a waist, but it's borderline. He's not a thin dog. Vet says he's just right. He's neither a large nor a small cavalier and he weighs exactly 16 pounds. He's gained about 1 1/2 pounds in the past 5 weeks. I don't think he's eating more but i am watching it closely.

I give a half cup twice a day, plus a carrot stick, and when i'm focusing on training, he was getting tiny pieces of lamb lung fillet (merrick) but right now is getting tiny pieces of charley bears, amounting to about 5 to 8 charley bears a day. a charley bear is a small treat, and i give him about 1/3 of one at a time, sometimes less, sometimes more, just so he tastes it, he's happy with it.

His activity level is moderate at best. It was moderate to active but in the past month i stopped frequent trips to the dog park, which was where he was getting his good full out long runs. He just gets one on average 45 minute walk a day now. It will help when i bet a bike and can have him running every day.

Usually i throw away the kibble bags but yesterday i just got a new bag of Innova regular kibble, not Evo, and it has typical proportions of protein, fat and carbs that many kibbles have.

Looking at their recommendations on the bag, they go by weight of the dog by pounds, and by activity level which includes inactive, moderate, active, performance, and expressed in cups per day.

For a 10 pound inactive dog, they recommend .65 cups a day. For a 20 pound dog, they recommend 1.04 cups a day. So basically a half cup twice a day for an 18 to 20 pound inactive dog. Less for a smaller dog. For a moderately active dog, the numbers are 10 lb dog, .72 cups, 20 lb dog, 1.14 cups. For an active dog, a 10 lb dog should get .79 cups, a 20 lb dog, 1.26 cups. for a performance dog, 10 lbs, one cup a day, 20 lbs, 1 1/2 cups a day.

Even for an active dog, they only recommend 1.66 cups a day for a 30 pound dog. For a moderately active dog, they don't recommend over two cups for dogs under 45 pounds.

So that is a big difference from the Puppy Lovers Soul brand recommendations--maybe their proportions of fat and other ingredients are different, or calories.

The Innova regular is 14% crude fat, and 24% protein (minimums).

It says that the calorie content per cup is 557 calories. Actually it says Kcal. Don't know what the K means.
 
We feed anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 cup per day to our dogs, depending on who it is. I think I said it once before on here, but if we fed the amount recommended on the bag, we would have to stencil "Goodyear" on the sides of our dogs :lol:
 
Bruce H said:
We feed anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 cup per day to our dogs, depending on who it is. I think I said it once before on here, but if we fed the amount recommended on the bag, we would have to stencil "Goodyear" on the sides of our dogs :lol:
:rotfl:
 
Bruce H wrote:
We feed anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 cup per day to our dogs, depending on who it is. I think I said it once before on here, but if we fed the amount recommended on the bag, we would have to stencil "Goodyear" on the sides of our dogs

AHHH yes Bruce I will never forget that one!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

I am glad there are other people that only feed 1/2 cup like me. :) I choose to feed this much because it keeps him at a healthy weight and gives him a steady growth rate which I think is important. I still give him his treaties here and there, but he is also neutered so he can go with a bit less food :) [/quote]
 
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