Weigh and size of Cavaliers

Hello. I thought I should check with members here regarding healthy weight (and size) of Cavaliers, as I wonder sometimes if our Chloe needs to be fed more. Chloe is now 11 months old, and weighs 5.5 kg, about 40 cm from neck to the beginning of her tail. Her weight increases regularly until about two months ago when the increase has been slight. Our vet says she is healthy and normal, albeit petite as some dogs are, and she has always been healthy and active. We go for walks almost every day, about 500 metres at least daily and more during the weekends. Chloe is more of a grazer and would leave her food until she feels hungry, well at least that's what we think of her eating habit. Could also be that she learn from our 8-yr old cat who has always been a grazer all her life? She is on RAW diet (minced hare mix, chicken necks and green tripes) from a local company called rawessentials. I thought I should ask most of cavaliers we seen are larger in size. Any thoughts are much appreciated. Thanks :lol:

It really varies greatly. I've seen cavaliers anywhere between 10lbs-30lbs (4.5-13.6kg, Sorry im in the US and am used to pounds lol). I believe the AKC's breed standard is listed at 13-18lbs (5.9-8.18kg). Your's sounds perfectly fine to me. My cavalier is 2 1/2 years old and weighs what yours does now. She stayed at 10lbs for ages, and filled out a bit this past year and put on 2lbs. They come in many diff sizes

Weird! I had this same question this past weekend. But Toby is only 20 weeks old. I wanted to make sure he is ok for his age. Toby currently is 12 lbs even. I have been advised that he seems normal and Cavaliers can range in sizes and weight. Some smaller, some bigger.
Becky

Thanks Erin! Comforting to know that she is perfectly normal by comparison to others. Chloe says hi btw giving me her "are we going for a walkie soon?".

A few comments– at 20 weeks, 12 pounds in weight would indicate you're going to end up with a larger cavalier, most likely up over the 20 pound range, but that is actually a quite common weight even for show males–increasingly, breeders do not seem to be using really small male studs and most of the studs I have met are in the 20-23-ish pound range, I would guess. My Leo is only about 16 pounds at most and I have had a couple of breeders comment that they would never breed a male that small.

Breed standard in the UK is 12 to 18 pounds, and in the US is 13 to 18 pounds, so a dog at the bottom end of that scale would not be considered unusually small or petite, just at one completely normal end of the breed standard. 5.5 kg should be within breed standard and not undersized. But she will very likely put on another pound or 2 anyway before she reaches her a full adult weight.

There can be health reasons for why dogs are small, so it is a good idea just to keep an extra eye on things When people do have a below breed standard sized dog. For most dogs, as long as they weren't from breeders who are deliberately trying to breed smaller Cavaliers (in which case they often are breeding runts of the litter and therefore are just asking to introduce unwanted health problems), being at the lower end of the breed standard or even a pound or 2 below that is really no big deal, just as it's not really any big deal if they are a few pounds over. All things considered, it is less potentially compromising to health for a dog to be larger rather than smaller because dogs do not tend to end up larger in the breed due to health reasons, but that can definitely be part of why they are smaller, especially if they are particularly small. A good breeder will not re-home a runt until they have kept an eye on it for a while to make sure it is beginning to develop normally and put on weight, and that skull plates close, etc.

Overall, I wouldn't really worry about a dog hovering around the bottom end of the breed standard, where the vet is not seeing any issues!

This, however, would potentially raise a question:

Chloe is more of a grazer and would leave her food until she feels hungry, well at least that's what we think of her eating habit. Could also be that she learn from our 8-yr old cat who has always been a grazer all her life? She is on RAW diet (minced hare mix, chicken necks and green tripes) from a local company called rawessentials.

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It would really not be a good idea to leave raw food down for a dog that doesn't eat all of its food at one time. It is just not hygienic and potentially, could make a dog very ill if raw food is left out sitting for whenever the dog feels like eating it. A lot of this kind of finicky eating can be resolved by simply giving the dog 10 or 15 min. to eat and then lifting the food until the next scheduled feeding time, and not making any fuss at all about mealtimes. If a dog knows the food isn't going to be hanging around, it tends to focus the mind (as does adding another dog–there aren't many dogs that ignore their food when they know there's competition! :lol.

Hi Karlin - thanks for the advice. I'll make sure that we put the food back in the fridge then after 10 - 15 mins. We have on a few occasions saw that she ate very little of the food after 20 mins or so, we then left the food where it was, about 8 am, and by 1 pm we saw the food's gone - so we could not tell at what time she went to finish the lot. I better not let my wife read your answer, as she'd say "ah, problem solved, we'll just get another cavalier!!!! so that Chloe finishes her food on time every time". I loveeeee the thought of giving Chloe a bit of competition, food wise but we are just not at a stage where we could do justice to another Cavalier. A good friend asked if we would like to adopt a very sweet and gentle long-haired Chihuahua a few months ago, and at times we thought we should have adopted her. I guess we don't feel that bad because we know our friend would only give Lily the Chi to people who could love and take care of her better than we could. Still, there's a pang of regret from time to time!

Thank you Karlin for explaining. I was figuring he would be larger but not more than 20. I don't mind if he's larger though, my husband would love it..huskier dog:lol:
Becky

There are several in here with smaller Cavaliers. My Claire is 11.5 lbs last at Vet, though I suspect it might be closer to 12 since then as she appears to have filled out a bit. But she is smaller boned and the Vet has assured us she is perfect for her bone structure.

There are several here with smaller dogs, like Erin's Polly, Anne's Elton and Debra's Gracie to name a few.

My Claire doesn't leave a crumb when fed her morning or evening meal......so that part of your dilemma is foreign to me, lol!

In general if you Cavalier is at a correct weight for it's size/build, you should be able to feel its ribs, and be able to see a definite waist. You'd expect a puppy to be a little roly poly, thinning out as it grows up. I use this as a check rather than rely on actual weight, because they can vary so much depending on their build - as you can see from previous posts the breed standards allow for a fairly wide weight range.

Laura Lang has a page on her web site which discusses feeding your Cavalier. About halfway down she has a very good section on how to check whether it's weight is acceptable. She describes how to do a "rib test", and shows three photos of Cavaliers from above so that you get an idea of what sort of shape you should expect to see at an "ideal" weight. It's worth having a read!

HTH, Rosemary

Karlin and Rosemary give very good advice here, and Laura Lang's page is excellent - as is the rest of her website


These are the photos from Laura's site



1


This Cavalier is on the thin side which is much better for them




2



3





The arrows are pointing at the waist of each dog. Dog #1 in in pretty good weight. #2 is a bit heavier and lacking some waist, this Cavalier is carrying the maximum amount of weight you would want them to carry. Dog #3 is definitely much heavier. The dog has no noticeable waist as you can see and needs to lose several pounds.

If you think your dog is not overweight, it's just "pouffy" [fluffy] coat, then give them a bath, and take a photograph from above. Compare it with the dogs above.



It's a good idea to do this on a regular basis, also to weigh them and record that once a month - it's surprising how quickly weight can creep on - and like us, it's harder to lose it than prevent it going on in the first place!!

Great read. This helps a lot.

Becky

Sonny was 7.9 pounds at 10 weeks. We go to the vet again next Monday. I am excited to see how much he has grown! Sonny was the largest in his litter, so we were expecting him to be on the larger side. I read somewhere on this site that you could predict your dogs weight by doubling their weight at 14-15 weeks for a female and 16-17 weeks for a male. I keep thinking about that post and get excited to see what Sonny will be at 16 weeks! I know it isn't an exact predictor, but it is fun to get some sort of an idea.

Yes that can give a good indicator - size compared to the rest of the litter surprisingly does not indicate eventual size.

The prediction advice is also from Ohio breeder Laura Lang (the breeder who has given us permission to use those pics of waists ).

Her full post is worth reading as it IS hard to predict size -- there are many variables. A large puppy might end up[ an average size for example -- much depends on size of litter, how the dog develops and when its main growth spurts come etc. For me, Laura's advice was correct for Jaspar (the only one of my gang I have had from a small puppy).