I am no stranger to diets, having lost basically the same pounds on a number of occasions until finally, Jenny Craig fixed me.
But I have to confess to feeling baffled when I realized something needed to be done for my 6-year-old Australian shepherd, Ronnie. Those of you who know Aussies know that they are usually moving most of the time, and so weight is not a problem. Unfortunately, during all the moving, Ronnie managed to hurt one of her back legs pretty badly. Our vet does not think she is a good candidate for surgery, so we just needed to wait it out. That meant vastly reducing her activity.
Reduced activity and eating the same amount of food is a prescription for chubbiness for dogs and people alike. After six months of being a couch potato, Ronnie is now to the point where she can take one fairly short (about half mile) walk each day (compared to her previous three-a-days of longer walks–about 4 miles total). But she’s still about ten pounds heavier than she needs to be. Frankly, without the vet weighing her, I couldn’t tell. She’s so furry. But you’re supposed to see an hourglass shape from above and be able to feel ribs on the sides without pushing. According to the standard rating scale, Ronnie was a 7 and was supposed to be a 5.
I wasn’t too alarmed about this initially, figuring her weight would drop as her leg healed, but then she started breathing rapidly most of the time, even during sleep. My reading suggests this is not a good thing. Obviously, extra weight was not going to help her leg recover either, or it might lead to further injuries.
So what to do? First, I was told one needs to figure out how many calories she needs. That seems to be somewhere between 800 and 1000 per day, depending on the formula you use. Then I needed to figure out what she was currently taking in. A dog that is a picky eater is a bit of an anomaly, but we have that dog. She’ll pick at her kibble (which we free feed). We give her a baked chicken thigh each day which she leaves sitting around before she finally decides to eat it. But then there are the Large Milkbone Dog Biscuits, at a whopping 125 calories apiece. I have boxes of these things delivered regularly from PetSmart. Oops. These are basically the only treats Ronnie will eat. And she’ll pretty much eat as many as you give her, which was often enough to go over her calorie limit without any other food. So limiting cookies seemed like the most likely strategy.
We continued to free feed the kibble, which she continues to ignore for the most part, plus the chicken, but we’re cutting Ronnie back to one cookie per day before bedtime. We’re not too worried that she’ll starve, because she has the kibble as a backup. Aussies are so smart that we had to redo our cookie storage, as she managed to help herself to a few and bury them in our blankets when we weren’t looking. She isn’t happy with us right now–one daughter commented on a photo that Ronnie looks “hangry”– but she’s quickly getting her little hourglass figure back. Her breathing is much better, too. I’d say she’s down to a 6 on the chubby doggy scale now.
So we plan to continue what we’re doing, and hopefully, Ronnie will have dodged one of the bullets that can easily shorten a dog’s life and threaten well-being.
