# Annoying food question



## Jchrest (Jun 5, 2019)

Lyka is 9, and she got fat. Like 15-20lbs over her normal weight fat. We tried cutting down portion size (still within recommended portion size) switching to a few different “diet” foods, and none really helped at all. We made the switch to Victor’s senior healthy weight, and she is finally starting to drop the LBS. But her coat looks and feels like crap. She is blowing her coat right now, so that may be why, but all the dogs coats went to crap with the switch. Plus super sized turds. So the question is, keep her on Victor and supplement for coat health, or take the poor coat and large stools as it not being the best food for her? The weight is obviously more concerning than her coat and stools, but which is the lessor of the two evils here?


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## Chuck94! (Feb 8, 2018)

give her some eggs


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## Orphan Heidi (Sep 21, 2018)

Jchrest said:


> Lyka is 9, and she got fat. Like 15-20lbs over her normal weight fat. We tried cutting down portion size (still within recommended portion size) switching to a few different “diet” foods, and none really helped at all. We made the switch to Victor’s senior healthy weight, and she is finally starting to drop the LBS. But her coat looks and feels like crap. She is blowing her coat right now, so that may be why, but all the dogs coats went to crap with the switch. Plus super sized turds. So the question is, keep her on Victor and supplement for coat health, or take the poor coat and large stools as it not being the best food for her? The weight is obviously more concerning than her coat and stools, but which is the lessor of the two evils here?


Raw eggs, ground flax, Vit A, Vit E, and a good multi-vit would probably help. Fats and oils usually
boost the hair but can also cause weight gain.


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## David Winners (Apr 30, 2012)

There are 2 things that come to mind. The first is that, as long as you are feeding a balanced diet, the weight of the dog is just a simple math problem. Calories expelled must be more then calories taken in to lose weight. The "recommended serving" on the side of the bag is written by the manufacturer, who benefits greatly if everyone overfeeds by just 1%. If the dog is overweight, just stick to the original food, where she was thriving and looked healthy.

Disclaimer: I have not reviewed the ingredients in either dog food.

Large turds leads me to believe that there is a filler in there. Something that is satisfying the hunger of the dog but is passing right through and not being digested. I guess this can be helpful but isn't the way I would choose to do things. If you agree with this line of thinking, you could go back to the original food, lower the serving sizes and supplement with your own known filler, like no sodium green beans or something. Another supplement idea is to stay on the Victor and supplement with healthy fats to see if their coats come back in line. Something like ShempOil, virgin cold pressed coconut oil, herring oil, do your own research here as opinions vary.

If it were me, I would just go back to the food you were using and lower the daily amount based on the condition of the dog and not the writing on the side of the bag. As an anecdotal example, I have 2 Cane Corso dogs. They are similar in size, with the older being about 10 pounds lighter than the younger. They are both adults and are mostly done growing. The 3 year old will still get some shoulders, but he's just about done. 

The younger gets 2.5 times the daily allowance as the older. On kibble, they eat 6 - 6-1/2 c. and 2-1/2 c respectively. They are in similar condition with the back rib showing and a defined waist when viewed from the top and side.

The change in diet should not be super drastic. Just back off a little bit at a time, say no more than 10% per week, and see what happens.


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## Jchrest (Jun 5, 2019)

Chuck94! said:


> give her some eggs


She won’t eat raw eggs. She loves boiled eggs, but only the yolk, she picks around and spits out the egg whites, so I’m not sure if eggs are the best thing when trying to get her weight down. Yolks are super fatty, aren’t they?


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## Chuck94! (Feb 8, 2018)

Jchrest said:


> She won’t eat raw eggs. She loves boiled eggs, but only the yolk, she picks around and spits out the egg whites, so I’m not sure if eggs are the best thing when trying to get her weight down. Yolks are super fatty, aren’t they?


Like David said, calorie control is how dogs (and people) lose weight. Yes egg yolks are a great source of healthy fat. If your dog is burning more calories than they eat, they will lose weight.


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## Jchrest (Jun 5, 2019)

David Winners said:


> There are 2 things that come to mind. The first is that, as long as you are feeding a balanced diet, the weight of the dog is just a simple math problem. Calories expelled must be more then calories taken in to lose weight. The "recommended serving" on the side of the bag is written by the manufacturer, who benefits greatly if everyone overfeeds by just 1%. If the dog is overweight, just stick to the original food, where she was thriving and looked healthy.
> 
> Disclaimer: I have not reviewed the ingredients in either dog food.
> 
> ...


This is super helpful, thanks David! We had already decided to switch the other 2 back to Fromm, but wasn’t quite sure if I should switch Lyka back or not. The switch was made based on ease for me, instead of having 3 different dog food bags (adult, puppy, senior), I would only have 2 since Victor was formulated for both adult and pups, but it just isn’t working for us. I have to blend Seiran’s food anyway, and she hasn’t been switched because of her health issues, so it was making things more difficult, plus the super sized stools and increased frequency was causing more work clean up wise as well. I was just concerned about her not getting enough nutrients. On Fromm, we were down to 2 cups a day, which was lower than the recommended daily feeding.


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## LuvShepherds (May 27, 2012)

I have always kept all my dogs on the same food because it’s more cost effective and I don’t want to store all that different food in my kitchen. Then one dog got sick and had to be on a different food. So I switched them both and the second one got terrible allergies. Now they are both on different food for health reasons and so far, are both healthy, so it was worth switching. I had my older one on grain free for years because that is what my previous dog needed and I think I created the condition that set her up to develop IBS. Now she needs a grain free diet, which in itself might cause other problems. I had to weight the pros and cons. She’s on Honest Kitchen and partial raw because that is what works best for her, not because I think it’s better than all raw or anything else. It costs more than Fromm but a lot less than 6 vet visits a year did plus all that testing.


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## David Winners (Apr 30, 2012)

Another thing that could be helpful is upping exercise by a little bit. I know you aren't in a position to go play 2 ball for an hour, but there are used treadmills available for cheap all the time. Treadmill training is usually fairly simple and doesn't take long. 20 minutes a day at 4-5 miles an hour will burn some calories for sure.

If you decide to go this route and need help with treadmill training, let me know and I'll dig up some old posts I made on how I train dogs to run on a treadmill.


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## Jchrest (Jun 5, 2019)

David Winners said:


> Another thing that could be helpful is upping exercise by a little bit. I know you aren't in a position to go play 2 ball for an hour, but there are used treadmills available for cheap all the time. Treadmill training is usually fairly simple and doesn't take long. 20 minutes a day at 4-5 miles an hour will burn some calories for sure.
> 
> If you decide to go this route and need help with treadmill training, let me know and I'll dig up some old posts I made on how I train dogs to run on a treadmill.


This could actually work. She doesn’t play with any toys at all, never got into them and trying to engage her with toys just shut her down, but with the Adquin (sp?) injections, she is much more active, so a treadmill may be just the thing for us!


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## David Winners (Apr 30, 2012)

Jchrest said:


> This could actually work. She doesn’t play with any toys at all, never got into them and trying to engage her with toys just shut her down, but with the Adquin (sp?) injections, she is much more active, so a treadmill may be just the thing for us!


If you are lowering her food intake at the same time, food training could be just the ticket for making the treadmill totally awesome to her as well.


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