Greenbriar Animal Hospital

Your pet needs to lose weight. How can you tell? If you feel his chest, on the side, mid-way between top and bottom, you should be able to feel ribs easily. Oh dear. You can’t feel any ribs at all? Try our diet tips - your pet will be much healthier (overweight pets usually live 2 full years less than their thinner counterparts)! The more suggestions you try, the better this will work for you.

Major tips for putting your pet on a diet:

No matter how little he actually eats, your pet is eating too many calories and not getting enough exercise, or he wouldn’t be overweight. How do you get your pet to lose pounds? First, it is OK if your pet is occasionally hungry! Second, dry food and treats like biscuits, pupperoni, snausages, pig’s ears, etc. have LOTS of calories.

Buy a much smaller food bowl – ½ the size of the current one you use. It sounds silly but this can make a BIG difference for you and your pet!

Give ½ as much dry food. Start this now. Always measure dry food with a level measure (no heaps). Regular “diet” dry foods only have 3 to 4% fewer calories, so we recommend a switch to a prescription dry food like Purina DH which is very good for teeth and gums, and happens to be low calorie, too. Or consider trying the pre-packaged Hill’s Diet program for dogs – you get pre-measured food packets and treats, and an amount to follow. Ask us for a cat food or dog food measuring cup – they are free to our clients!

For dogs, replace 1/2 of the dry food you’ve removed with low-cal vegetables (carrots, green beans, cucumber, lettuce, broccoli, etc.). No green peas, corn, lima beans, or onions. Feed veggies raw, cooked, canned (low sodium), or frozen and gently nuked in the microwave. Or try rice cakes (the human kind). One large rice cake replaces 1 level cup of dry food (avoid popcorn cakes as they have more calories). Or use Puffed Wheat cereal – 1 level cup replaces one level cup of dry dog food.

To get your pet off to a great start on their diet, feed only wet food for one month. It has less than 1/3 the calories of dry food. Ask us how much to feed! Do the switch gradually – see our handout on switching foods. For cats, make sure your cat will eat wet food and that it agrees with him – cats will make themselves sick refusing food they don’t like. A low-carb food like Prescription DM works great for cats – it’s the Catkins’ diet!

For dogs, cut out high calorie treats, especially the fatty ones like pig’s ears, Snausages, cheese, hot dogs, Beggin strips. NONE of these. Use puffed wheat cereal (¼ cup per day for a 20# dog). Or puppy-size milkbone type treats, rice cakes, or baby carrots!

Miscellaneous helpful things to know about putting your pet on a diet:

Monitor your pet’s progress with weekly body measurements with a cloth tape measure (we can show you how and where). You are also welcome to bring your pet to the hospital anytime during open hours for a simple weight check (weekly for dogs, monthly for cats). If you don’t track the weight loss, it can be weight gain instead! Don’t decrease the number of snacks/treats your pet gets. Decrease the size of the treat and the calories. If he gets a Snausage when he wakes up, give him a ½ of a puppy milkbone instead. Go for smaller pieces and less calories, but don’t eliminate treats altogether. For cats, Greenies are a great low-calorie treat (good for teeth and gums, too). Dr. Olson’s dog Madison gets one piece of her DH dry food as her “treat”, and she loves it!

Increase the amount of exercise if you possibly can – walking is great for your dog’s physical and mental health – it is more than exercise, it is entertainment and stimulation! Dogs behave much better, have fewer mobility problems, and are less anxious/nervous with regular exercise. See our handouts on “Exercise and Your Dog”, and on “Exercising Cats”.Yes, you really can do a few simple things around the house to get your cat to exercise (all by themselves – you don’t have to be a Richard Simmons for your cat)! If you have a fat cat and a skinny cat, and you can’t separate the two for meals, consider adding a special ‘cat door’ to one of your room doors – the kind that will only open to the cat wearing the special collar. Then put the special collar on the skinny cat and give them 24/7 access to the food bowls while the fat cat gets rationed.