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Every owner wants to maintain a dog’s health at the best level possible. However, just like us humans, dogs can become underweight due to some medical conditions or the circumstances around them. Helping your dog to gain back its healthy weight after an illness or surgery is important to prevent more health complications. However, this is never an easy task. Fortunately, there are many resourceful websites like https://www.authenticdogs.com/, which teaches you how to maintain the right weight for your dog.
Additionally, you can use a variety of dog foods and products to add weight on your dog in a safe way. In this post, we explore some of the recipes for dog weight gain.
How can you tell that your dog is underweight?
A healthy weight for your dog depends on several factors including the dog’s breed, age, and sex. If your dog is skinny in a way you can see its bones particularly the ribs from a distance, it is more likely that it is underweight. Another sign of an underweight dog is if you notice a hollow space between the ribs and the hips. However, you need to confirm this with your vet and probably understand the reason behind the excessive weight loss. Dogs may lose weight due to a range of issues including:
- Poor diet/ eating habit – If your dog is just a picky eater, it may become underweight.
- Sickness/ Illness – It could be an underlying health problem such as stomach upset, cancer, worms, diabetes and many others.
- Depression – Dogs may fail to eat properly after or during a stressful moment and this could lead to sudden weight loss.
Foods to Bulk up Your Underweight Dog
Dog foods have different nutrients composition, so it is important to understand and choose quality feed for your friend. Every meal you feed to your dog should provide sufficient calories and balanced portions of other important components.
Food with an adequate number of calories
Work with your vet to learn how healthy your dog should weigh and ensure what you are currently feeding can offer that. For instance, a dog weighing 90 to 100 pounds requires approximately 1500 to 2500 calories per day. For an underweight dog, you should consider:
- Puppy food or food made for an athletic or working dog, which offers a higher amount of calories.
- Feed a small number of canned foods that contain high-calorie supplements from pure meat sources.
- When buying manufactured feeds, confirm the calorie per cup content from the manufacturer.
- Ask the exact caloric intake per day for your dog from the vet.
- Replace the current diet with calorie dense foods if need be.
- Add an extra meal to your dog’s feeding schedule or add a small portion of food per meal.
Food with More Fat and Protein
- If you are feeding your dog with dry feed, ensure that it contains at least 20% fat and 30% proteins or 5% fat and 7% proteins for wet food.
- Include highly digestible and quality proteins in the food. A good practice is to go for brands with ingredients such as chicken, lamb or beef instead of too much carbohydrate.
- You can use homemade recipes with human foods such as tuna, chicken or beef but avoid elements that could harm the dog’s health.
Fill Dietary Gaps with Supplements
When losing weight, your dog could have lost other important nutrients like vitamins and minerals. Therefore, adding portions of vitamins, mineral supplements can help to fix any dietary gaps.
Extra Feeding Tips
Other feeding practices that can help your dog gain healthy weight include:
- Offering appetizers – Adding a bit of yogurt, tuna or egg to the kibble makes them yummier and so the dog will enjoy eating more.
- More wet foods – Moist food is more digestible which means that your dog will absorb much of the nutrients. Besides, they are more delicious so even for a picky eater, they are a great option.
- Small portions over frequent servings – Some owners confuse quality with quantity, you don’t need to overfeed your dog, but dividing the meals into small frequent servings may help your dog to consume more calories.
Conclusion
To help your dog gain weight in a healthy manner, you need to ensure that their food contains more calories, proteins, and fat. Additionally, you need to include the necessary supplements to bridge any dietary gaps as well as make its food yummier with appetizers. However, you need to work closely with your vet to learn the best food for your dog depending on its age, gender, breed, and lifestyle.
