# dog not losing weight on raw and on less than recommended food amount



## larrieuxa (Feb 6, 2015)

Bentley is just a year old (born april 2014) and chunky. one of the reasons i put him on raw back in may was because its supposed to slim dogs down, but it hasn't had any noticeable effect on him so far and its been a few months. he is a lab retriever and 106 pounds. the vet wants him down to 90. i already feed him less than the 2-3% of ideal body weight, usually its around 1 to 1.5% that i give him. i walk him every day, and he is at the dog park most days as well for 45 minutes to an hour. he is not an energetic dog at all, even as a puppy he received frequent comments about his mellowness. a few times a week his youth will show when he gets excited about meeting a new person or dog, but most of the time people think he is a much older dog because of how he acts. his temperament is just amazing but these days i am often wishing i had a more energetic dog because then i wouldn't be having such difficulty keeping his weight down! recently some stranger at the dog park even approached me out of nowhere and got angry at me because Bentley is chubby and i wouldn't put him on kibble and cut his food intake by 50%. he didn't even know what raw is, when i said Bentley eats raw he thought i was talking about wet canned food, and when i told him what it was he got even more mad that i wouldn't put him on a pet food brand to get his weight under control. when i said i would never be switching him off raw, he got disgusted with me and walked away. well there is no way i am going to switch him to kibble and cut his food by 50% when he is already eating 25% less than the recommendations. his primary food is chicken (legs quarters and thighs usually), turkey legs and wings, pork rib bones, ground beef, canned tuna and salmon, and beef liver. he doesn't get much organ meat right now because i have had a hard time finding any in my small town. the chicken hearts and gizzards i was giving him for organs are apparently muscle from what i've recently discovered. what can i do to get him to lose some weight? i don't know how much less food he can eat without just starving him. is it safe to just give him poultry for a few months to keep his diet leaner? i am also thinking of feeding him maybe .75 - 1% meat and then another .5% vegetables from my garden as filler. he likes vegetables a lot but i stopped giving them to him when i stopped homecooking and started feeding him raw and now everyday he is out in my yard eating grass or plant leaves.

this is a picture i took of him from the side yesterday so you can see where he is at with his weight: http://i.imgur.com/Xj0ZFN1.jpg


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## naturalfeddogs (Jan 6, 2011)

Did the vet do blood work to rule out any health related issues?

You could feed chicken, turkey and weekly liver for probably a month at the most with nothing else, but I wouldn't go any longer than that. Also, you could trim the fat off of the fattier cuts of pork and beef.


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## Dude and Bucks Mamma (May 14, 2011)

Oh, my! He is a looker! When you finally get his weight where it should be I think we will need another picture because I think he will make a very handsome dog!

Honestly, I would be looking past diet and asking my vet if there could be some underlying cause. My grandparents' late Doberman, Xena, (who I consider as one of my own since I lived there for much of her life) was fed little food and supplemented her own diet with critters she caught on their ten acres. She was built like a barrel and it was incredible to see that Miss Hefty could launch herself up in the air to successfully catch birds that had taken flight. So, in a way, she was partly a raw fed dog too. However, thyroid issues are common in Dobermans and I am convinced that she suffered from hypothyroidism. She was never checked for it and otherwise lived the normal lifespan for a Dobe, but I would be willing to place money that she had a thyroid issue. 

If you know for a fact that he is full Labrador, look up the common medical issues for the breed. Labs are not the healthiest of breeds so it's something you should really familiarize yourself with anyhow. If he is a mix, look up the health issues for the breeds you think he may have in him. Discuss these with your vet and see if there is anything that hasn't been checked for that could contribute to his weight and lack of energy. 

You might just have a mellow, laid back dog (I just lost my naturally mellow guy a couple of months ago) or you could have an energetic dog waiting to be unleashed once the health issue is resolved. If it truly is just a struggle with weight loss (something my dogs know nothing about, but I know FAR too much about myself!) then perhaps a good canine nutritionist familiar with raw is the answer.

Whatever it is, I wish you luck. People are far too nosy when it comes to other people's dogs. Even my guys with their healthy, muscular svelte bodies draw "your dog's are too thin!" comments all the time. A Petsmart "trainer" even told me my Coonhound was wormy! He had dropped some weight due to his nervousness about our move, but he was still at a healthy weight for his body and was absolutely NOT wormy. No matter what I told her, in her mind, my dog was wormy and she knew better than the dog's owner because she is a trainer who has never before laid eyes on the dog.


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## gsantiago14 (Aug 13, 2015)

Hey!!
He is beautiful!!
Some things I can recommend is cutting the fat of the protein or instead of feeding the chicken quarters, I would do chicken breast. My girl was on the chubby side, but she is very energetic. When I changed her to raw and a combination of Daycare, she dropped a lot of pounds. Now its kind of hard to gain weight on her. I fed her turkey breast and some veggies. Also, supplements helped a lot. I use the supplements from Doctor Dobias. He has multivitamins, probiotics, and mineral supplements. See if adding this to the raw food will help. in my opinion, I would not cut more food, I will keep the same amount and make some protein selection that is leaner. I was giving 90% lean and 10% fat ground beef instead of the 80% 20%. Now, I buy the 80/20 because of soo much exercise she does at the daycare.
Also, raw feeding Miami sells all kinds of organs and meats and they ship nationwide. There is a shipping flax rate but it will help on getting the organs on his diet. They also sell supplements. They can also create a plan for you. 
Hopefully this helps!!!


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## DutchedForTheVeryFirstTim (Jul 26, 2015)

You might also ask your vet about Cushings. I think it's pretty prevalent in labs and his coat has that look. Hopefully he's just an air fern lab


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## MollyWoppy (Mar 19, 2010)

Personally, I wouldn't cut back toooo much on the fat, dogs definitely need fat in their diet. My girl is getting okder now and has got a little chunky over summer as I can't exercise her as much due to the heat. And, the husband was giving her too many treats. So she is down to 1.5% of her weight. I feed a few of her meals frozen now, so it takes longer to eat. And, I've upped her exercise again. If she doesn't lose a little weight in a couple of weeks, i'll cut her food down even more and get her swimming a lot more.


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## Dude and Bucks Mamma (May 14, 2011)

DutchedForTheVeryFirstTim said:


> You might also ask your vet about Cushings. I think it's pretty prevalent in labs and his coat has that look. Hopefully he's just an air fern lab


I didn't even think of Cushings. The coat was throwing me off too which is why I suggested looking into the health issues of suspected breeds in his makeup if he was a mix, yet his head is just SOOO Labrador that I was doubting the mix. I have only ever met one animal with Cushings (a pony I knew many years ago) so it just never crosses my mind until someone else says it. Definitely something I would look into with this dog just to be safe.



MollyWoppy said:


> Personally, I wouldn't cut back toooo much on the fat, dogs definitely need fat in their diet. My girl is getting okder now and has got a little chunky over summer as I can't exercise her as much due to the heat. And, the husband was giving her too many treats. So she is down to 1.5% of her weight. I feed a few of her meals frozen now, so it takes longer to eat. And, I've upped her exercise again. If she doesn't lose a little weight in a couple of weeks, i'll cut her food down even more and get her swimming a lot more.


I agree. Dogs definitely need fat. Too little fat can cause just as many issues as too much fat. We went through a time in my early raw feeding days where Buck wasn't getting enough fat due to most of his meals consisting of beef heart trimmed of fat for human consumption. Never even occurred to me how lean the hearts were. So we got our hands on some nice, pure, grass fed Scottish Highland fat (a TON of it!) and we still have some even these years later that we use to ad to lean meals. You can feed leaner meats, but don't cut out all of the fat because dogs DO need that in their diet.


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## larrieuxa (Feb 6, 2015)

well i haven't had much success getting him to go down but he hasn't gone up either. here are some more recent pics of him: pic 1 . i find that side pictures don't really portray his weight that well, his extra weight is more visible from certain angles like this one here: pic 2 .

i was really counting on the cooler weather giving him more energy after summer + frequent trips to the dog park to start slimming him down, however right after i made the original post there was an incident between two other dogs at the park that gave him a big scare and he started being very snappy and unfriendly to certain dogs he felt threatened by and i had to stop taking him. that behaviour is now disappearing and he has gotten his confidence back so i have been starting to take him again, but now that it gets dark so early nobody is ever there after work at the time i am able to be there. sigh. i have been working very hard at fetch and he is more interested in it than before but he still loses interest after just 4-5 throws and wants to go back to sniffing the grass. some days are better than others - one day i counted 9 then he would do, and then today he blew me off after just two throws.

after talking to my vet we decided that the beef soup bones i have been giving him fairly often are probably a big contributor to his weight as they are apparently quite fatty. i have been taking them out of his diet and looking for other solutions for chew bones. i gave Bentley rawhide bones all the time as a puppy to keep him occupied and non-destructive, and as a result he was always very satisfied and we never had any problems with him chewing up any of our things like labs are notorious for. i think the only thing of ours he ever chewed was a small piece of wood on our dining room chair. but because he got very expectant of having something new to chew most nights he gets annoying if he doesn't get it on time so i never broke the habit even after he stopped being a puppy. and also i preferred to have him chew on something anyway because otherwise he would just go to boredom sleep and i want him awake as much as possible during the day and not just lazily snoozing all the time. so when i started reading about how rawhide is not good for dogs, thats when i started looking around for something else for him and eventually i switched him to the beef soup bones. but the good news is, this time as i was looking around for yet another supply of things i can give him as chew items, i found a raw food vendor nearby. and their prices are suuuuuper cheap. they sell a 1 pound bricks of raw mix that thaw into this stewy kind of thing, and its just 72 cents a pound! and thats canadian too. big savings. what i have started doing now is partially thawing the bricks and using them to fill Bentley's kong and the marrow holes of his already used soup bones and then freezing them and using those as his chew items. the only thing is, whereas a rawhide bone or a soup bones would keep him easily busy for an hour and a half working on them, he finds his kong and the marrow bones filled with the premade raw much less challenging to suck out, and he needs a kong and 2-3 marrow bones to keep him busy for the same hour and a half. its okay because i am just using them from his daily food ration, but its annoying to make and freeze that many every day! so i am really hoping that the soup bones being out of his diet is going to make a big change in his weight, hopefully quickly.

i did look into cushings but i didn't think any of the symptoms listed fit him very well except just being overweight. what do you think about his coat looks like cushings? the list i read said hair loss was common, but i actually think his coat is very thick.


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## xellil (Apr 4, 2011)

I got a Doberman who was about 25 pounds overweight. He had a kind of hidden thyroid condition I guess, it didn't turn up on the standard test but it did on the more extensive test. So he went on thyroid meds but honestly it was about two years before he got down to his goal weight of 90 pounds. He just lost weight very slowly. So you might consider testing for thyroid as being stubbornly overweight is a symptom.

I normally fed my dog somewhere between 1 - 1.5 pounds of food a day which is somewhere between 1-1.6%. 

I wouldn't reduce fat. Can you do two Kongs? i wonder if there's something you could put in them that's more of a challenge. Count any bones you give him as part of his daily allowance. 

Do you have a local place where you could teach him agility? Maybe he's that rare Labrador who isn't interested in fetching. Or a place to swim? Maybe he likes to swim.


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## xellil (Apr 4, 2011)

Oh, and I have never heard of raw food thawing out into a soupy mix. You want want to find out exactly what's in there.


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## larrieuxa (Feb 6, 2015)

xellil said:


> I got a Doberman who was about 25 pounds overweight. He had a kind of hidden thyroid condition I guess, it didn't turn up on the standard test but it did on the more extensive test. So he went on thyroid meds but honestly it was about two years before he got down to his goal weight of 90 pounds. He just lost weight very slowly. So you might consider testing for thyroid as being stubbornly overweight is a symptom.
> 
> I normally fed my dog somewhere between 1 - 1.5 pounds of food a day which is somewhere between 1-1.6%.
> 
> ...


actually i got him specifically to do fetch and agility! before him i was looking after my brother's husky/rottweiler/lab mix for a year while he lived in a place that wouldn't accept her. she was a very energetic dog. i used to play fetch with her half an hour every day and i also ended up doing dog agility with her. she still comes over every week and i take her out to fetch and always hope her enthusiasm will rub off on Bentley but nope. i really enjoyed doing it with her so when my brother took her back i got the sads and decided to just get my own dog to do it with. Bentley would fetch from water forever if he could, he has tons of passion for it there, but on land he has very little interest in it and will lose interest after a few throws and just want to walk around the year sniffing things. he is a water dog and forest dog for sure, he gets super excited to be in water or offleash in the forest and will do a ton of excercise there, but due to location thats not something i can take him to every day like he needs. i have been considering trying to find a dog trainer who has experience training uninterested dogs to fetch, god knows i've been totally unsuccessful at it.


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## Anfisa (Dec 13, 2015)

You can't teach "uninterested dog" anything. First, you need to motivate him.


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