New Drug Approved to Battle Canine Obesity

[CathyBogart]

What is wrong with reducing the amount of food you feed your dog?

[cmayer31]

I'm actually pretty interested in this. Riley only eats 1 cup twice a day of reduced calorie food, but she is still technically over weight. She's under the recommended feeding for her weight of 3-4 cups a day. She isn't dangerously overweight by any means, but her bad hips makes it difficult to provide an exercise routine to work the extra weight off. It's a catch 22 for her, she needs to lose weight to prevent further damage as she gets older, but she can't go for long walks, runs, or play too long without causing more damage. Ideally a pool and low impact exercise would be best, but I don't have that option open to me right now.

If this proves to be a safe and manageable treatment, it may provide the extra help needed to reduce her weight.

[Canis-Lupess]

What is wrong with reducing the amount of food you feed your dog?

Try telling my aunt margaret that where fat mega is concerned. She thinks you are accusing her of not loving the dog because she feeds it too much but feels she doesn't love the dog as much if she doesn't feed her bits all the time causing her to get to her present diabolically obese condition.
She measures the amount of love by the amount of food she feeds the dog. Stupid, I know but you try reasoning with her. I doubt she's the only person out there like this.

[Flatcoatluver]

I'm actually pretty interested in this. Riley only eats 1 cup twice a day of reduced calorie food, but she is still technically over weight. She's under the recommended feeding for her weight of 3-4 cups a day. She isn't dangerously overweight by any means, but her bad hips makes it difficult to provide an exercise routine to work the extra weight off. It's a catch 22 for her, she needs to lose weight to prevent further damage as she gets older, but she can't go for long walks, runs, or play too long without causing more damage. Ideally a pool and low impact exercise would be best, but I don't have that option open to me right now.

If this proves to be a safe and manageable treatment, it may provide the extra help needed to reduce her weight.

We are in the same boat as Riley, Zoey has just been proved to have hip dysplacia and sponysplasia. I can only take her on 2 20 min walks twice a day and let her out only on a leash. She has been on 3/4 a cup for a while even before we found out about this. She still hasn't lost weight. I would not try this product for a long time.

[Catlady711]

Two comments here:

1) for many people feeding=love, we see that time and time again at work. Horribly obese animals than can barely walk in the door and panting like crazy because of the weight. When we stress to the owner the health risks of obesity we usually get many responses like "but he just keeps begging", "she just loves those treats", "I know that but hubby/kids keep giving them snacks", "yeah he's a fat thing that's for sure (usually announced very proudy by the owner as if it's a good thing)". Some owners are obese themselves and just don't see anything wrong with an obese pet. We constantly see weight related diseases come in, including most recently, a very obese cat that had a glucose level of 600+ (normal should be 100 or less) the machine couldn't even go high enough to give us the exact glucose level!!

2) sometimes a failure to lose weight despite cutting back on food or increasing excercize can be a low thyroid problem. A blood test can determine this and the medication is reletively inexpensive (at least in my area) and usually has great results.