Tales of Teddy

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Teddy’s Tales: Dog Diet

dog diet

Some dogs will eat anything. I remember my friend’s childhood Labrador (appropriately named YumYum) being opened up more than once because she confused stones with food. One Christmas, my husband’s Beagle scarfed a whole round of Stilton. She was also prone to filching  from the ‘fridge – determined, she taught herself to open it. Both of these dogs were, to put it mildly, on the heavy side, but it’s not only the greedy ones who gain weight.

A couple of months ago we took Teddy – who is keen on chicken and carrots, but tends to prefer playing with a ball to begging for food – to the vet and when he hopped on the scales we got a small surprise. This dog, who normally weighs in at around 9 kilos, had crept up a kilo-and-a-half. That’s a pretty hefty increase for a fairly small dog. Why? He wasn’t getting extra treats and we couldn’t put it down to his shaggy winter hairdo.

“Are you weighing his food?” asked the vet. Um… After two years of carefully using scales to dole out his daily rations, we felt sure that we knew what 2 x 75g looked like. Turns out we were wrong. We were  generously giving him an extra 10g or so at each meal, which added up to one porky Schnauzer.

Out came the scales, and down went the allotted daily food allowance. It’s only been six weeks and we can feel his ribs again. It’s been the simplest (and cheapest) doggy health fix that we’ve ever had to employ so thought I’d share it.

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