How To Tell If Your Dog Is Overweight

Health

There’s so much we can’t control when it comes to our dogs, but one thing we can control no matter what we’re feeding them is their weight.

In the U.S. especially, we’ve become so conditioned to seeing overweight dogs as the norm. I constantly have people commenting on how lean my dog is when *technically* she has the ideal body condition.

In 2022, the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention reported:

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“Approximately one-third of pet owners with an overweight or obese pet mistakenly believed their animals had a normal or ideal body condition, placing their pets at risk for developing various weight-related diseases.”

MONITORING YOUR DOG’S BODY CONDITION SCORE (BCS)

Monitoring your dog’s Body Condition Score (BCS) is one of the easiest things we can do to ensure our dog’s are at a healthy weight. BCS is the pet version of body mass index (BMI) for humans. Two BCS scales that veterinarians use are a 5-point scale and a 9-point scale, where the lowest number indicates our dog is too thin and the highest number indicates our dog is obese.

THE EFFECTS OF DIET RESTRICTION

I wish more people knew that simply keeping your dog at a healthy weight can help them live longer – and even save you some serious cash at the vet.

A 14 year lifetime study researched the effects that diet restriction had on life span and age-related changes in dogs. Here’s what they found:

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“Median life span was significantly longer for dogs in which food was restricted. The onset of clinical signs of chronic disease generally was delayed for food-restricted dogs.”

Simply put, healthy weight = healthier dog.

You can download your own Body Condition Score chart and learn how to measure your dog (and cat if you have one!) on the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention’s website.

Hey there, I’m Laura!

I’m a dog parent who turned $5,000+ in emergency vet bills into a fresh feeding movement. I founded The Doggy Dish™ after realizing the healthy eating habits my dietician mom instilled in me could apply to my dog, too. My mission is to make fresh feeding accessible, affordable, and backed by vets who understand its benefits. 

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