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I have a boxer/pointer mix and he is right at 3 months now. The problem i have run into is that he will eat his butt off somedays and other days he eats like one bowl all day long, he does look really skinny and you can kinda see his ribs. I’m taking him to the vet on saturday for his third set of shots and i’ll ask the vet but i was wondering if there was something i could add to it just to let him get in the act of eating or something but i’m kinda worried but he is very active and dosen’t seem to have anything noticeable of not eating except his size, but he is heavy. i’m just worried cause he came from a litter of 12 and some of the other pups outweigh him by a big amount and they have no problems with eating. should i be worried?
The body style you are describing sounds normal to me for a boxer, so I wouldn’t stress too much. To get him to eat more, if the vet thinks he needs more food, you could do what I do- I put a small amount of organic chicken broth on my dogs dry food, she eats it right up.
This is not normal. A skinny dog has all or most of his ribs showing, hip bones prominent, easily felt or seen spine, etc. A dog or pup of a good weight should have ribs able to be felt with light pressure on the sides but not all or most will be visible. The spine should have a layer of padding over it that is not heavy but the spine can be felt with light pressure. This site has a graphic that is actually used by my vet and many others to help owners see if their dogs are too tin, just right or too heavy. (the graphic is from another source but is being used on this site) http://www.truehaus.com/nutrition.htm Scrool down a bit and you will see the graphic. It is a great guide for the owner. At this age, a pup should be eating three good meals a day. Any pup not eating well (and again, young pups need three meals a day – they are growing fast, have different nutritional needs and one meal a day is not enough to really sustain them – and if you are leaving a full bowl of food down all day, that is not proper feeding either and hard to gauge how much the dog is eating) is cause for concern and needs to be seen by a vet. There are many things that can cause a pup to be underweight that need to be ruled out. Since I cannot see your pup, I cannot help determine if it is underweight or not. This is why I gave a link to a graphic. But if the pup is not eating well, I would be worried. Many owners euqate fat with healthy in pups, this is not true. Pups should follow the same weight guides as adult dogs in regards to looks as feel. Pups bodieds change a lot during the first year of growth but fat is not healthy neither is too thin.
I checked out the website and he is in between thin and ideal. I did have him on a feeding plan and it was three times a day but he was eating moderate amounts each time so now i leave it out but i make sure i only put three cups total a day and he eats about two cups through the day. The vet says he is fine and thats just the breed but i know that its not just that. Are there foods that put more fat on dogs or is there some muscle gainer i could give him? Also if somebody has an email address i could send some pics.
I would not give the dog any muscle boosing stuff but consider feeding a performance level food for more active dogs and see if that helps. If there is nothign medically wrong (have you ruled out internal parasites and had a full blood panel done) then try this. If the vet will not do the testing, then find a new vet. You can reach me through http://www.WestWindDogTraining.com personally to send pictures.
::) I have a almost 7 month old pup maltese and it took a long time for me to figure out what he liked and didn’t like. I tried the expensive brands and he stuck his nose up at them. I took them back and the one he likes is cesars and he gets one at night and in the morning he gets moist and meaty by purina. A 1/2 bag and if he doesn’t eat that he gets it for evening.He gets treats also. Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out. I wprried also and now my Taz is a little chunky.
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