My former neighbor had a huge Golden Retriever (130 pounds, when he should have been about 85 !), and they couldn’t figure out why Jake was so heavy when “all they did” was give him about 5-6 full-sized Milk Bones a day, plus about 3 cups of dry food twice a day. Of course, they thought he was just big-boned until I came along and told them otherwise. They still defended his weight until they took him to the Vet and the first words out of the Vet’s mouth when he saw Jake were “That dog needs to go on a diet!”
(1) don’t free feed
(2) give the appropriate amount of food in 2-3 meals a day
(3) choose a healthy, meat-based diet, and as AZCarolyn said, reduce or eliminate grains in the diet
(4) appropriate exercise... if she’s out of shape, you obviously can’t start out with a 5-mile run
(5) if you must give treats, choose a low-cal treat, such as 1 baby carrot, twice a day
Thanks for the info. We feed her twice daily, but I have to admit, since my daughter started on grown up food, Ursa's been quite the opportunistic cleaner upper. This is something we work very hard to discourage, and our daughter has been good in not feeding Ursa snacks like she used to (she used to have a game where she'd ask for a biter biscuit and then sneak it to Ursa.)
I'm going to see how the grain-less diet works for her. She walks a few miles every day with either myself or my hubby, but since I've got a triathlon in less than a month, maybe I'll bring her along on a few of my light runs (I'm a terrible runner, so she won't be working beyond her ability right now.)
That dog must have been gigantic! Our boy, Tycho, was about 75 lbs, 80 when he was chubby. Mom liked feeding him Bonz and Snausages. When she quit feeding him such junk, the pounds (as did the ridiculously horrendous gas they caused) disappeared. He lived to 15, outliving both his parents by a good 7 years.
~LOL~ no, actually pumpkin is a great food to have on hand (the solid pack pumpkin without spices in it).... it is the one food that cleans out the upper intestine of toxins and will help stop diarrhea as well as constipation. Dogs seem to like the taste, too... another filler food to help a dog diet is low sodium canned green beans..