Ideas For Weight Gain...

[Anna H]

Ok, need some help here guys.... One of my GSP is quite underweight at the moment (can see hip and rib bones clearly) and I'd like to get some weight on him. I've tried increasing his food intake and he'll always eat willingly, but the more I feed, the more he poos (and usually get the runs if I up his food too much). He gets a mixture of dry/chicken frames/dog rolls/bones. I can't feed him things like lamb flaps without him getting serious runs from them. He is eating more than double my GSP bitch at the moment.

I desexed him a couple of months ago, but this hasn't helped at all. He is only 14 months old, so still a very active young dog - however, he is confined to a run during the day whilst I am at work so shouldn't be getting too much exercise (unless he is pacing when I'm gone, but I've not noticed that).

Ideas?

[puggy_puggy]

He could have a condition where he is missing digestive enzymes so he is unable to process food properly. Basically it goes in one end and out the other almost the same.

Does he eat his own poo? What is his hair like?

I look after a puggy girl that has this condition. She is a skinny mini and always will be. Her fur is pretty harsh. She gets the runs or vomits if her food is to fatty and will eat her poo because her food doesn't digested properly.

She does pretty well on a diet of lean chicken necks and BARF roo patties. She has three small meals a day and always has to have a digestive enzyme sprinkled onto her food.

You can purchase the digestive enzymes from a health food shop.

[huski]

Canned sardines/mackeral, yoghurt, goats milk, lamb bones (I regularly feed lamb forequarters and lamb necks) etc are all supposed to be good for putting weight on. What dried food are you feeding?

[Stitch]

I have had great success recently with putting weight back onto a dog that had been really sick and had eaten very little for about 9 days.

I tried everything, all the bland diets etc, and the dog would only pick.

I started feeding small amounts of Dr.Billinghursts Rabbit BARF about 4 times daily and the appetite improved dramatically along with the weight and condition. She has now dropped back to 3 times a day and will soon be on just 2 feeds daily for maintenance.

It was all she would eat - I guess she knew exactly what it was she needed!

[Anna H]

Thanks guys. Ollie's coat is correct for a GSP and quite glossy, no signs of flaky skin etc...and no, he never eats his own poo, he'll eat the cats if he gets half a chance (but many dogs do that ). Aside from being literally skin & bones, he seems really healthy.

Huski - lamb bones are out, he gets seriously gassy and then gets runs from lamb. He is fine on all other meats that I've tried (unless I overfeed). I've tried quite a few dried foods - none seem to make a difference to his weight but he seems to do better on mid-range foods as opposed to superpremium ones. At the moment he is on Optimum Puppy.

Chelsea (my other GSP) was fairly lean at the same age, but nowhere near what my boy is like.

[huski]

I think someone's mentioned before about Bonnie Working dog being good for putting weight on? Something like Artemis Maximal may work too because it's higher in protein and has no grain content.

[Lowenhart]

Don't forget to worm him

You can also take him to a Chiropracter to make sure that nothing is out. We had a couple of underweight dogs who were out and within 2 weeks of being adjusted were looking super solid and starting to get fat.

[Anna H]

He gets wormed monthly as part of his hearworm meds... so no little wormies.

Wouldn't surprise me if something was 'out' - the way this little fruitcake zooms around the yard (which is split level with heaps of rockeries)

If I don't get weight on him in the next couple of weeks, I'll take him off to the vet just to make sure nothing else is going on.

He could just be like me I guess - super fast metabolism (I'm skin and bones too )

[Kelly_Louise]

Send him to my mum's house for a couple weeks - she can make ANY dog chubby