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Originally Posted by Lou  Hi everyone,
Skeeter is STILL overweight and now his knees are acting up. With 6 animals eating everymorning we put the food down at 6 am and pick it up at 10am. Everyone has eaten bey then. We feed Healthy Weight by Blue Buffalo. We give bites of Science Diet Dental Care for treats about three times a day. All of them except Gracie need to loose weigh but Skeeter is really obese.
After reading all of this - here is my plan and I would love comments and suggestions:
Food down for 2 hours instead of 4. Feed Skeeter green beans first. (1/2 cup?) Then maybe confine him with a little food for that two hours.
Smash the dental care food so that they get about 1/4 of a piece instead of 3 whole ones. Give Skeeter his piece last so he doesn't get more than one if he steals.
The big problem I with Skeeter is that he is so greedy he steals everyone elses food and if he is hungry enough he will trail around behind someone waiting for them to poop then he snatches it up. |
If I'm understanding correctly, you are still essentially 'free feeding' just leaving the bowl down for shorter period of time? IMO, that's just not going to work. If you're trying to get a dog to lose weight, and you have 6 animals, and don't see EXACTLY how much each one is eating... it's just not going to work.
You need to feed them all separately, at once, and pick it right up. In other words, the food gets put down in separate bowls in front of each of them, and then they eat, and then it gets picked up. Do you not want to do wet food? If you put a dab of wet food in there and mix it in, it should make them eat it right away. At my dads house, we have 3 dogs and at dinner time, they all eat right next to each other without messing with the others bowls. It took a few times of standing right next to them and reminding them, but now they're good. They get dry/wet mixed. If you don't want to do wet, believe me... they're learn very quickly that the food gets placed in front of them... give them 30 seconds or so, make it exciting, enticing, and if they don't eat. Pick it up. Try again later. After a day, they'll realize that's all their getting.
Ditch the treats all together for Skeeter, except use something like green beans if he likes them as his treat. I dogsit a Golden Retriever who needed to lose weight and they actually use peas as a treat (like peas in a pod) and she loooovesss them. I'm not sure how many calories each SD treat has? But they're like nugget sized right? I would get Zuke's or something -- pieces are so tiny and like 1 calorie per treat.
Exercise? How much exercise are they getting? VERY important in losing weight obviously.