dogs weight

Question
i have two small  dogs the eat like a mule but the will not gain weight. there weight is around ten pounds but both of them have drop some weight i am worried please help i am trying to find out want i can feed them to gain weight. thank you for your time

Answer

Hi Tommie,

You didn't say your dog's age or their activity level. Dogs under 12 months need a puppy food to get all the extra nutrients their growing bodies require. If your dogs are very active and over 12 months of age who get a lot of exercise on a daily basis, that would explain their appetite and the fact they aren't gaining weight. If this is the case, feed your dogs a food with higher values of protein and fats. Really active dogs can have a food that provides as much as 30% protein and 20% fat. Ideally the food would have a named source of protein in the first 5 ingredients, and contain natural preservatives. If you plan on switching your dog's diet, do so gradually, over a period of about 5 days. A sudden change in diet can cause a dog to develop diarrhea.

If your dogs aren't especially active, then there is probably other reasons for being underweight despite their healthy appetites.

You didn't say if you've had your dogs examined by your vet for parasites or not. This would be a good place to start looking for answers. If your dogs are always hungry, and eat what looks like more than they should, but don't gain weight, they may very well have "worms". You can try giving your dogs an over the counter wormer, but these aren't always effective in killing all kinds of "worms". If you want to try this, read the package directions well, and be sure to retreat your dogs with the dewormer medication in the time period recommended by whichever wormer you choose. New worms hatch in about two week intervals, and you want to be sure you kill them all.

If you try worming your dogs yourself, but they continue to look like they're losing weight, it's then time to have them examined by a veterinarian.

I hope that helps.
Best of luck,

Patti