The Weight Gain Norm But a simple general rule of thumb is to expect your pup to gain about 5 ounces per week for small breeds and 2.5 pounds per week for large breeds. Anything more than that could be preparing your puppy for future obesity. Your puppy should have a slit in the waist between the ribs and hips. This is easier to detect if you look at it from above.
You can also check that its waist folds when viewed from the side. And ultimately, the reason puppies go from cute and chubby to fat depends on you. Diet and exercise are important throughout a dog's life, but they are essential during the puppy stage. Dogs that enjoy foods high in fat or calories and who live indoors all day are more likely to get fat.
Ideally, your puppy should lose about two percent of their body fat per week. Your veterinarian can help you develop a weight management program. Your veterinarian can also help you by allowing you to come every week and weigh your puppy on his scale. The scale in a veterinarian's office is much more reliable than a scale at home.
For exercise, consider something unusual like swimming, which is good for your joints, or play a game of “Follow Me” and tempt your puppy to follow you around the house. Keeping your puppy at their optimal weight is essential to helping them become a healthy and happy dog. A chubby puppy can be very cute and cuddly, but if he starts his life overweight, this can easily lead to problems later on. Simply eliminating or reducing treats and increasing play sessions can help moderately overweight puppies lose weight.
Canine obesity should be seen as a serious problem and one that can no longer be ignored. The dilemma is that an overweight dog is more difficult to exercise, since obesity leads to respiratory and musculoskeletal problems that also have a negative impact on the dog's quality of life and an already short life expectancy. Obesity can also increase the risk of other chronic diseases, such as canine diabetes and heart disease, making canine obesity a major health problem in veterinary medicine. Very small puppies almost never need a reducing diet, but young teens who become plump can benefit from dietary advice for fat puppies.
The earliest predictive marker was thought to be 2 weeks after birth, where puppies that had a growth rate greater than 125% were found to be significantly more likely to be in the “overweight” group; a finding comparable to human studies, which have shown that High weight gain at the beginning stages of life is associated with the development of obesity in adults.
