There are many reasons you may need to consider a dog diet or plan ways to support and promote weight loss for dogs. The most obvious reason is that you have an overweight dog on your hands, which typically means a dog that is getting too much food, the wrong types of food as well as not enough exercise.

Overweight Dog? Too Much Food

Some breeds of dogs are prone to putting on weight and simply will eat as much as goes into their bowl. When this behavior or personality trait is combined with lack of exercise or limited exercise, the results will be serious and very unhealthy to the dog. Dogs that are likely to put on weight or that appear to be gaining weight should be fed according to the food manufacturers recommended rations and not provided free access food. Always have your dog checked by the vet before starting a problem for weight loss for dogs, just to make sure there isn't some medical condition that may be contributing to the weight gain.

If there are no health issues and you are feeding the correct amount you may need to actually reduce the ration to help your overweight dog. By simply cutting back the ration by ¼, you can adjust the dog's diet without having to change foods. With ¼ less food per ration there should some slow weight loss within the first two weeks, then the overweight dog should continue to drop pounds slowly over the next weeks and months.

Wrong Types of Food In The Dog Diet

Successful weight loss for dogs needs to adjust the types of treats, table scrapes and little extras that can be adding calories, sugar and unnecessary fats to the dog diet. The first thing to do is to cut out 100% of any table scrapes you may have been feeding. The second step is to restrict all treats to only healthy treats such as small pieces of boiled chicken breast, or even small pieces of apples, broccoli or high fiber, commercially available or home made dog treats. Treats should be only 5% of the total amount of food provided to the dog per day.

Not Enough Exercise = Overweight Dogs

In most cases weight loss for dogs starts with a modification of the diet, reduction of treats and lots more exercise. Just like humans, overweight dogs tend to be much less active than their lean counterparts, so adding more routine, structured exercise is key. Simply turning the dog out into the yard is not going to accomplish anything, as the dog will just go and find a comfortable spot to lie down in the shade. Exercise means walking with your dog, perhaps slowly working up to brisk walks, then jogs and perhaps even runs.

Start slowly and change the current dog diet, plus add some additional moderate exercise to help your overweight dog. Within a few weeks on your program you will notice that weight loss for dogs is a lot like human diet programs, and you may even find you are benefiting from the additional exercise!