Content
- Consult the veterinarian
- Keep a diary of your weight
- quality food
- Increase calories in your diet
- Small but frequent meals
- make food more appetizing
- physical exercises
- Other advice
Although obesity is an all-too-frequent problem in puppies today, there are also puppies with the opposite problem: your puppy may be weak because he doesn't eat enough, because he burns a lot of energy or because he comes from a place where he has not been treated and correctly powered.
Help your dog to have a healthy weight is an important task for owners, but a dog that is too thin is a delicate problem and making it gain weight can be a difficult task, don't worry, there are solutions for your puppy to gain weight.
In this article by PeritoAnimal, we will explain to you how to make your dog fat.
Consult the veterinarian
The first thing to do if your dog is weak is to ask the vet to do it. a complete physical examination of your dog. Many diseases can cause you to lose weight and lose your appetite: diabetes, cancer, hepatitis or a digestive problem can cause you to lose weight. If your dog has an illness, it's important to diagnose it as soon as possible to treat it and get better.
Also think about asking your veterinarian to do some fecal exams to check if your dog has intestinal parasites, if so you will have to administer a deworming to your dog. Once the vet has ruled out an illness, ask them to tell you what the ideal weight is for your dog. That weight will be your goal in a weight gain program.
Keep a diary of your weight
Now that you know your puppy doesn't have any illnesses, you can start making some changes to his diet and way of life to help him gain weight. However, it is very advisable to make a diary with your meals daily, treats, exercise and weight each day. That way, if the weight goes down or up, you can see it and objectively analyze the reasons for these changes, to improve your weight gain program.
quality food
Improving your puppy's diet isn't just about increasing calories, it's also about increasing calories. balanced diet and suitable for him.
Check the quality of the feed, and make sure that on the composition label the first thing on the list is proteins like "lamb", "beef" or "chicken" rather than starting with cereals such as corn or wheat. Effectively, the best food for your puppy is based on meat, eggs and vegetables.
Increase calories in your diet
One of the keys for your puppy to gain weight is to increase the calories in his diet, so that he ingests more calories than you burn during the day, but it is important to know that too many calories too fast can lead to digestive problems causing vomiting or diarrhea. Likewise, adding too much fat can cause digestive problems such as pancreatitis.
To add calories you can start increase by 30% of your daily food and see if your dog gets fat, if you see that it does not increase in weight, add progressively more.
Small but frequent meals
When increasing the amount, it is important that you add a meal for your puppy to eat regularly during the day. If your dog was used to eating once a day at night, add one meal in the morning, if your dog had two meals, add a third meal in the middle of the day.
If you can, you better receive 3 or 4 meals a day instead of 2 very large ones. In this way, it digests food more easily and metabolizes nutrients better by eating small amounts, but more frequently. Ideally, don't spend more than 6 hours between meals. The thinner the dog is, the more important it is that it receives smaller meals more often.
Keep in mind that by increasing the amount of food your puppy eats and your meal schedules, your faeces elimination needs also change, this may require a small adjustment in daily walks. This practice is very helpful to prevent gastric torsion.
make food more appetizing
If you regularly feed your dog dry food and you've noticed he doesn't like it very much, you can try putting hot water on top of your food, then wait for it to cool down and give it to your dog. Many dogs find dry food more appetizing using this trick.
If you see that you still don't like it very much, change the ration to a wet food that he likes more to encourage him to eat so that your puppy can gain weight.
If you still don't eat, don't hesitate to visit our article on why my dog doesn't want to eat and use some tricks we've shown you.
physical exercises
At first glance it may seem counterproductive to recommend exercise for a puppy that needs to gain weight, however, exercise burns calories but is beneficial because it allows your puppy. build muscle rather than just increasing the weight with fat.
In addition to physical activity increases the dog's appetite. We advise that you increase your exercise very progressively, without overdoing it, and as you increase the calories in your meals. But remember, your dog has to eat more calories than he expends, in order to gain weight.
Remember that getting your puppy fat is a process that can take some time and requires patience and making small changes to your puppy's habits and habits, all to help him reach a healthy weight.
Other advice
You can complement all of the above and offer small treats to your puppy occasionally. Practicing obedience will be a fantastic way to give small prizes to your dog when he correctly carries out the orders given to him.
