I'm curious...
About a year ago when Kivi first came Penny put on a lot of weight. She was getting a little extra from pinching Kivi's food when no one was looking, so thinking that was the issue I made sure they were split up when eating and watched them. Plus I reduced Penny's meal sizes. Despite this, she was not losing weight and I assumed this must be because she was suddenly much less active. I reduced the meal size to a very small amount and she dropped the extra weight and stabalised, but I was giving her such small meals that I wondered if she felt satisfied. I was planning to give her more of the vegie mix and maybe increase some of the fibrous vegies, but suddenly I didn't need to. Penny was dropping weight again. I increased her meal size again and she was still slowly dropping weight. Meanwhile, she started doing some odd poops. They are tiny and often look like diseased earthworms. Skinny and lumpy, but quite hard. So now her weight has stablised again, but I estimate she's getting about the same amount as she was getting before when she was putting on all that weight. Poops are sometimes tiny and sometimes normal, but when they are normal there's very little of it, usually.
I have spoken at length to the vet about this and she thought it was interesting, but as long as Penny could put weight on and everything was working she didn't think there was any need to worry much about it. Penny is less active than she's ever been and yet needs more food than she did just 12 months ago. Do older dogs start to need more calories to keep everything running smoothly, or is something else going on?