Sad statistic at vets office/vent

First of all they don't call the Flabradors for nothing.

I have very large lab! It is a female and she stands at least 27". We keep her active, we never got any comments from our vet to watch her weight. However last summer she got kennel cough and for about 6 weeks she could not sustain ANY activity without gagging. Boy did she plump up!!! She gained about 20 pounds. We were not feeding her "that" much. When she recovered from her kennel cough, we started the battle to get the weight off. We took her to the vet for blood work to be done. She is a laid back lab, and I started being concerned. The blood work turned out fine, and the vet encouraged me to buy a better food and feed her less. I was concerned about not enough nutrition. A dog her size on less than 2 cups of food a day seemed very low to me. He said if the food is good quality she will be fine. On that day at the vets office (September) she weighed 120 pounds. This spring when we took her in for her annual shots, she weighed 86 lbs!

We cut her food, walked her, ran her, did agility, swim, dock jumping you name it she did it! We were dedicated to her. She looks AMAZING!!!! Our dock jumping friends who had not seen her since last summer, can not get over how she looks. My golden "looks" fat, but she is not even the vet was surprised when he put his hands on her, she is extremely fluffy.

It should not surprise us when people tell us how overweight so many dogs are. I sure know there are A LOT of them in my neighborhood. Take a look at the people. If they can't stop overfeeding their children how do you expect them to not over feed their dogs.

Ok done with my 2¢. I am now a very careful dog owner when it comes to the weight of my girls. I want them to be healthy.

I wish that was the problem I had with my Aussie. My Aussie won't eat enough so I have to make her eat occasionally or she'll throw up as she won't eat for at least a full day and a half some times. But when I do make her eat I only give her about a half a cup with something like yogurt mixed in the food. I'd rather not do this, but if it comes between mixing something in with her food to make her eat, or not making her eat and her throwing up because of not eating, I'm going to make her eat.
 
As well, my mother is such an idiot. She decided to mix some doggy stuff in the dogs food this morning. Fine. But her Staffy's bowl had about a half a cup in it and she was going to give her more food to mix the stuff in with!!!!!!! This dog is already overweight and my mom knows it, and she's constantly feels the need to mix things in with a full bowl of food. I commented on that and she put the bowl back down without filling it up first. Apparently she doesn't get the fact that if you mix something in with the dogs food it will normally eat every last bit of food that tastes like whatever was mixed in with it. Even if that means eating the full bowl.  I won one time.
 
Shiva