Best food to prevent extra weight gain?

[dealrocker]

I have a 7 months old male Saint Bernard and for a last couple of weeks I have been noticing that he is getting overweight. I am very serious about his health and want to prevent further weight gain. I was told to feed him only dry food, so now I am just looking for some good dry food. Planning to hit our local Petco store this weekend. Want to know your thoughts and recommendations.

Thanks..

[Debbiedogs]

Not likely

You are not likely to find a truly premium food at one of the big box stores. You need a specialty place.

Taste of the Wild and Merrick are really good foods. There are others that your dog could do well on, like Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul, or one of the Nutro foods. These last two are what I call the "best of the worst", lol, but can still be good for lots of dogs.

What you want is a food with not so much grain - corn, barley, rices, etc. More protein, less carbs is what I think would work well. Evo is also a grain-free food.

[SwissNChow]

There really is no "best food to prevent extra weight gain". A dog can gain weight on ANY food. He can also lose weight on ANY food. ANY food can be used when you put a dog on a diet.

There is no trick to losing weight. The answer to extra weight gain is less food and more exercise. This is tough to do for ourselves, but simple to do for a dog. You have full control! Reduce the kibble you put in his bowl and really reduce the amount of treats he is getting. Change the type of treats from high calorie morsels to low calorie. Be careful what you are giving him, many dog treats have way more calories than you would anticipate. A large Milk Bone type biscuit can have as many as 150 calories in it!

You also have a dog that is transitioning from his fast growth puppy stage into the naturally slower growth stage of his "teenage" months. He simply doesn't need the amount of calories that he needed when he was growing 10-15 pounds a month or more. He can also now handle more exercise than he could handle as a young puppy.

There is a lot of research available on the web. It's true that a good quality dry food is an appropriate way to feed a dog. However, it's not the only way. You can select diets that range anywhere from a solid dry food diet, to diets that mix canned and dry foods, and then to homemade diets that contain no dry kibble at all. None of these options is wrong. All are right, you get to make the choice of which one you want to do. They all have advangages over the other, it is all a balance of where your priorities are with your pet's diet. Anyone who told you that you feeding a dry kibble diet is the only way to go for a healthy diet is misinformed. (and I still say that even if it was your vet that told you.)

There are dry foods that are better quality than others. You can indeed find reasonable quality foods at PetCo. You can also find specialty pet food stores that offer other options. There is no one food that is the "right" answer.

[Doubledogdare]

Simple - feed him less.

[valentine]

I have a female st. bernard...she is almost 4 years old...we got her as a pup. She has never been overweight...in fact she is small for a st. bernard...she is only 100lbs right now! Her mom was 114lbs and her dad was 160lbs...the males of course are larger. Your pup won't be full grown til about 2 years old so he might not be overweight by then....I feed my dog Purina Dog Chow...the vet says he has never heard anything bad about it. And you are not supposed to give large dogs puppy food when they are young....give them adult dog food...and preferably adult dog food meant for large breed dogs. My other 2 dogs are also on the same food (a bichon/shih-tzu mix and a toy poodle) My shepherd mix that we had to put to sleep in October was also on it....my bichon/shih-tzu is overweight but he is 16 and does nothing but lay around and eat....all of my other dogs are/were lean...but not underweight. I free feed them all...they eat when they want and how much they want. My st. bernard got A LOT of exercise when she was younger...she went to obedience classes 2 days a week for about an hour each day (almost all walking) and i walked her every day in the nice weather for about 20 mins to 1/2 hour...plus she would run around in my yard every day for a bit. Since i had my baby 16 months ago she has not been able to get as much exercise...she still gets the odd run in the yard...but even that poops her out for 2 days! LOL. She will never get overweight i don't think...but some dogs are prone to it and some aren't. I suggest you just make sure he gets the appropriate amount of exercise...but not too much as he is still growing and it can injure him if he has too much exercise.