fat springer

My 2 year old female springer is getting rather porky. she is 22.7kg where as my male springer who is 5 only weights 19.6kg they eat the same food and amount and get the same exercise, Why is she so fat ?????????????????

She was spayed at 6months old because my vet recommended it due to her being a hyperactive dog, she was quite skinny up untill 6 months ago. She gets 3 good walks off lead a day 1.5 hours in a morning 30 mins at lunch and 2 hours at night.

any ideas how to get some weight off her.

Maybe she just have a different motabilism to your other dog. Is she still as active? Maybe speak to the vet and see if she needs her thyroid checked. If not it will just be a case of making sure no body in the family is feeding her titbits and cutting down the amount of food she is eating.

Check with your vet first though because your idea of a fat dog might be different to theirs. Maybe she is just a chunkier variety......or just big boned!

she was vet checked last month when she had her booster I asked the vet if she thought she was fat. she said she could not afford to put anymore weight on. She has just been in kennels for a week and has put a lot of weight on, I think due to not as much exercise as normal I have cut down on her food and stopped treats not that she got many in the first place and I have set up a weight chart to she if she starts to loose some weight this way.

Spaying does change the body chemistry slightly so spayed bitches don`t need as much as before (as a rule) It`s just a question of cutting the amount down a little. Dogs take a while to lose it, I find. My tubby old pointer took months to get his waist back! I wouldn`t cut it drastically or she`ll start scavenging.

she has always been alittle pig she will eat ANYTHING including plants the food has not been reduced a lot but enough to cut her down.

My friend's springers got really fat when they were spayed, and it affected their coats really badly too..

What do you feed her? It may that a change of diet would help so that you don't have to cut her food back too much.

This sounds a lot like the problem I had a few months ago. My Springer had been over weight since she was 9 months old (not spayed, just a greedy pig with sad eyes! ).

She's raw fed and I literally had to cut her food right back to about 60% of what she should've been getting as she was already getting 2 hours of exercise a day!

When I went to the vets last year I asked about her weight and they said exactly the same thing - she wasn't fat, but was at the top of her weight range.

This is very true. It has taken my Springer about 6-8 months to loose the excess weight. We decided to cut her food right back to allow her to have titbits inbetween - much easier on the conscience!

Basically I would continue with the exercise, cut down the food (perhaps try a light version of her diet?) and also try a bit of swimming as this can help a great deal with weight loss and is easy on the joints.

cheers for that the prob with swimming is the beach is the best place for that but she has a very bad habit of chasing birds and not coming back - she has even killed 3 blackbirds so far and I rarley take her to the beach unless its dark so she cannot run off

We did similar to Rips with Fingal. Cut his food right down. He piled on the pounds as a young dog when on steroids and we couldn't shift it. Giving MORE exercise just wasn't possible with Fingal as he was active as active could be. 50% less food ever since and he's in 'reasonable' shape. He's still a bit heavy 19.5KG for a little 9 year old working type but he does OK on the small amount he has.