I have no time for owners with overweight dogs [unless there is a medical condition] causing the dog to be overweight.

The times I see dogs waddling along the in the park just makes me angry when the owners say my dogs likes his food it is not rocket science feed them less walk them more.

Maybe it just the same as us humans, overeat and dont excerise =overweight and we are sensitive about it and rightly so I suppose, but for me I take the same approach with my dogs , they are well excercised but sometimes get a little less and I adjust the food intake accordingly , same as me I control my intake depending on the level of excercise as I know I wont burn it off , is that a simplistic view ? does it apply to dogs ? seems to work !

of course it applys

My dogs have never been overweight, they compete so they are kept as lean as possible, in fact I have been accused of having them thin, they are not thin, they are fit! Very fit!

Hi, my Jasper,(english setter) is overweight by about 5kgs, I have tried everything, light version of his food, made him even less active, so put weight on, changed his food all together, still no good, at the moment he has about half the reccomended amount, and treats are very few, he is a rescue, and when I got him, he just didn't run.(not ES behaviour), he dordles and smells on our walks, he is so slow sometimes I have to put him back on lead. It breaks my heart, sometimes. Have had his thyroid checked within normal limits. Any Ideas anyone.

Usually the dogs we see when out on our walks are mainly overweight/obese but yesterday we saw an "American Bulldog" type dog that to me looked quite underweight. You could see all its ribs.

Dogs of a similar type to this I have seen before were much fatter-I wouldn't have thought you should actually be able to see the ribs on this type of dog should you?

Perhaps it had a medical problem though. It is realatively easy to see when someone's dog is lardy but I think if I had known this person I would have asked if there was a medical problem as the dog looked quite thin.

We do know someone with an underweight Dalmation that looks a bit like a cruelty case but they can't afford to keep taking it to the vets to find out what's wrong. They have taken it before but it's still quite thin.

It makes me mad to see any animal that shouldnt be, be in an overweight state its almost like kind cruelty the owners are too stubborn to do anything about it because their happy feeding the dog large quantities of food.

Its not a question of he/she likes his/her food its the owner who enjoys feeding them just as they enjoy eating.

It shocks me because the UK is trying to become more healthy and stamp out smoking, drinking and obesity but we are quite happy to let our pets become fat and unable to do the things they should be doing.

I gave upon the vets when Rupert was like this to be honest. They couldn't find a thing wrong with him yet we couldn't put weight on him for love nor money. He's on the lean side now but requires a lot of food to maintain it, seems as he's got older his metabolism has slowed a bit and allowed him to put that bit of weight on and keep it.

A lot of owners work very hard to try and keep their dog(s) weight to the correct level, but factors such as rate of metabolism/any medical conditions/weather conditions can pose a problem and hinder weight loss. Don't assume that owners don't care and are ignorant, yes a lot are, but equally many aren't as shown on this thread.

Mine was the same til I started to feed raw. Now he is still lean but he is fit and has a covering over his bones. He's probably the best shape dog I've seen for a while and quite often people will comment on his muscle tone and how fit he is. I still think he looks a bit skinny tbh but not SKINNY like before. He was also ill after malicious poisoning...anyway, raw feeding and time and he is still back to the fittest looking thing..

I have to admit though - most cases of overweight dogs is a simple case of calories in - calories out tbh but I think sometimes its easy for people to get carried away and not actually realise just how much or how innapropriate they are feeding, compared to exercise.

I'm not ruling out that some medical reasons etc contribute but realistically, the amount of overweight dogs, well, thats like everyone who is fat saying that its thier health, its the weather......simply not true.