Riles and Simon, tossin' each other down in the pasture at my friend's farm. Riley's undercarriage is what this post is about - well, his underbelly, anyway!
I just have to share this because I've been fighting this for Riley's whole life.
Riley is fat. Obese, really. He's weighed as high as 42 pounds once. I feel bad for him because people constantly make fun of him, poor guy. My vet was sure it was a thyroid issue - his heart beat is slow, his temp a few degrees below normal, etc... but nine hundred bucks later, there's not a darn thing wrong with him. (Well, at least not that. There's a hundred other things wrong with him. Yay puppy mill rescue dog! Not.)
He's just Zen. My vet has the same sense of humor I do and dryly remarked that in case of the apocalypse, I am to save him to eat last, he'll be the one who stays nice and fat off of twigs, leaves, and rocks.
I put him on literally 1/4 cup of a light kibble a day and green beans and pumpkin for nearly a year, and we got down to -- drumroll---
38.8 lbs. And there we've sat. We walk a mile or more a day, throw the ball for fetch. He does not get handfuls of treats, etc. We have been on every diet, every exercise program, everything we could possibly think of. Mind you, I cannot feed him a raw food diet, which my vet recommended and I would have liked to do... he always got horribly ill on it, to the point where one morning I had to rush him to the vet because he literally got out of my car to go to work and I found his feathers soaked in blood, where he'd been fine ten minutes before.
Well, thanks to the folks I met at the herding trial who mentioned that Simon was getting slightly heavy (and I was only feeding Simon 3/4 a cup, split during the day) I went into a "dog must lose weight and tone up for show" for Simon - I've pretty much given up on Riles.
One of my customers had her Shepherd on Sojo's Europa, and said she finally had to take him off because he couldn't keep the weight on. I sell it, but I honestly hadn't used it before because of Riley's stomach issues - several of my people here had. So, I thought, oh, what the heck, let's try it. One of the things I liked is that they gave the okay to use cooked meats, as long as you add a multivitamin and other additives, like yogurt and cottage cheese, etc... I also add a probiotic supplement and digestive enzymes.
Switched Simon, Caleb, and Piper over pretty fast and no problems. Shockingly enough, so did Riley, with no issues whatsoever. I've had them on it since the trial, and we've been doing our regular activities... Simon's really toning up fast, and he looks WAY better, gah! Way better! Caleb's full and isn't begging and being a shark, and looks great. Piper of course, has always been a lean, mean, Corgi machine, and yet even she looks more toned.
Today, at work, one of my employees mentioned that she thought Riley had lost weight. I was like, nah... nah, he's still an ottoman.
However, they convinced me to put him on the scale and -- Riley has lost nearly two pounds! He is at 37 lbs. I am just shocked. He looks good, he's not gotten sick. The only downside is that because of the added water, he's having more of his other physical urinary issues, but frankly, a wet mop on Pergo is worth two pounds...
I'd like to get ten off of him. That's a reasonable goal, I think. I just hope this keeps working - the dogs look good, they're full and satiated, and frankly, I'd eat the darn Sojos mix. It smells like good soup. Really good soup.
Okay, I might just have to try it. *grin*
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