Dr. Ruthann Lobos keeps a high-performing yellow Lab that gets ripped and ribby by the end of eastern Colorado’s pheasant season every year. Like most Labs, when Finn isn’t running wide-open on prairie birds, he’s obsessed with his food dish—especially what’s not in it.
Lobos, a practicing veterinarian, as well as the senior veterinarian for Purina , describes Finn as “volume sensitive.” He is hyper-aware of the decrease in vittles that Lobos administers in the weeks-long ramp-down from hunting season.
Finn doesn’t recognize that the dietary dial-back is in his best interest, in order to keep him trim in those long months between hunting seasons. But Lobos’ restraint is adding years to Finn’s life, and seasons to his hunting career, by optimizing his weight during those months when he’s chasing a bumper instead of a bird.
When, What, and How Much to Feed Your Dog “I’d say off-season diet is in the top five of the most common questions I get,” says Lobos. “People want to know if they should switch their dog off performance food in the off-season.”
Her short answer: No. But you should cut back on the quantity of food you offer to your sporting dog to maintain a healthy body index.
“Every formulation of performance food is programmed to build endurance in our sporting dog,” says Lobos. “Most performance formulas are a 30/20 blend, 30 percent protein and 20 percent fat. That’s designed to program the cells for endurance. You probably remember descriptions of mitochondria from high school science class. They’re the powerhouse of the cells, and that 30/20 blend is formulated with higher fat to maximize the number and capacity of mitochondria in the cells.”
Feeding a performance blend ensures that your dog has the protein and fat necessary to perform in the field. (Photo courtesy of Kali Parmley) “But when we switch our dogs off that diet, it takes 8 to 12 weeks to deprogram those cells and have the mitochondria die off,” Lobos says. “But then, when we ramp them back up, it takes another 8 to 12 weeks to reprogram them and get their metabolism up to that high V02 max that we want for endurance."
Considering all the deprogramming and programming, and the months required to ramp down and then build back that cellular activity, Lobos recommends keeping your dog on a high-performance diet all year but tweaking the quantity, and sometimes even the way, that you feed.
“That way, we’re fueling the cells the same way, but we’re not adding excess calories to their output on a daily basis,” Lobos comments.
But how do you know what’s enough? After feeding your dog liberally during the hunting season, cutting back can seem downright stingy to an eager, biddable dog.
“Our pheasant season ends at the end of January,” says Lobos. “Finn is probably in the best shape of the year at that time. By the third week of February, though, I’m slowly dialing back the quantity I’m feeding. It’s not a hard stop. His metabolism is still ramped up from chasing roosters, so it’s a gentle transition.”
If you have a volume-sensitive dog like Finn, Lobo says there are a few hacks to ease the transition to less kibble.
“You can add green beans,” she says. “They’re only about 60 calories per can, which is the equivalent of about a quarter cup of food. Or you can add shredded cabbage to bulk up the amount that’s going in the bowl, without bulking up the calories in the off-season.”
How Feeding Less Effects a Dog’s Lifespan Astute readers may recall Purina’s ground-breaking canine lifespan study that was completed about 20 years ago. Researchers studied 48 Labrador retriever puppies; one pair of the littermates got to eat as much as they wanted three times every day. Their paired littermate received 25 percent fewer calories. The study was designed to determine not only relative health as the puppies grew into dogs, and then into veterans, but also to determine how a lifetime of diet shapes body condition and physical output.
“On the surface, there wasn’t a world of difference,” says Lobos. “The dogs that were lean-fed had a body condition score of about 4.5 out of 9. The dogs that got to eat as much as they wanted had body condition scores of 6.5 out of 9. So those heavier dogs were not ‘walking ottomans’ or grossly obese, just kind of heavy. That makes sense, since the difference was only about 400 calories a day, or less than a cup of Pro Plan Sport.”
But over the course of the 14-year study, the cumulative effect of diet became apparent.
“The dogs that were lean-fed, had a 3-year delay in needing to be treated for arthritis,” says Lobos. “The average age of arthritis onset was 10 for the heavier dogs, and for the lean-fed dogs it was 13. When we think about our sporting dogs, that’s huge, because osteoarthritis can certainly be career-limiting for them.”
Equally significant was lifespan. The lean-fed dogs lived almost two years longer than their paired littermates did.
“Dietary restrictions extended the health span and the lifespan for those dogs,” says Lobos. “Cutting back on portions may be extending the life of your dog.”
The body condition chart helps you identify what the ideal body condition for your dog is. (Photo courtesy of Purina Institute) “When people ask me if their dog is in good shape, I often refer back to that body-condition score,” says Lobos. “The easiest thing to do is to assess your dog’s ribcage. You want to put your hands on your dog’s sides and feel their ribs. The ribs of a dog in good condition should feel like your own knuckles, with defined ridges and valleys. If your dog’s ribcage feels like the squishy part of your thumb, then they’re overweight. Even if their ribcage is tight, like the pad of your finger, that’s still probably a little too soft.”
“You can also give them a visual assessment. You want to see a tapered waistline,” says Lobos. “Their ribcage should angle into their hips, so that it looks like a nice hourglass shape when viewed from above,” she says. “They should have an abdominal tuck; their ribcage should be lower than their belly. That puts them in an ideal body condition based on all the research that squares physique with performance and overall health.”
Finding a Dog’s Ideal Body Condition at First Check-Up If you struggle to assess your dog’s body condition based on physical cues, Lobos offers an iron-clad benchmark for your dog’s ideal weight.
“I don’t have scientific evidence to support this, which makes me a little nervous to say out loud, but as a vet for the past 20 years, I can say I have high anecdotal correlation for this,” says Lobos. “That is, what the dog weighs at their first annual checkup—generally when they’re in the range of 15 to 16 months old—is their ideal body weight. Our sporting dogs are generally still intact at that point, and there’s still a good deal of growing and developing, but that weight at 16 months, plus or minus five percent, is a good weight to try to maintain.”
Lobos says that dog owners famously have short-term memory loss. They base their expectations of their dogs’ body condition only on the most recent month or two. But she says that first-year vet appointment is a significant body-condition baseline.
“I’ve gone back and asked folks what their dog weighed at their first annual visit, and compared that with what the dog weighs now,” says Lobos. “That 15- to 16-month weight is pretty close to where we need to get them back to, so I encourage people to go back and pull those records from their dog’s first vet visit. That’s generally a pretty good baseline of where they should be.”
Back to that dog-owner's amnesia, Lobos says visual cues can help us recall our companion's fighting weight.
“We all take pictures of our dogs,” she says. “Find a picture from mid-season of your dog. They should pretty much be in their body-condition prime. Print that picture, put it in a frame, and display it in a place where you’ll see it frequently. That becomes your frame of reference of where your dog should be, even in the off-season. A lot of the time, we don’t see this weight gain in our dogs. A Lab that goes up six or seven pounds is no big deal, but that’s 10 percent of their body weight, and you might not see it unless you have a photographic benchmark.”
Keep a picture of your dog at peak fitness so you can visually reference how they should look year-round. (Photo courtesy of Purina) Lobos also encourages dog owners to take their pets back to the veterinarian’s office, not for an official check-up but simply to step on the scale.
“One, it’s good for your dog to have a positive experience where nothing traumatic happens when they walk into the clinic,” she says. “And two, it’s a great way to keep an eye on weight trends by using the same scale that we use every year.”
She notes that “a lot can fluctuate in a year, and it’s a lot easier to get five percent of their body weight off rather than trying to get 15 to 20 percent off,” after their breathing becomes labored because of thoracic fat deposits or because they’re carrying extra weight.
Using Feeding Time for Mental Exercises Lobos notes, from her own experience, that people commonly mistake their off-season dog’s energy as evidence that they’re hungry. Or hangry.
“Those dogs coming off an active hunting season can seem sort of needy, and a lot of people mistake that for begging,” says Lobos. “But I think it’s more common that their brains aren’t being exercised after a season when they were running and smelling and reacting to birds, and generally being active. Now we’re just tossing the bumper to them 10 minutes a day, and they’re bored.”
They express boredom in attention-seeking.
“We equate that to them being hungry,” says Lobos. “But if we can use their brains and give them some mental exercise, or use food puzzles in hide-and-seek, then they have to hunt for their food. They’ll be using their brains more, so maybe they won’t seek our attention so much or so aggressively. If you can use puzzles and games to help them find their food, then it combines food rewards with being physically and mentally active, and that’s one way to keep them in ideal body condition while we’re supporting their health and mental well-being.”
