Did you know that pet weight and human weight tend to go hand in hand? This is the time of year that we all tend to have gained a little weight. And this applies to our pets as well. We may have been feeling a little festive and gave our dogs scraps from delicious home cooked meals and treats during holiday parties.
As important as it is for you to watch your weight for health reasons, it is just as important for our dogs to maintain a healthy weight as well. There are a few tools available online for checking what a dogs weight looks like compared to human weight gain and also for seeing if your dog is at a healthy weight or not. Be sure to click on the links that bring you to the tools!
Tools for Comparing and Maintaining a Healthy Pet Weight
Comparing Pet Weight to Human Weight
Hill’s created a great tool for comparing pet weight to human weight. Meaning, when your dog gains 3 pounds, what would that look like on a human? It is easier for us to think in terms of weight gain in humans than weight gain in pets. We may think 1 or 2 pounds is ok for our pets, when in reality it would be much more on a human.
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The tool uses a 4 pound dog and a woman weighing 125 pounds. Adding 1 pound to the dog is like adding 31 pounds to a woman. Adding 4 pounds to the dog is like adding 125 pounds to a woman. This is a great way to see how important weight gain is on dogs.
Check out Hill’s tool on comparing pet weight to human weight.
Is Your Pet A Healthy Weight?
PetMD has also created a tool you can use to quickly check at home if your pet is at a healthy weight. This is a great tool, and can be used for both dogs and cats. I used it for my own dog, Chowda, an American Staffordshire Terrier (you must know your dogs primary breed, even if mixed).
It asks for your dogs name and breed, as well as age and weight. There are then silhouettes for you to choose your dogs body type, too thin, underweight, ideal, overweight and obese. If you click on the box, it gives you a description of each body type. I chose what best describes Chowda (which happened to be ‘ideal’ even though I don’t feel she is). Click submit and you get your results!
The results come in the form of a sliding scale, meaning there is a bar that ranges from underweight to obese, and an arrow of where your dog falls. In addition to telling you if your dog is at a good weight, they give you a range of healthy calorie intake for your dog.
Check out the Healthy Weight tool now.
Post your thoughts below on the pet weight tools once you have tried them. Were they helpful? Did you feel they were accurate? Would you recommend them to a friend to try? Share your thoughts below!
