If you are a dog owner then you must be conscious about your dog’s health. You must want that your dog should be healthy, active and have a healthy body weight. While you are determining your dog’s weight then first of all, you will surely think about its daily food intake plus its exercise routine. You should check your dog’s weight on a regular basis on an animal scale.
Instead of checking on the animal scale, you can also check your dog’s weight by focusing on its body condition which is called BCS. BCS (Body Condition Score) is a basic scale that is used by the pet food companies to check the pets’ body health. This BCS evaluates the dog’s health with 1 to 9 score and 4 and 5 score is called ideal for the dog’s health. The ideal health of dog in which:
- You can feel the dog’s ribs but you can’t see it
- You can notice narrowing at the waist (both sides)
- Dogs have a discernible waistline
For your help, below are some of the important factors that can give you an idea if your dog needs to gain weight or lose it.
Check the Ribs:
To check your dog’s weight, the most important thing is to check your dog’s ribs. Gently rub your hand on your dog’s ribs and feel. So, do you think that ribs have body fat? If yes, then, how much?
Above Look:
After checking the ribs, check your dog from above. So, can you see the visible bones? How visible are your dog’s vertebrae, pelvis bones and ribs? Is your dog’s waistline visible?
Look from the Side:
So, after the above look, now you have to determine the side angle. On this stage, you also have to check the same things that you check in the “above look”. For example: ribs, bones etc. At this stage, also check the abdominal tuck.
Time to recheck your dog’s routine:
After evaluating your dog’s health without any animal scale, it’s time to reorganize your dogs’ food intake and health routine. If your dog is underweight then it must be a reason that it’s over-exercising and not taking enough food for its health’s requirement. On the other hand, if your dog is overweight then it must be taking too much food without doing any healthy workout. You can lead to your dog health ideal by just changing its food intake and exercise routine.