The scale at Hank's rehab practice is a big rubber platform on the floor, and on February 2 it said 72.0. On December 29, at my clinic, he'd weighed 68. Four pounds in a month, on a dog who had done nothing but lie in a pen and go outside on a leash. The therapist didn't make a big deal of it. She just said "hm," in exactly the tone I use at the front desk when an estimate is about to get longer.
Four pounds doesn't sound like much. On a 68-pound dog it's about 6 percent of his body weight, and it's all riding on a knee that just had a plate put in it, plus a right knee we're trying very hard to keep healthy. So for the last three weeks we've been working on it. Here's what we changed.
How it happened
Simple math, mostly. We kept feeding him for the dog he was in December, the one who walked 45 minutes a day and patrolled the fence line for squirrels. Then we added extras: a dab of peanut butter around his pills, yogurt on the lick mat, pumpkin in the frozen Kong, a treat every time he was good about the sling (always). Each of those felt tiny. Together they were a second dinner.
Plus some guilt. I'll own that. When your dog is stuck in a pen and looking up at you, food is the easiest way to say sorry.
What we were told
I asked one of the vets at my clinic, and the rehab therapist said the same thing: trim his daily food by about a fifth for now, count every extra as part of the day, and weigh him every two weeks so we can adjust. She worked out a daily calorie target for Hank based on his ideal weight. I'm not sharing that number, because it was for Hank specifically, and any target for your dog should come from a vet who can put hands on him.
In practice, Hank used to get about three and a half cups of his Purina Pro Plan Large Breed a day, split between breakfast and dinner. Now he gets a little under three cups, and that includes whatever goes into his puzzles and toys. Nothing extra goes in unless something comes out.
Making less food last longer
This is where the crate rest gear earned its keep a second time. The trick for us was to stop putting food in a bowl at all. Everything he eats now comes with a job:
- Breakfast in the snuffle mat. About half his morning kibble, hidden in the fleece strips. Ten minutes of sniffing instead of 40 seconds of inhaling.
- A frozen Kong at lunch. Soaked kibble from his daily amount, packed into a Kong Classic with a teaspoon of plain canned pumpkin (not pie filling) and frozen overnight. Twenty-five minutes of work.
- A LickiMat in the evening. More soaked kibble mashed into the grooves. Licking settles him for the night.
- Green beans as filler. Plain frozen green beans, no salt, a few at a time. He thinks they're treats. Our vet was fine with them for Hank in small amounts.
- Kibble instead of training treats. For the sling and the potty trips, he gets pieces of his own dinner, counted out each morning into a jar on the counter.
The jar was Caleb's idea, and it's the single thing that helped most. When the jar is empty, Hank is done for the day, no matter who's standing at the counter feeling soft.
Three weeks in
At rehab yesterday, February 23, the scale said 71.0. One pound in three weeks. That's slower than I'd like and, I'm told, about right. Fast weight loss isn't the goal while he's trying to build back the muscle in that leg, and the therapist pointed out that some of what we want him to gain back is thigh, so the scale isn't the whole story. We're also checking his waist from above and his ribs under our palms, the way one of our vets showed me years ago, and both are slowly coming back into view.
His recheck X-rays are next Monday, March 2. If those look good, short leash walks start, and the calorie math gets a little friendlier.
Hank has noticed the change, of course. Around 3 p.m. he stands in his pen facing the jar and grumbles at it, and when that doesn't work, he grumbles at me. I've learned to read with my back to the kitchen.
