A dog's life when your dog is over weight.

All those that follow Freya Rose Blossom on her CAT FLAP CAVALIER blog know Freya has been on a diet over the last month. At three years old her yearly check up's are something she attends and never misses. Ears, eyes.paws, HEART, joints, jabs and weigh in.
The weighing scales at our vets groaned as she clambered onto them last month. 12 kilo's was far to heavy for a Cavalier.  It's so easy to allow your dog to put on extra pounds. The hardest thing is trying to shed them again. There was no excusing her tubby tum because she looks fluffy with her Cavalier coat.

Explaining to the vet exactly what she ate during the day, all went well until we mentioned dental health teeth cleaning chews. The vet rolled his eye's, we held our breath wondering where we had gone wrong. After a good shake of his head and a tut, tut, we both came to the same conclusion that for Freya at least they are a big no, no.

The vet reinforced his view that giving her one dental chew was like feeding our beloved dog a MARS BAR every day. 

Even when cut up into quarters it's believed they are one of the culprits of her tubby issues. The other culprit/s, non other than ourselves for over feeding her with the occasional cheese snack and lick of ice cream. Not that there is anything drastically wrong with that I agree, but when your dog is starting to look very barrel like you realize it's time to act. Kindness by over feeding can kill.

Another of Freya's downfalls is her fondness for cat food. She can be a sneak thief if left to her own devices anywhere near the sniff of the cat food dish.
Over the last month cat food has been another big no, no.  She's quick, but we have been quicker to remove an unguarded cat food dish. Okay, I admit, twice we forgot, and true to form Freya snaffled every tasty morsel. We aren't just on about tinned or pouched cat food and cat cookies, Frankie de tabby lives high off the hog as any old 19 year old cat should, with roast chicken and poached fish. A fussy 19 year old cat is hard to please so as long as he eats it, he can have what he wants. Freya had a great time and snacked all day when no was one looking.

The month of a new feeding regime has worked. NO CAT FOOD, NO SUGAR FILLED DENTAL TEETH CLEANING CHEWS. Her daily allowance of Dr Wellbeloved light kibble is always weighed. No, I don't mean to advertize, but that is what she now eats. Any titbits she has during the day now come from her daily allowance of weighed kibble. 

We haven't been that mean that she has gone without her usual SMALL bone shaped cookies at night before she goes to bed.
One month on from her vet check up, she is lean and lighter and reached her target weight of 11 kilo's. So far, so good. Now to keep up the good work.

Freya can be found over at The CAT FLAP CAVALIER.

Meya, one of Freya's village doggie friends can be found wearing her new knitted Soggibottom sweater on her walks around the local park.You can find the pattern a few posts back on Soggibottom.
See you all very soon :-) X X X