We have been struggling with Rigby's weight for the past year or so. She's a 5 year old pit mix who is about 65lbs right now.
She's not a huge fan of playing - she'd rather sniff and eat grass than run after a ball 95% of the time, even with rewards. We try to encourage her to play around the house and in the backyard, but she just stares at us like, "Huh? What am I supposed to do?" I did train her fetch and recall, so she knows how to do it...she just doesn't. She'll tug for days, but she always ends up laying down but still holding it tight in her jaws, even when we encourage her to play. Walks are successful half the time...the other half they turn into a fight, where she plants her butt and won't move (even with a treat incentive). There seems to be no rhyme or reason to why she'll walk one time and not the next.
The weight gain primarily came from her ravenous eating while on prednisone as we were struggling with serious skin issues that resulted in staph infection flare ups 5-6 times a year. She would constantly test our food storage and hiding abilities...and finally figured out how to open the refrigerator. She even managed to eat the cat food that sits in a high rimmed bowl on top of a high dresser...without knocking it over...we still have no clue how she managed that. Then there was the leftover pizza on the back of the stove...when her nose barely even reaches the front burners if she's on her hind legs. When she isn't on the prednisone she's fine, but those were some tough times. She's on Apoquel now which has finally controlled her skin problems so she's hopefully not going back on prednisone anytime soon.
To make matters worse, after one of her worse skin flare ups we were giving her baths 3-4 times a week with Rx shampoo....and she slipped in the bathtub. After that she began favoring one of her rear legs and a visit to the vet and an x-ray confirmed that she likely tore her CCL. We are in the process of saving up money to get that fixed (hopefully next month or so), but the vet wants her to lose weight before that.
She eats 2 cups (actual cups, not a plastic non-measuring cup) of Kirkland Signature Salmon and Sweet Potato currently, though I just double checked the guidelines and it recommends for 40-60 lb dogs (50-55 lbs is her ideal weight according to vet) 3-4 cups per day. She's getting MUCH less than that. Every time we talk to the vet about her lack of weight loss, he just says feed her less and give her green beans to fill her belly, but I'm beginning to worry that she is starving, literally.
So now we are in a vicious cycle. She can't exercise because her leg, her leg is bad because she's overweight, she's overweight because she can't/won't exercise. And she doesn't eat enough to seemingly justify the lack of weight loss.
These days she sleeps nearly all day, even though I am home all day and try to entice her to play multiple times a day. I've gotten new toys for her, used a Kong Wobbler to feed her to get her mind going, but she doesn't even respond to her old favorite toys. She barely gets up for anyone...the only time she really gets off her bed or the floor is when someone is eating. She's even stopped getting up when my SO comes home from work in the afternoons to greet him, which used to send her into fits of happiness.
So long story short, I'm starting to get really worried. Her quality of life seems awful, sleeping 24 hours a day, lethargic, refusing to play... I'm worried that if we go ahead with the surgery to repair her leg before getting some weight off of her that she'll just re-injure herself. We've worked with the vet along the way, and he's even tested her for thyroid disease (negative). He just recommends the continued light to no exercise and reduced feeding, but there have been no results. Last time she was weighed (about 3 weeks ago) she had actually GAINED 5 (!!!) lbs.
Any advice or tips at this point is highly welcomed. It feels so sad to see her like this...it seems like sparkle and life has almost left her eyes and she is just completely depressed. She doesn't even get up for her favorite visitors anymore....
TL;DR - Lazy dog, torn CCL and recommended no/low exercise by vet until surgery, prednisone induced ravenous hunger led to weight gain, eating less than food packaging recommends, still not losing the weight. What can we do?
Submitted July 30, 2015 at 04:29AM by seasicksquid http://ift.tt/1KzBFun dogs
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