Green Beans?

[Stella]

Got the boys weighed on Friday and Hartley has gained 3lb over the summer. He is now 77lb, and is carrying a little more weight than I would like. I try to keep him under 75lb, preferably around 74lb. He definitely has the lab tendency to gain weight easily, and this is despite agility training and competing. He is fed Acana, and only gets 250ml per meal (two meals per day) .... sorry the cups measurements wore off my cup, so don't know how much this is in cups!! I know that if I cut his food back he is going to be hungry and I remember reading on here that you can use green beans to help them to feel full. So, my questions are: what kind of green beans - raw? frozen? canned? cooked? how much? is there a substitution X amount of green beans to replace X amount of food??? Any other tasty food substitutions?

[Lonnie & Libby Lu]

Hi Stella!  Libby was recently at the Vet for her yearly check up and she weighed 48 pounds.  Our vet would rather see her down to 45 and suggested she cut down on her food.  Nancie & Gracie Doodle suggested green beans with her kibble.  I steam the green beans and she gets a 1/2 cup of green beans and 1/2 of kibble twice a day.  Every once in a while we give her boiled chicken instead of the green beans but only a 1/4 of cup.  We took her in last Friday and she has lost 1.3 pounds and the vet was very happy with the progress.  It has been seven weeks since her visit.  Hope this helps a little!

[Anita - Thunder, Noodle, Sparky]

I just threw frozen green beans in with my dog's food. Crazy though, 3 of them were totally fine with frozen green beans, and one would go outside and immediately throw up after one bean.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Canned, no-sodium-added green beans, heated, seem to work best and appeal the most to dogs. 

There are only 40 calories in a whole cup of green beans. You didn't mention which Acana formula you're feeding, so I'm going to use the Wild Prairie formula for an example. Wild Prairie contains 434 calories per cup. If you were feeding two cups per day (250 ml is one liquid cup), that's 868 calories.  (which really doesn't sound like a lot for a dog Hartley's size, but I digress, lol.)

Now, if you replaced just a quarter cup per meal of the Acana with a full cup of green beans, that would save 68 calories per meal, or 136 calories per day, (108 calories in the quarter cup of Acana you're taking away, less 40 calories in the cup of green beans you're adding = 68 x two meals per day)  yet Hartley would be getting a cup and a half more food: 1 cup of green beans plus .75 cups of Acana = 1.75 cups of food at each meal = 3.5 cups of food per day versus two cups of just the Acana. 

I am a little worried that he may not get enough nutrients with only 1.5 cups of Acana per day, but if he's gaining weight on only two cups per day, it should be fine. You could try cutting back slightly less than a quareter cup and see how that goes.

There are lots of other tasty food substitutions, lol, but none that are going to save many calories. A medium hard-boiled egg contains only about 85 calories, but substituting that for a quarter cup of kibble would only save about 23 calories, and won't fill him up as much as a cup of green beans will.  Be sure to warm them up before adding them to his kibble.

[Stella]

Thanks for such a detailed reply Karen. I rotate through most of the Acana formulas, I've always fed the same volume for each formula because I figured it evens out in the end! And I feed way less than is recommended on the bag. I think I'll look at buying some of the lower calorie formulas for a while. The problem is that Chase, my other dood has the opposite problem - hard to keep weight on him, and trying to increase his volume doesn't work because he just stops eating - won't empty his bowl. For ease, I've always had them on the same food and I don't really want to have to have them on two separate formulas if I can help it.

I'm pretty sure he has gained weight due to less exercise. My marriage fell apart earlier this year and as a result, the dogs are inside during the day when I am at work. Previously, my ex would have been at home a few days a week and they would have played fetch three to four times a day with him. Although they still do get a fair bit of exercise, it is less than they are used to. Once things settle down in my personal life, I will be able to get back to increasing their daily exercise. I looked into a dog walker, but I live in a rural area and the cost was astronomical!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Increasing the exercise would definitely help. I play ball indoors with JD...no running, the house isn't big enough for an 80 lb dog to run indoors, but 30 minutes of fetch with a stuffed squeaky ball does help, and I get to sit in a chair and watch TV while JD fetches. 

[Stella]

"Like" :)

[BG and Gavin]

Sorry to hear Stella :(  Don't worry too much about a couple extra pounds, you will get it figured out.  Make sure you are taking care of yourself.