Feeding a lot and no weight gain.

[elegy]

When Luce was young, she ate 3-4 cups a day to maintain 45 lbs. She was a pretty active dog, though. My other dog has always eaten less than 2 cups/day to maintain 55 lbs. Every dog is an individual. Some are easy keepers, some aren't.

[Adrianne]

Some dogs are harder keepers, give it time.

[Scarsmommy]

You seem to be having the same problem I have with Scar.. it seems that no matter how much I feed him I can never get him to gain much weight. He has had blood work done..and also fecals and everything comes back fine so our vet came to the conclusion that he just has a high metabolism. Somedays he looks skinnier than others but as long as he is healthy and keeps his muscle I don't stress it to much anymore.. here is a picture so you can see Scars body type

[Shoshana]

I agree - he doesn't need more pounds. he just needs more muscle. I'd also keep watching his poop to make sure he doesn't have tapeworms. My vet said they don't actually test for them - they wait till they can be found in the poop before treating. I don't remember what she gave us - it was just one pill so I don't know if it's one of the ones you mentioned.

He doesn't have fleas or tapeworms. He's been dewormed 3 times, with 3 different products.

None of my dogs are overweight, one of them has hip issues and she's on the lower end of her weight range as well for her hips. I'm NOT TRYING TO MAKE HIM FAT. I want to know why he's eating almost 2,000kcals just to maintain the weight I have put on him. My 40lb dog is eating 2cups per day, my 55lb dog is getting 2-3cups per day depending on what we're doing, he gets 3-4 if we're riding a lot.

I do take him to the barn to run around, we have a spring pole that he plays with also. All I was saying is that he is not getting so much exercise that he should require that much food. The only time I have ever fed that much has been when I take a dog riding and we go for 10-15miles per ride.

Thanks for the input, he either has a high metabolism or he's still got some worms.

Some dogs just burn more calories. My friends have a GSP that eats 5 cups of food a day and he's so skinny you can see hipbones. They can't switch his food because he's a picky eater and stops eating if he doesn't like the food. On the other hand, Peanut has less than 2 cups a day of the same food and needs to lose 3 pounds or so. Peanut was eating 2 full cups a day and was the right weight - then we treated her for tapeworm...

[Murfins]

Ime, some animals, despite calories listed on food just don't do well on certain foods with respect to gaining, maintaining or losing weight - maybe it's the protein, carbs or other ingredients and/or maybe it's the way the food is processed (depleting the true nutrition), I'm not positive. I do know that I have had animals that on certain foods I could not keep weight on and others I could not keep weight off and each animal is very different, ime. Personally, that is a LOT of food, imo and I would be at least trying out some other brands/protein sources to see if that made a difference. If none of that made a difference then I wouldn't stress and would just chock it up to the individual dog's metabolism/build - some animals are just naturally thin.