Dog obesity: Causes and solutions

8 min readApr 6, 2020

More than half of the dogs are overweight. More than half of the people are overweight. A significant portion of both are severely obese. It is the result of a mismatch between our prehistoric brain and modern life.

Recently an article appeared in my local newspaper stating that more than half of the dogs are overweight. In fact, one in ten dogs is morbid obese. A few days earlier elsewhere an article on appeared that painted a very similar picture for people. Maybe this isn’t very surprising considering we are living together for tens of thousands of years.

We now share not only our homes with dogs, but also our diseases. An article in National Geographic quotes researcher Ya-ping Zhang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences:

In addition to sharing genes that deal with diet and behavior, dogs and humans also share diseases, including obesity, obsessive-compulsive disorder, epilepsy, and some cancers including breast cancer. (Dog And Human Genomes Evolved Together)

Many of these diseases are relatively new and are related to our increased prosperity. Hence the term “diseases of affluence”. In “Mismatch”, researcher Mark van der Vugt and writer Ronald Giphart argue that our brains are largely wired just like those of our prehistoric ancestors, while modern society looks very different than prehistoric societies. According to them there is a “mismatch”, and diseases of affluence are a result of this. As for food, both us and our dogs are not made to live in abundance but in scarcity. This applies to both our brain and our body.

We stuff ourselves with snacks and other fast food, because our prehistoric brain says that it can take a week before we get our next meal. However, our refrigerator proves otherwise. Nor does it help that even government officials still prescribe three meals a day. Add to that the snacks and sugar drinks, and our body is busy with digestion all day everyday.
Harvard professor and aging specialist David Sinclair, in his book Lifespan, says eating three meals a day is absurd and the main reason we grow old too early in our lives. Unfortunately, we take our dogs into our disastrous modern lifestyle of abundance. We can learn a lot from our ancestors, be it the wild man or the wolf.

Working kelpies work all day before getting a meal. (photo: by me)

Skip a meal

For many people, it probably is hard to understand why some people only feed their dog once a day. I won’t even mention that some people deliberately skip a whole day of feeding! According to some, this is even animal cruelty. However, if you ask the people who do this consciously, they all give more or less the same reason: “Wild wolves also don’t get food every day.”

They have a point, our dogs are descended from the wolves and so understanding their physiology is important to keep our dogs healthy. As it turns out, wolves do not eat food from the supermarket that regularly magically appears in a food bowl. A wolf body is fully adapted to short moments of abundance and periods without food. The same holds true for people. As mentioned, our own diet is the main reason for most diseases of affluence such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Aside from what we eat, it’s probably wise to eat less and less often.

In this article I don’t focus on what constitutes healthy food for dogs. There are simply too many factors to consider. And I can imagine that quality can differ greatly between countries. Central to this article is the amount of feed and the frequency of feeding.

Calorie restriction and fasting

When wolves kill an animal, they first eat all the high-calorie parts, such as the organs and muscle. Later, they eat the low-calorie parts such as bones and skin. This is followed by a period in which they do not eat anything at all. Dogs are not wolves but they are the closest family member to them and provide the best glimpse into a world pre-dog food, canned food, dog sweaters and central heating.

Should we characterize the eating habits of wolves, the following two characteristics emerge. First of all, there is a calorie restriction, the environment does not always provide food and so their food intake is limited. There are also large differences between the days when it comes to the amount of calories. Some days more can be eaten than all other days of the week combined. The other characteristic is fasting. Wolves do not eat at all for short or longer periods and only drink water. The diet of wolves is typically one of feast or famine.

Dogs live longer with a calorie restricted diet

For dogs, calorie restriction means feeding about 70% of the normal amount of food. Research has shown that this produces fewer free radicals at the cellular level and that all kinds of protective proteins are produced in the body.

The effect of calorie restriction has been investigated in various animal species, time and time again it appeared that animals that were fed less lived much longer. This always involved tens of percentages and some animal species even lived twice as long.

Restricting caloric intake to 60–70% of normal adult weight maintenance requirement prolongs lifespan 30–50% and confers near perfect health across a broad range of species. ( The effect on health of alternate day calorie restriction: eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life. — PubMed — NCBI )

Dogs were also researched. To evaluate the effect of calorie restriction on longevity and health, 48 labradors were split into 24 pairs of two. One dog in each pair received 25% less food than their partner. Fitness, body composition and blood values were measured annually until the age of twelve.

The study showed that the labradors who received only 75% of the normal amount of food, lived more than two years longer on average. They had less osteoarthritis in knees, shoulders and elbows, among others. Moreover, the severity of the osteoarthritis was significantly lower. This effect of calorie restriction is greater than the effect of smoking and exercise combined for people.

The graphs below show that restriction leads to a longer life and a healthier body.

Left: calorie restriction led to a bigger percentage of lean body mass. Right: At 11 years of age the half of the dogs in the control group had died. At 13 years of age half of the calorie restriction group had died.

Fasting

Calorie restriction and fasting are not the same thing. After all, you can give 70% of the food just fine every time. But the result is that you feed just as often. In short, this is calorie restriction but not fasting.

With fasting we mean a period in which no food is consumed. Of course, drinking water is allowed and necessary. The most common fasting periods are 12, 16, 24 and 48 hours.Gandhi regularly fasted for 20 days, but also Confucius, Pythagoras and finally the founder of Western medicine, Hippocrates fasted regularly and like I said, wolves do it all the time.

The reason why people do it, is simple, the toughest task of the body is digestion. Quite a bit of work is being done to break down food and convert it into nutrients that we can use. We are so used to the constant presence (and intake) of food that our digestive system is busy all day. But what does the body do when it is not digesting food?

With an empty stomach, the body can focus on healing and strengthening the immune system. Fasting gives the body time to cleanse by filtering out the mess. Unfriendly bacteria and other pathogens are destroyed and disposed of via the stool.

Mahru and I often hike distances of more than 40 kilometers. A healthy weight is the prerequisite, not the result. (photo by: me)

What do the dog experts say

Robert Mueller and Ian Billinghurst who co-developed the BARF diet and have written several dog health books are great advocates for fasting. Mueller also offers some warnings.

Fasting is not a good idea for growing puppies, older dogs, dogs with puppies or with specific health issues where fasting can be counterproductive. For best results, start slowly by fasting once a month and then increasing the fast to once a week. (The Intelligent Pet)

Dr. Karen Becker, who calls fasting a “godsend,” recommends feeding dogs only once a day. But there are also specialists who recommend a 16/8 system, This is a form of intermittent fasting. For example, the dog gets a meal at 10:00 and at 18:00 and may have another snack in the meantime, but during the 16 hours between 18:00 and 10:00, there is nothing else on the menu but water. In short there are different methods and there probably isn’t a best way for all dogs.

However, a number of points are mentioned to a greater or lesser extent by everyone. These can be listed as follows.

Fasting is not a form of starvation but a short break from eating.
It is important that dogs get all the nutrients on the days they eat.
Clean water should always be available.
Fasting prevents diseases but does not cure them.
Fasting a sick dog is rarely/never a good idea.
Although dogs that fast often have a healthier weight, it is not a diet to lose weight.

Working kelpies work all day, only getting a well-deserved meal afterwards. (photo by: me)

The challenge

I think we are facing a much bigger challenge than we realize. Most of us grew up in a time of plenty, full shelves for ourselves and our dogs. We have to have breakfast, brunch, lunch, snack, dinner and dessert, it’s not much different for our dogs. Marketing doesn’t make it any easier.

For example a brand in my country promotes dog kibble for: “Labrador Retriever Neutered Adult” with “Exclusive kibble shape”. This makes no sense at all. Does a neutered adult labrador really need a special kibble? And even an exclusive kibble shape? Of course not. Sadly the brand is the biggest in my country and apparently people believe this kind of marketing.

But this article isn’t about what to feed, but when to feed and how much. However big brands of dog kibble are part of the problems we feed to much and too often.

Comments and sharing is highly appreciated!