Weird Question About Weight Gain

[greysmom]

Hey everyone!

 

Long story short, through an unfortunate series of circumstances, our new girl Toni weighed only 47 lbs when she was put under a doctor's care on 1/12/09. This was before she came to our house on 1/23. She had a severe case of giardia, as well, that was treated prior to us.

 

We were told to feed her 2 cups of kibble 3 or four times a day (Science Diet L/R Adult), which we did for about 2 weeks. Then, as she was looking really good by then, we began slowly cutting back to last week feeding her twice a day, a bit over 2 cups total. Her last three ribs still show, her hip points are not sticking up, her backbone has lost the hollowed out look and her butt is filling out with muscle, she still has quite a tuck up. If she had come to our house looking like this I would think she was nearly perfect.

 

So I was totally shocked when her weight last Friday at her spay surgery was 70 lbs!! That's 8 lbs over her racing weight. And the vet charged us $55 extra due to the volume of fat in Toni's abdominal cavity that she had to work through. The vet also wants her to lose 5 lbs.

 

So my question is have you ever heard of this before? Is this a common occurence when a severely underweight dog begins being fed regularly? Is the fat build-up a normal thing or should we be on the look out for another cause?

 

Otherwise, she's happy and healthy and came through her surgery and dental with flying colors.

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

greysmom

[MaryJane]

Do you think that the vet's scale was off for the weight on 1/12?

 

I've put weight on fosters but that's usually AT THE MOST about 5 to 8 pounds over 2 weeks (ie .. about 15 lbs a month) and while these dogs were a little underweight, it was nothing like a "47 pounder".

 

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced anything similar and what they fed to get the weight up.

[GeorgeofNE]

Getting rid of the Giardia and feeding her SLIGHTLY more than normal would probably have gotten her to a healthy weight in a couple of weeks instead of basically tripling her food intake! I'm surprised, honestly, that you were told to do that.

 

People tend to get nuts over the "racing weight" thing. Some dogs race heavy, some dogs race lean. Your dog should weigh what is a healthy weight for her--George actually weighs LESS than his racing weight (muscle is heavier than fat) and IMHO and my vet's, his weight is perfect. If I got stuck on the "XX pounds over racing weight" he'd be fat!

 

I'm sure if you feed her a normal amount, she'll be just fine in a few weeks!!

[greysmom]

I did see a picture of her just off the farm - you could clearly see nearly her entire skeletal structure (extremely emaciated), and she had down-to-the-bone pressure sores. She was in very bad shape. I'm not telling the whole story because it puts the farm and its owners in a very bad light, and I know they have been good and responsible breeder/owners in the past. I suppose her weight loss might have been exagerated, but that picture was not.

 

I was mostly concerned about the fat build-up the vet saw during her spay surgery. I've never heard of that happening before. She's now getting 2 cups of kibble (we're switching her OFF the Science Diet) a day which is what the other three are maintained on. Also increasing her exercise a bit with an actual walk a day instead of just yard play and zoomies.

 

Thanks!

greysmom

[MaryJane]

I did a quick search out on the web using "weight gain in emaciated dogs". The two links below are interesting.

 

http://www.thepetcenter.com/imtop/recovery.html

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summa...86-31234926_ITM

 

They sort of recommend not feeding more than the quantity per day that you would feed a normal weight dog and it seems they also favor calories from fat rather than carbos so more "puppy type chow" rather than adult. So in the case of an 80 lb dog, I take this to mean that he/she should probably not be fed more than 4 cups a day but with a higher fat content. Hmmmm .. not sure about this in greyhounds though because of their intolerance to large amounts of fat.

 

They note that there is a "refeeding syndrome" where the dogs are fed too much to get the weight on too quickly and as a result, chemical imbalances occur in the body which in turn can cause problems.

 

Theoretically from what I gathered in the articles, I suppose that if a starving dog is overfed and gets too many carbos, it could turn into the "fat" that you are mentioning that the "spay" surgeon saw.

 

So ... this "fat build up" may not be a good thing and loosing weight (very slowly) is likely a good idea and then maybe gain it back slowly (I guess so it comes back correctly in some form other than fat). But, I'm not a vet or a nutritionist and don't pretend to be - I would probably take those articles and talk to some specialists and see what they say.

 

If you follow up with your vet, I'd love to hear what they say about this so I have it for future reference.