weight and muscle - Page 1

My boy has weighed 100 lbs. I decided to take off a few pounds to keep less weight on his back end.
He is at 95 and looks great. But I want to make sure he doesn't loose muscle.
What are some suggestions to make sure that he doesn't loose any muscle mass?

Since dogs can't lift weights, I not so sure about muscle mass. You could try jogging with a weighted vest or train him in weight pulling. Swimming is great, but it would provide more in the way of cardio and toning than mass.

i guess i worded it wrong. I mean how do you build muscle?

A car tyre a harness and a rope. let the dog warm up well and make sure u also let your dog cool down.

thank you

We would do the same Yogi . Tire pulls for distances with our dogs in harness. Advice that I would give people: I used a bungee chord to attach to the tires and the harness. The dogs loved the exercise and then I got sled harnesses and transferred this to teaching my GS to pull snow sleds in the winter months. Other times, I would do ATV work with in the autumn and spring months with my dogs and snowmobile runs in the winter months. In very bad weather or the summer months when it was to hot , I would put my dogs on the treadmill and run him miles while I watched tv .

Use a sled instead of the tyre, you can put weights on a sled as soon as your dog is used to it ( and already got some muscles ).
But first of all ( in case you didn't check them already ) make sure hips and elbows are okay.
Start slowly, no weights, for some time the sled only, always playing afterwards, not more often than every other day ( the muscles need to recover ).
Normal gaiting only until your dog feels comfortble, later on gaiting/trotting/gaiting, no pass!
Your dog should always love to see the sled.
Bycicle riding ( swimming ) during the days off- for a GSD it's not only about the short, but first and foremost about the long muscles ( endurance ).

How old?

thank you for all the great suggestions, I will be looking into all of them!