This is a placeholder text
Group text
by luvdemdogs on 23 March 2009 - 05:03
by steve1 on 23 March 2009 - 14:03
Steve
by Bob McKown on 23 March 2009 - 15:03
by Bob McKown on 23 March 2009 - 15:03
by Horse30189 on 23 March 2009 - 18:03
by Micky D on 23 March 2009 - 18:03
How Obesity Harms Your Dog
We all love our pets and want to give them the little “extras treats” that life offers but it’s up to us to see that they are healthy. Understanding the risks associated with obesity can help us to ignore those pleading eyes and give our dogs attention and exercise in place of overfeeding.
- Arthritis, cruciate ligament injuries, spinal disc problems, and hip dysplasia can all be caused by or aggravated by extra stress on the skeletal structure.
- Heart failure can be the result of fat cells clogging arteries and impairing blood and oxygen flow.
- Diabetes can be the result of elevated blood glucose levels due to obesity, and can lead to kidney failure and blindness.
- Liver disease occurs when fat cells clog the liver so that it can not efficiently remove toxins from the blood.
- Pancreatitis, a life threatening illness, is associated with obesity and a high fat diet.
- Some cancers are linked to obesity.
- Respiratory difficulties due to excess fat around the muscles of the heart rob the body of adequate oxygen.
- Greater surgical risks plague obese dogs.
- Heat strokeis more prevalent in obese dogs due to insulative fat and breathing difficulties.
by sniffydog on 23 March 2009 - 18:03
I also notice a bunch of these dogs were "retired" at three years old. How on earth do they tell if these beasts have any longevity to them? Of course, with all that weight on the joints, they probably don't. I was impressed with the counter-surfing male, though he illustrates just one more reason you don't want one that tall. He'd have to be pretty strong to get his big self up there.
by Trafalgar on 24 March 2009 - 02:03
The ironic thing to me has always been that people who like one "look" tend to have no shyness about condeming people for liking a different "look".
Personally, if I was asked what kind of GSD "look" I liked best - I'd say I like the look of a dog on a podium.
by MVF on 25 March 2009 - 03:03
Weight or mass is a cube of height.
So if you believe a 26" dog is fit at 85 lbs (I have seem some who were fit at 100) then a dog of the following height is fit at the following weight:
28" -- 105 lbs (= 85*(28/26)^3)
30" -- 131 lbs (=85*(30/26)^3)
32" -- 159 lbs (=85*(33/26)^3)
Most people are failed by their intuition here. A very tall male shepherd who is 30" at the withers should in fact be 130 lbs or even a bit more.
Now, don't fall off the emotional intelligence cliff here, please.
I am not saying tall is good.
I am not saying breeding standards are made to be broken.
All I am pointing out is that all those 28-30" oversized male german shepherds out there (I saw one just today, there are plenty of them) are supposed to be 105-130 lbs or they would be out of proportion.
A big tall male shepherd who is 125 pounds or so is not necessarily overweight.
Of course, a 173 lb shepherd is almost surely overweight unless he is at least 32" and you like 26" dogs who weigh 100 lbs.*
**
In this case, of course, people have good reason to be upset that a breeder of gsd's is creating huge dogs without even a modicum of knowledge about health and testing issues. All I am addressing here is the fact that most people don't actually know what to think about a report of a 140 lb gsd and assume it must be morbidly obese. Sometimes it is not.
Try getting tackled by a 6-5, 280 lb lineman (I have). Those guys are not fat; they are supposed to be that heavy. Anybody remember Refrigerator Perry? He was 300+ and could stuff a basketball and sprint pretty well. Some of us -- not all of us -- would be okay with a big dog who met all the stiff hurdles of the working dog world. The problem is in part that the big dog folks are ignorant of the health issues, but a small part of the problem is that they are excluded from learning from folks like you guys (and from testing their dogs). One of the consequences of jumping on the big dog breeders is that they can honestly say that they can't earn working titles because they are not welcome to try.
___
* A technical note is that even when an animal increases dramatically in size in proportion it is less sound then it was at the smaller scale. An ant blown up to the size of a dog would find its legs could not support it any longer. So even a fit 32" 160 lb shepherd might find itself unsound relative to its 26" 86 lb counterpart. But watch out about where you take that logic -- would you want the gsd shrunk to the size of a papillon -- a dog likely sounder than the shepherd? Size has its purposes! A police dog needs a combination of force and agility -- the bigger dog who is equally agile and sound is better to a point. We just assume that size is where it is now.
by SchHBabe on 25 March 2009 - 03:03
Contact information Disclaimer Privacy Statement Copyright Information Terms of Service Cookie policy ↑ Back to top