My Sadie bear had to go on a diet per the doctors orders. She weighed in at 82lbs at her last visit. The vet recommended getting her down to the low 70’s.

She said no more packaged treats and to cut her dog food by 1/4. She said absolutely no table scraps. However, hard boiled eggs and baked chicken were great snacks for her (in moderation).

After starting her diet I realized I’m the one who made her fat! My poor dog! I never realized how many table scraps I actually fed her. If I made Ryder a sandwich and cut off the crust, Sadie got the crust. Leftovers from dinner that I didn’t want to keep, I’d toss to her. Random parts of my snack or lunches I would give her. It had become such a habit to drop her food, over half the time I didn’t even realize I was doing it. That is until I put her on a diet. I was cutting the crust off Ryders sandwich and went to hand the crust to Sadie and stopped myself. Feeding the dog was literally a habit I was having to break!

It’s been exactly a month and I took Sadie to the vet to get weighed. She weighed in at 72 lbs! That’s a 10lb weight loss in 30 days! You can see she feels better. She moves around a lot more. She actually goes bounding after the kids to play with them. Before she looked like she had to drag herself up off the floor if she needed to move.

A one mile walk used to about kill Sadie. She would come home and lay on the floor for a while panting. Now she can go almost 4 miles and needs maybe 10 minutes to recover before she’s ready to go and play with the boys again.

I think she still has a few more pounds to lose. The extra weight can be hard on her joints, especially with her being 12 years old. But she’s made great progress! I think 5 more pounds should be no problem for her. I’m proud of my old pup. She’s getting healthy so she can take care of her brothers for a few more years 💙