Body condition scoring is an excellent tool to monitor your dog’s health and wellbeing and to ensure they are in optimum condition and size for their breed. Once you have practice, it is a quick, easy assessment you can do weekly and then use to adjust your dogs feed quantity. There are various body condition scoring charts, some are from 1 to 5 and others are from 1 to 9. Above is our My Raw Pet body condition scoring chart we which recommend our customers use.

To body condition score your dog, firstly look at your standing dog from the side and above. To be in ideal condition (score of 4-5) they should have a noticeable abdomen tuck and noticeable waist. No tuck or waist or a barely visible waist or tuck indicates they are overweight to some degree (score 6-9). Too big of a tuck and bony protrusions on the back and hips indicates your dog is underweight (score 1-3). Next feel over their ribs, you should be able to feel the ribs relatively easily. If you push over this area and can’t feel the ribs at all or it is difficult, your dog is overweight and has too much fat covering (score of 6-9). Conversely, if you can feel the ribs right at the surface or can easily see them, then your dog is underweight (score of 1-3).

Use these observations and the chart to determine which score is most like your dog. If you assign them 4 or 5 then leave their food quantities as they are. If you assign them 1-3, you need to increase the amount of food fed at each meal and if they are assigned 6-9, you need to decrease the amount you are feeding at each meal. Aim for a 10-15% increase or decrease in their food intake for the first week of change, reassess their BCS and then adjust weekly until they are maintaining a healthy weight. It will obviously take longer for a dog with a body condition of 1 to get back to a healthy weight than it will a dog scored 3. In combination with this, increase the amount of exercise overweight dogs are getting.

If you feel you need help with this, please get in touch.