Hi there, I’m relatively new to posting so sorry if I’m doing this wrong. I have a 18.5 week old Labrador puppy that I am concerned is underweight.. she is 13kg as of today when I weighed her, she seems to be gaining about a kilo a week which is an improvement on the 500g/week we had earlier on. I’ve seen the “How much does your puppy weigh” thread and I can see there are some smaller puppies in there but I’m worried that her body composition is too skinny. Not to mention my partner is giving me a hard time about how small she is as I am the one who feeds her, I’m worried I’m doing something wrong with her feeding that will result in her being quite small all her life. I feed her Royal Canin Labrador puppy food using the “adult weight” as 32kg. I’m considering increasing her food again but am concerned about bloat if I give her too much for each meal (she still gets 4 meals a day - I am going to move down to 3 soon). Anyway, any advice? Will she likely reach a full (25-30kg) adult size? Her litter mates are much larger than she is.
She looks fine to me. Working bred labs are not 'Andrex' puppies. Time and again, I have folks in class whose idea of a Labrador puppy, is a puppy which looks like a roly poly Andrex puppy. The Andrex puppy is a SHOW BRED Labrador, with a larger bone structure and a propensity to put weight on very easily. A working bred Lab puppy should be fit, athletic, and lean. Fat puppies become fat adults. Your pup has a waist and a tuck-up and looks fine to me.
I'm no labrador expert but she looks great to me. My girl started looking like a sausage on legs when she was around that age. After I put a stop to people sneaking her food she started looking like a dog again. Now she is lean and athletic. A lot of people deem her "underweight" because she doesn't look like the typical overweight lab. But her vet applauds that she is a healthy weight that isn't going to ruin her joints.
Hi there, your pup looks good to me. My girl is small also but after having a lab years ago that was overweight, (when I didn't know better) that had joint problems and was on vet's diet food all her life to try to keep her weight down, believe me it's far better to keep your pup trim and comfortable from an early age.
Thank you all!!... you have put my mind at ease, i'll keep up with what i'm doing and see where she ends up for her adult weight
She looks great, and has the same shape as Cooper, which is what I think field labs should look like. Cooper is a big girl, she weighed about 18 kg (40lbs at 18.5 weeks) She just about doubled that by the time she was full grown. She weighs about 80lbs now and is 24" at the withers, so she is still a tall dog with a small waist. If your pup follows Coopers pattern she will end up around 26kg. Our previous lab, Tilly, was about 35 lbs at 18.5 weeks and ended up between 65# & 70# so she just about doubled her 18.5 week weight also.
I was worrying about the same thing but this thread put my mind at ease. Joy looks the same shape at around 11.5 months and I was worried he was underweight. I'm really tired with everyone around me telling me that he is too thin and that we should feed him more. I actually tried that once. I added 1/4 cup more food to his dinner, but he ended up throwing it up. I'm not going to do that again. The vet is happy that Joy is an active and playful pup and says that too much fat would affect that. I'd never want that to happen.
I get that all the time. People keep asking me what breed she is and are shocked when I say Labrador lol. Some then proceed to tell me she is too skinny or that she is crossed with something and not purebred (Honestly I wouldn’t care if she was crossed anyway but I know she isn’t). But this has also put my mind at ease having some feedback on how she is going. Thank you all. She is now 21 weeks and just hit 15kg, so she is gaining 100g a day on average, not bad. Progress is progress I suppose . She’s getting an extra 40g (half cup) of food a day as well so I’m hoping that helps her grow more.
