Just a quick update for those interested in Porsche and her progress with the Green Bean Diet for Dogs. Porsche has been on the diet for about a month now. When she started the diet, she weighed 69 pounds. We have not yet done a follow-up weighing. She is heavy and floundering when we try to lift her to get the weight with our bathroom scales. Her vet is located in Cassopolis, MI, which is a 30 or 40 minute drive each way. So we’re left with other observations about her diet.
The first and most obvious factor is that she is more active. I had thought that with fewer calories, she might be lethargic until she adjusted to having less food intake, but almost from the first few days, she started walking around more. She now walks with me up and down the stairs, instead of her old habit of walking to the top of the stairs and then plopping down, chin on paws, to wait for me to return. I guess it used to be too much trouble to walk down and back with me.
Porsche also has become more energetic with her favorite toy, Kong. Kong is a long cylinder made of tennis-ball material attached to a thick yellow rope. She loves Kong and just the mention of the word has her up and waiting at the door. While formerly, my son would throw Kong and she would retrieve it 10-15 times before lying down and refusing to bring it back, she now has retrieved Kong a record 60 non-stop times. My son actually made her stop at 60, because he was worried she would hurt herself. So that mysterious extra energy is also helping Porsche to get more exercise and thus burn even more calories.
The green beans also seem to be helping with her less desirable habit of stealing food from the cats. She used to wait for a cat-food opportunity and we had to be very vigilant. While she has gotten to the cat food bowls a couple of times in the last month, she is much less interested in their food now. In fact, about two weeks ago, she got to the cat food bowls, gorged on all the cat food and then promptly threw it up. I was less than thrilled with the event and scolded her sharply. Later, I felt bad because she had really already gotten her punishment for being a glutton and obviously did not feel well when I was scolding her. I was also worried that maybe she was sick, but she recovered so quickly, we have assumed that it was sheer volume and speed of ingestion that caused it all to come back up.
We tried measuring her around the back trunk area. At the start of the diet, she measured 31″. When we tried measuring her again, she squirmed and escaped from the measuring tape. The best measurement I got seemed to also be 31″, maybe slightly less. She looks a little leaner, especially right above her back legs, but we have not gotten any reliable evidence.
All in all, we are pleased with the diet. Porsche’s coat seems glossier and she is more energetic. I may mix in carrots or other vegetables from time to time instead of green beans, just to give her a little more variety in vitamins. I’ll do some research first to find out which ones are the healthiest for dogs. I’m also considering occasionally giving her bits of lean, unseasoned cooked meats to give her a little more protein. I’m considering this because I discovered that the first, and most prominent, ingredient in her dry dog food is ground yellow corn meal instead of a meat product.
We’re also going to try to figure out how to weigh her. Maybe one of our farmer neighbors will have an answer!
Photo credit: stock image from the amazon.com store
