How Do I Keep My Dog A Healthy Weight in Winter?

Winter is well and truly upon us!!!

Shorter, colder, days means comfort food for warming our souls; it’s all too easy to forget about how our habits during winter can affect our pets health?

I think it is always important to start thinking about what your valued customers are going to be experiencing before they actually do!

By thinking this way, you can prepare your staff to take advantage of some great business opportunities…..So understanding their upcoming issues will help your business to continue moving forward.

Winter can be one of those challenging times where our own routines can be disrupted…….as a consequence of this, the routines of your clients pets also get disrupted.

These include:

Daily exercise
the days are shorter, and darker in the mornings, and as such we prefer to snuggle up rather than get out and take our puppies for some exercise…
Hence, they get less exercise..... which means more weight gets put on.
Exercise types
Eating habits
we tend to eat more comfort food over the cooler months……and are warming to our souls……when we see our puppies looking up to us, we automatically think they are cold and also need their souls warmed up by our comfort food…….so they tend to eat more, because we tend to eat more……..
plus the food we give them is more likely to be the types that will tend to put excess weight on…….and I’m not talking about humans now…….
Sleeping habits
Becasue of shorter days, especially if they are inside dogs, our pets are also more likely to be sleeping more....
Hence slower metabolism and less energy use. Therefore more weight is likely to be accumulated.
Drinking habits
And the list can go on……..

Being able to forecast these issues to your customers can mentally get them prepared, but also gives you some real credibility as a business.

If nothing else, it shows you care enough to think forward about them……and this all adds to the customers experience.

So with these two thoughts now in your head…..how are your customers treating their furry family members?

Are they keeping the exercise up to them as they would do in summer?

Are they sticking to their normal eating habits, timings, and food types???

Here are a couple of tips to help:

Don’t radically change the exercise type.
Keep the exercise up.
Reduce the amount of food if you are not exercising as much.
Pet Treats designed specifically for pets are fine but remember not to over treat with your own comfort food….
Keep the water up to your pets….
Weigh your pet before winter and then midway through to ensure you keep a check on their weight….