Do you look after a dog who needs to drop down a couple of collar sizes?

Have you been worrying about how to help him or her lose weight easily and without hardship?

Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan is the answer.

It is the natural, healthy, easy, simple, pain-free way for any dog to lose a few pounds or, if of a metric turn of mind, kilograms.

This article contains all the information you need to put Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan into action.

But please remember that we are happy to provide one-to-one advice, including diet plans, if you need it.

You can choose whether we supply the food for you or you make it yourself.

Anyway, if we can help all you have to do is call or email.

Eight benefits of Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan

1. Your dog will love the food.
2. The food is quick and easy to prepare at home
3. The ingredients that can be purchased from your butcher or supermarket (or you can buy complete food from Honey’s).
4. The diet leads to the loss of fat, rather than muscle mass (much healthier for the dog).
5. The diet only takes a few weeks to work.
6. It will improve your dog’s general health and may solve all sorts of other issues such as skin complaints and allergies.
7. Your dog will not suffer hunger pangs.
8. No calorie counting or complicated maths involved.

A bit of background

According to the latest research, more than half the dogs in Britain are obese or overweight.

You may think that the main cause is too much food and too little exercise, but it isn’t.

The leading culprit is modern, processed dog food.

Modern dog food is high in simple carbohydrate, low in protein and full of harmful fats – a fatal and fattening combination if you happen to be a dog.

Even many of the so-called diet dog foods follow the same formula.

Why don’t manufacturers, who know the truth of what I am saying, tell their customers?

Almost certainly because modern dog food is indescribably profitable.

At any rate, if your dog is battling the bulge, the answer is to stop feeding dried or canned food and to switch him or her to a natural diet.

That is to say, the diet he or she would eat in the wild.

It’s simple to make at home and the pounds will fall away as if by magic.

Best of all, on such a diet your dog will be able to maintain a healthy weight without ever feeling hungry.

Introducing Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan

At Honey’s we have been feeding thousands of dogs a year since 2009.

One of the things we noticed early on was that when overweight dogs switched to a natural diet they slimmed down without any apparent effort.

This led us to conduct a series of experiments and trials.

Our findings were peer-reviewed by 20 vets, all of whom were happy to endorse our work, and are the basis of Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan.

Why You Never See a Fat Wolf.

What do wolves have to do with it?

Dogs and grey wolves are essentially the same species.

In fact, they are so closely related that they can interbreed.

True, over thousands of years, we humans have changed the external appearance of our domesticated dogs.

But inside they remain 100% wolf.

This is especially true of their digestive systems and it is why dogs thrive on the same diet as a wolf.

Wolves and dogs are carnivores.

They can and do eat vegetables and fruit.

But their primary source of nutrition is prey – everything from mice and rabbits to sheep and deer.

They eat the whole animal, too, including its bones (which provide about a third of their nutrition) and even (disgusting as it sounds) the contents of the stomach.

The main reason why you never see a fat wolf is because they are eating their ideal diet – that is to say the diet which their digestive system can process most efficiently.

As most of us do not want to introduce prey into the home the best alternative is to feed our dogs a domestic version of a wild diet.

That is to say: raw meat, raw bone and raw vegetables/fruit.

This is referred to by scientists as a ‘species-appropriate diet’ and it is the perfect option for all dogs, but especially for those with weight issues.

Why the diet works

The reason why the Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan is so effective is that it features what scientists call a ‘species-appropriate diet’.

What does this mean?

Every creature on earth needs a specific range of foods to survive and prosper.

To offer a couple of well-known examples, giant pandas depend on a diet largely composed of bamboo shoots, while bees depend on nectar.

One of the reasons why you don’t see overweight animals in the wild is because they eat a species-appropriate diet, which provides them with the precise nutrition they need.

No need to count calories

Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan doesn’t involve counting calories.

Instead, the amount you feed is linked to the weight of your dog.

For a dog weighing over 10kg with its heart set on a smaller collar size, we usually recommend 1.5% of its bodyweight every day.

The food itself would consist of roughly a third meat, a third bone and a third vegetables/fruit using any of the ingredients listed later in this article.

It is as simple as that.

Amount to feed per day

Example: a dog weighing 20kg would be fed 1.5% of its own bodyweight every day: 1.5% of 20kg is 300g.

Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan offers many other benefits.

You can obtain all the ingredients from a supermarket or butcher (or complete food, from Honey’s, of course)

Preparation need only take a couple of minutes a day.

Your dog will lose fat and not muscle mass, which is much healthier.

Research has shown that because it is the dog’s natural diet, they feel fuller and are less inclined to look at you imploringly for more food.

Dogs love the taste and texture of the food.

It may help clear up other medical issues, including skin complaints, allergies and digestive problems.

Does a little extra weight matter?

You may be asking yourself whether it really matters that your dog is carrying a little extra weight.

If you care about your dog’s health, then the answer is it does matter.

Excess weight will reduce your dog’s life expectancy and will make him or her prone to all sorts of serious health problems, including joint disease, arthritis, heart disease, hypertension, respiratory problems, asthma, pancreatitis, diabetes, liver disease, skin issues, cancer and a compromised immune system.

Anyway, thanks to Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan, slimming your dog down will be both quick and easy.

Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan made easy

The core ingredients of Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan are, then, any raw meat, any raw bone and most types of raw vegetable or fruit (but not, for example, grapes).

Feed approximately a third of each category.

Approximately? Yes! The percentages don’t have to be 100% accurate every day, providing you balance things out over a period of a week or two.

In the wild, dogs eat what is available and receive the nutrition they need over time.

They most definitely don’t carry scales and calorie counters around with them.

Preparing the food

 The diet requires almost no preparation. Here are some tips:

• When you are serving meat, you may like to mince it (if it isn’t minced already) or cut it into cubes.
• Dogs are remarkably clever at dealing with carcasses, chicken wings, meaty bones and so forth… it is the most natural food in the world for them.
• The vegetables and fruit can be put through the food mixer and either juiced or grated.
• When you are serving bones just make sure that they are too large to gulp down in a single bite. See our Bone guide.

Sample menus

Below is a sample menu plan for a week.

You’ll notice that on a couple of days we have suggested skipping either the bone or the vegetables.

The beauty of the diet is that you don’t have to follow the rules religiously.

There’s a bit of flexibility.

There are four elements:

1. Raw, lean muscle meat and organs
2. Raw meaty bones
3. Raw vegetables and fruit
4. ‘Boosters’ every other day

Incidentally, the Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan is suitable for all dogs. However, if your dog has had recent surgery or has health issues you should consult a vet before making any change to his or her diet. Remember to observe appropriate hygiene standards when handling raw food.

Give a dog a bone

In the wild up to a third of a dog’s nutrition (including calcium, magnesium, complex fats and vitamins) may come from bones.

Bones keep their teeth and gums clean (it has been proven that dogs with healthy teeth live longer) and exercise their upper bodies and jaws.

Providing the bones are raw (cooked bones can splinter) and certain basic rules are observed, they are safe for dogs to eat.

Beef marrow bones, by the way, are delicious (to your dog) but the marrow is fattening and so should be fed in moderation.

How to speed things up

Honey’s Happy Dog Weight Loss Plan is much, much more effective when accompanied by an exercise programme.

The best option is to get your dog out and about, but if this really isn’t feasible, don’t worry.

There are ways of increasing the amount of exercise your dog receives without you having to leave home.

For example, if you put a little bit of food into a Kong (a type of rubber toy) and play a game of fetch, your dog will burn a surprising amount of calories.

Exercise will improve your dog’s health, as well as his or her waistline, but simply changing your dog’s diet will make a massive difference.

Free one-to-one advice

It is shocking that half the dogs in the UK are overweight. It is also unnecessary.

The main cause is kibble and canned food.

You can make your dog happier and healthier by a simple switch of food.

It is as easy as that.

If you would like one-to-one tailored advice all you have to do is contact us.