you will be so glad you read this.....my dog's caloric intake

i should absolutely be focused on my mountains of accounting (sorry financial reporting, s.e.c. rules and such) and statistics homework, but i would hate to neglect my blog and my many avid readers.  lol

anyway, i have been concerned with how much and what gus eats since, well ... since day one when we got him.  sometimes i think he is looking a little chubby.  so i wanted to figure out how many calories he eats a day vs. how many calories he should be eating.

resting energy requirements or rer

the rer is the basic amount of energy that a dog would use in a day while remaining at rest. the formula to calculate rer for animals between 2 and 45 kg (5 - 99 pounds) is:

rer in kcal/day = 30(body weight in kilograms) + 70

so gus weighs about 22lbs or

1 pound = 0.45359237 kilograms

 22(.45359237)= 9.98

rer=30(9.98) +70

rer= about 370 calories

(the hard part was finding out the calories in his food)  because we mix honest kitchen and canidae.

so i deduced that we should be feeding him about 420-480, depending on how active his day was. and that is about what he does eat, not counting the cat poop he eats when i am not looking. gross huh...what is with dogs and cat poop?

but now if he gets fatter, i am going to say to him 'gus, that cat poop is really going to your thighs.'

here is gus a few days after we got him.  he is about twice as big now, but just as cute.