Adding pumpkin to dog’s diet may help with weight-loss

Q: We were watching some of your hilarious YouTube videos and caught one where you were talking about adding pumpkin to a dog’s food so that it would lose weight. Could you please explain in more detail why a dog would like pumpkin? My boxer is very overweight and we have tried everything else and nothing has worked so we are willing to try anything. — Mike Larsen, Las Vegas

A: Many carnivorous animals like pumpkin — not just dogs. Many zoos give pumpkin to their big cats and wolves. There is just something about the smell and texture of it that they enjoy.

Canned pumpkin has lots of fiber and hardly any calories, so if your dog is overweight and you add the pumpkin to its dinner, then the dog feels full, yet it is getting fewer calories.

When my dogs grew older and were not as active as they used to be, they all had weight problems. So what I did was to remove half the normal ration of food and replace it with the pumpkin; in other words, I would give them one cup of dog food and one cup of the canned pumpkin. They loved it and did not feel like they were missing out on anything.

The only time you may not want to do this is if your dog is on one of those special prescription diets; in that case you must consult with your vet before changing your dog’s diet.

Q: My green cheek conure is a great pet, but every time I put his dish of parrot pellets in the cage he eats a few and then spends the rest of the day flinging the rest all over the floor. Is there any way I can put some kind of cover over the dish so he cannot do this anymore? It cannot be because he is bored; his cage is so full of toys. — Terry Richards, Allentown, Pennsylvania

A: Pet stores do sell certain covered dishes and splash guards that force a bird to stick his head into an opening of the cup in order to eat, preventing him from scattering the pellets about.

However, if he enjoys playing with his food after he is done eating, then most likely he will still figure a way to do it even with the covered dish. It seems as if throwing his pellets around is more entertaining to him than playing with all the toys that you gave to him.

I would advise you to put the dish of food in the cage for an hour in the morning before you go to work and then an hour at night when you get home. He will have plenty of time to eat as much as he needs of the pellets, but after he is full he will not have access to them.

If you feel guilty about leaving him during the day without any food in his cage then you can put a dish of vegetables cut into large chunks that take a long time to chew up, such as sweet potatoes, carrots or celery. He can chew up and eat these during the day and they are not quite so easy to fling about as parrot pellets.