Is my BC healthy?

[Guest Paul]

My border Collie is 2 years now, and he is 40 pounds , but I think he still need to gain some weight because he is a little bit thinner than normal views. I need someone opinions. 

[GentleLake]

This section of the forums is for asking training questions of an expert in the filed of training a border collie for working or trialing livestock. You might get better response if you post this in  the General Border Collie Discussion section, where it will be noticed by more members and not flag the resident expert that she has a question to answer. 

Note: Thanks to Sue R, whose excellent reply to another post I've adapted for this one.

[colliepoint]

He looks healthy to me. But without being there to feel his sides and back, I can't tell for sure. This article is super helpful in figuring out if he is underweight. Someone recommended it here before when I was researching the same thing. http://www.successjustclicks.com/fit-fido-or-fat-fido/

[Maralynn]

Here’s my 16 m/o BC. She’s about 20” and honestly looks almost like a Border Collie/Whippet cross right now. But she has a touch of fat covering on her ribs and her muscles are ripped so I’m really happy with her weight. 

 

Remember that they’ll naturally fill out a bit more at this age, too. And a touch thin is healthier than a touch heavy for an active dog

[GentleLake]

What has your vet had to say about it?

From the picture, he looks fine. But as Colliepoint says, we really can't tell from a picture of a rough coated dog.

And, yeah, young border collies often tend to be very thin and with many of them there's really nothing you can do about it -- not that you'd want to -- unless you'd force feed them, and no one in their right mind's going to do that. Americans especially are so used to seeing overweight dogs that many of us don't really recognize what a healthy dog looks like.

 

[reploidphoenix]

Looks healthy to me! My girl is skinny too..and she looks really bad when she's wet. But she's still young, and she eats until she's full.. Sometimes when theyre active, they're just skinny like some people. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you look at my girl's chest..its mostly hair lol My girl is petite at 34lbs. she's 11 months old

sorry the picture is sideways..can't seem to fix it

 

[GentleLake]

Actual weight for any dog is irrelevant without knowing the dog's height and frame. Even then it's usefulness is limited without being able to put hands on the dog.

My border collie is 20 1/2 inches at the shoulder, medium coarse bone structure and weighs about 39 lbs.

My border collie mix is 22 1/2 inches at the shoulder. If she weighed 39 lbs. she'd be a tub of lard. She's also part sighthound, with much thinner bone structure and a very narrow chest. Her legs look like Maralynn's dog, but her chest is much narrower. She's good at about 36, 37 lbs. max. At 35 lbs. the vet thought she was too thin so I tried putting a little more weight on her and I can't feel her ribs anymore, even though her backbone and hip bones are still very easy to feel. Cutting her back down a bit now.

So posting pics and giving height and bone structure can only tell you so much. You've got to look at the dog in front of you, put your hands on it and even gauge appetite and behavior.