Healthy Weight, Healthy Pet: Body Condition Score - Dogs

In a previous post, we mentioned using the 9-point body condition score (BCS) system from Purina to evaluate our pet's weight.

You can determine your dog's body condition score (BCS) by following these steps:

1) Facing in the same direction, stand behind your dog. Lean over and place both of your thumbs on either side of your dog's backbone. Spread both hands across her rib cage. You want to be able to feel her ribs without having to exert too much pressure. Thick coats or long hair can make this difficult. Check the above chart. Based on ribs palpation alone, is your dog too thin, ideal, or too heavy?

2) Kneel down to your dog's level to examine the profile. Can you see the abdominal tuck? Another way to detect the abdominal tuck is to run your hand along your dog's underside, from the chest towards the belly (abdomen). If you feel your hand moving in an upswing motion as you move off the chest and rib cage to the abdomen, there's an abdominal tuck. As a pet gets heavier (BCS 8 and 9), she loses the abdominal tuck; your hand may drop downward instead upward.

3) Have your dog stand on all four legs in front of you. Stand behind your dog as in step 1 and look down at your dog's back from overhead. Do you see a waist behind the ribs? It's not a classic hourglass figure, but you should be able to see at least a slight curve inward behind the rib cage.

What is your dog's body condition? Did you come up with a body condition score?

Remember, there are other factors such as breed characteristics and conformation that may affect the BCS.

We use this 9-point system but we do not like the descriptive labels. The labels designated to the BCS are misleading. There are many pets with BCS 6 that we consider "healthy." And there are a few with BCS 4 that we don't consider "ideal" at all. We may say a pet is overweight or underweight then add on a BCS. But we often don’t give just a BCS alone since assuming a BCS of 4 is ideal may be inaccurate under certain circumstances. Even with these limitations, the body condition score system is a valuable tool in evaluating and monitoring our pet's weights. Once we have a way to recognize and monitor a problem, we have a better chance at finding a resolution.

Coming Up: Body Condition Score - Cats