Worried my female staffy is putting on too much weight after neutering

Hi all,

I'm new here, came across this site while trying to find info on my baby girl's weight. Bixi is 10 months old now, she's 15 1/2 inches and weighs in at 15kg. Her Mum and Dad are both fairly stocky so I do expect her to be a good size, but when I had her neutered 4 months ago she was only 12kg. Since then she spent a couple of nights at the vets with what they suspect is Addisons disease, she had vomiting and projectile diorrhea, became dehydrated and lost over a kilo within a week, she looked so skinny it was heartbreaking. It happened 2 days after we were out walking on the roadside when a bus came whizzing past us at such a speed it made Bixi jump from one side of me to the other. She recovered just as quickly and regained the weight, but has be gaining weight pretty quickly ever since. To me she looks perfect, she eats her meals twice a day, has sardines 3 times a week and only has fish skins for treats and walks at least 4 miles every day. To me she looks perfect, but other people are commenting that she's looking a it 'chunky'. What do any of you think?

aslong as she looks right then she's fine, she's still growing.. dont get hung up on weight imo..
My boy is nearly 9months and he's 20kg.. He's not even filled out

Don't get bothered by the actual weight, because they all have different builds and grow at different rates, but if she looks OK to you then she probably is. Here's a link for you to have a read on anyway:

https://staffy-bull-terrier.niceboard.com/t31577-is-my-staffy-overweight

Agree with Jason and Tara, although they are prone to putting on more weight once neutered. Maybe you could pop over an say hi

https://staffy-bull-terrier.niceboard.com/f7-new-member-introductions

Agree with the others, if you're happy with how she looks then ignore them!

By the way, what made you think she had Addison's?

I was always lead to believe that once neutered it's worth cutting down how much to feed a dog, as because that drive isn't there they don't need as much calories. (Not sure on the facts of this though)

At that age weight fluctuates up and down quite a bit as they are still very much growing. Don't worry too much about it

It is easy sometimes to get hung up on the weight issue, so long as she is happy and healthy eats her meals and gets plenty of exercise she should be OK. Do you have any pictures of her, the link below should help with posting them ?

https://staffy-bull-terrier.niceboard.com/t12017-how-to-post-a-photos-onto-the-forum

^^^^agree with above, if she's happy & healthy & exercised then try not to worry.

Thanks for all of your replies, I have just figured out how to upload a pic to my profile, this was taken last week. I am a little bit paranoid I guess. She is lovely, one of the kids really, even more so since she got ill. The vet suspected Addisons disease as it started within a couple of days of her jumping out of her skin over the bus whizzing past too close. I have never seen diorrhea like it, in fact the sound of it was the worst. The vet gave her a canine kaolin 2 help stop her dehydrating, but what we did anage to get down her didn't work. She refused to touch water, we were syringing it into her mouth but it wasn't enough to stop her lips sticking to her gums, it was awful to see. The vet then kept her in for a couple of days on a drip, they suspected Addisons because her heart rate was very slow, when dogs are ill their heart rate should increase. The vet did another test while she was there, I can't remember what it was, but he said it showed signs that could be Addisons. The next day she recovered so quickly and from thereafter was as if othing had happened, which is another sign of the disease. The vet said he didn't want to do the actual Addisons test unless she had another episode. Having read up on it, it does make sense as she has never been good with any kind of stressful situation.

She looks great