Weight & body condition
Is my dog overweight?
Your vet answers it with their hands in about twenty seconds, off a 1-to-9 chart anyone can download free. Here's that same check, done properly at home, and how Dogoos helps you keep track afterwards.
The gap
Almost everyone thinks theirs is the fine one
Vets put 46% of UK dogs at overweight or obese, while 81% of owners say their own pet's weight is ideal. Both figures come from the PDSA PAW Report 2023, which sets them side by side itself (the owner figure is its 2022 reading). The UK Pet Food Obesity Report 2024 found the same gap separately: 50% of dogs overweight, 77% of owners sure theirs is a healthy weight. Two surveys, the same gap.
Nobody's fibbing to a survey. It's what happens when your only reference point is the dog who greets you at the door every single evening. Weight arrives at the speed a hedge grows, and by the time it shows, you stopped noticing the collar going out a hole months ago.
The scales don't settle it either. Twenty-four kilos is a fact about a dog, not a verdict on one. It means nothing without knowing what that particular dog should carry, and for the average British crossbreed no chart knows. Which is why a vet reaches for their hands first.
The check
Body condition, in about twenty seconds
Vets score body condition on a 1-to-9 scale where 4 or 5 is ideal. It measures fat rather than weight, which is why it works on a whippet and a beagle with no adjustment. The chart is published free by the World Small Animal Veterinary Association, and it asks three questions.
The twenty-second check, in three questions
- Feel the ribsA flat hand along the chest. They should turn up straight away
- Look downThere should be a waist behind the ribcage
- Look from the sideThe belly should tuck up, not run straight
- 4 or 5 of 9That is ideal on the published scale, whatever the scales say
Feel for the ribs, don't look for them
Dog standing, not sitting. Lay a flat hand along the side of the chest and run it back with about the pressure you'd use to stroke them. The ribs should turn up straight away, under a covering you'd call thin rather than padded. WSAVA's ideal is just that: “ribs palpable without excess fat covering”.
Look straight down: there should be a waist
Stand over your dog. The outline should pinch in behind the ribcage and flare back out at the hips. The chart wants the “waist observed behind ribs when viewed from above”, and this is the one that fails first, so it's the one worth looking at hardest. A thick coat lies about it, so on a Samoyed trust your hands over your eyes.
Crouch to the side: the belly should rise
From the side, the underline should sweep upwards from the bottom of the ribcage towards the back legs. That rise is the abdominal tuck: “abdomen tucked up when viewed from side”. It's the most stubborn of the three; the chart still allows a tuck at 7 out of 9, two rungs past ideal, and only writes it off at 8. On its own it proves very little.
Reading what you found
Three yeses puts your dog in the band the chart itself marks ideal, 4 or 5 out of 9.
One rung over, at 6, WSAVA describes ribs “palpable with slight excess fat covering” and a waist “discernible viewed from above but not prominent”: the rung households call "a bit cuddly", and the one worth catching. At 7 the ribs are “palpable with difficulty” under heavy fat cover, with deposits over the lumbar area and the base of the tail, and the waist is “absent or barely visible”.
Under-ideal isn't the safe direction either. Ribs visible with no fat you can feel at all is a 3 or below, and the same vet conversation. And the chart scores fat: muscle has its own, so an old dog can sit at a perfect 5 while quietly losing topline.
Once a month, same day each time. A month is long enough
for a change to show and short enough to catch one. Checking every morning just measures
your own mood. 
And reading a chart is not a diagnosis: what your three answers mean for
your dog, and what to do about them, is a conversation with your vet.
Why bother
Twenty seconds of ribs, and the best evidence we have
Seven litters, 48 Labradors, paired by sex and weight, one of each pair fed 25% less than its partner from eight weeks old until the end of its life. The lean-fed dogs reached a median lifespan of 13 years against 11.2 (Kealy and colleagues, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 2002, and one of the four papers printed at the foot of WSAVA's own chart).
One breed, one research colony, a lifetime of controlled feeding. Not a licence to take a quarter out of tonight's bowl. A weight-loss plan for a real dog belongs to your vet, who can first rule out the reasons a dog gains that have nothing to do with dinner.
Which is why the check stays monthly, free and entirely in your hands. Dogoos scores none of it. What it keeps is the weigh-in you take afterwards, so by the time a vet asks how long this has been going on, the curve is already on the summary in your pocket.
In the app
Dogoos keeps the record. Your vet does the scoring
Nothing in Dogoos looks at a photo and decides your dog is fat; the body-condition check is a hands-on one, and what it means for your dog is your vet's call. What Dogoos holds is the bookkeeping: the weigh-ins, the label, and the arithmetic between them, free on every plan, with one AI label scan a day on the free tier.
Log a weight in kilograms with the day it was measured and a second weigh-in is what turns it into a trend chart. A daily calorie range appears with its working printed underneath: resting need at 70 × kg0.75, then the band applied for neuter status, age and energy. Treats get their own meter, capped at 10% of the range's midpoint: for a neutered 12 kg adult that's 451 kcal resting, a 632–722 kcal day, and 68 kcal of treats inside it.
What you never get is a single number, because a single number would look precise and often be wrong. The app's own line sits under every target: “Individual dogs vary by up to ±50% from any formula. Trust the weight trend and body condition over the number.” And beneath it, permanently: “For a personalised feeding plan, ask your vet. This range is a starting point, never a prescription.”
The label scan works the same way. Photograph the constituents panel and the scan reads only what's printed, never guessing a value it can't see. Then it hands you every number it read in an editable sheet, because shiny and curved packs get misread, and nothing saves until you press “Save food”. If energy is missing, you can keep the food and portion with calories unknown. When all five constituents are available, an optional modified Atwater estimate is clearly marked as estimated, separate from a printed energy value. The whole nutrition side is here.
What it does
- Records weigh-ins in kilograms, and draws the trend once there are two of them
- Reads a food label from a photo, then makes you confirm every number before it saves
- Puts the weight curve on the vet summary your phone builds, beside 90 days of your notes
Good to know
- There's no body-condition score in the app: a read returns a mood, a breed check returns a breed mix, and the hands-on check is yours and your vet's
- Puppies get no calorie target. Set a birthday or tick Puppy and the target steps aside, because growth feeding is your vet's call
- A weight above 130 kg is treated as a typo, and you get the weigh-in screen back instead of a target
Weight that moves on its own. A dog gaining or losing while the food stayed the same belongs to your vet, and so does a sudden change in appetite or thirst. Bring the curve with you.
Questions, answered
Before you change anything in the bowl
What body condition score should my dog be?
4 or 5 out of 9 on the WSAVA chart, which marks both as ideal. At 4 the ribs are easily palpable with minimal fat covering and the waist is easily noted from above. At 5 the ribs are palpable without excess fat covering, the waist is observed behind the ribs from above, and the abdomen tucks up viewed from the side.
Can Dogoos tell me my dog is overweight from a photo?
No. A read returns one of six moods with a confidence score, and the breed check returns a likely breed mix; neither looks at your dog's shape. What Dogoos keeps is the weigh-in and the calorie range underneath it. The body-condition check is hands-on, and what the answer means is your vet's call.
Why a calorie range rather than a number?
Because individual dogs vary by up to ±50% from any published formula: same weight, same breed, wildly different engines. A single figure would look authoritative and often be wrong. So the app shows the resting need, the band it applied, and the range that falls out, and tells you to trust the weight trend over the arithmetic.
My dog is a puppy. What does Dogoos say?
It points you to your vet. Set a birthday, or tick Puppy on the profile, and the calorie target steps aside: the screen reads “Puppies grow. Vets guide that”, and where the number would sit, “No target shown: puppy feeding is your vet's call.” It goes off the age on the profile, so a five-month-old with no birthday and the life stage still on Adult will be handed an adult range, which takes two seconds on the profile to fix. Meal logging works either way.
Go and feel for the ribs. Then log the weight while you remember.
Discover the health journal
Keep weight changes and everyday notes together for the next vet visit.