Common Feeding Mistakes Indian Pet Parents Make
June 18, 2026 · 12 min read
Ask ten pet parents what they worry about at mealtimes and you get ten answers. Is he drinking enough water. Are those treats too many. Is rice fine. Should I be adding curd, or ghee, or the supplement someone recommended in a WhatsApp group.
All fair questions. But the longer we cook for other people's dogs, the more we think most of them sit downstream of one thing almost nobody asks about.
Not what you feed. How much.
Why portioning is the one that compounds
Most feeding mistakes are self-correcting. Feed something your dog doesn't like and you find out that evening. Feed something that doesn't agree with him and you find out by morning.
Portioning is different, because getting it wrong looks like nothing at all. A bit extra, twice a day, produces no visible event on any given day. It produces a slightly heavier dog by the end of the season, on a body that was never built to carry it. And the people best placed to notice are the ones least likely to. When researchers asked owners to score their own dogs against a standard body condition chart, a third of them underestimated it, mainly on the dogs that were carrying excess fat.
The other direction is quiet too, and it is worth being honest about how you would spot it. Not by behaviour. It is widely believed that a dog short of food will guard his bowl, but when researchers looked at 900 dogs taken in from cruelty cases, underweight dogs were no more likely to show food aggression than normal-weight ones, and no more severe about it when they did. Appetite and food-seeking tell you something about the dog. They do not reliably tell you anything about the portion.
And the free-feeding version, bowl down all day, top it up when it looks low, means nobody actually knows the number. Not the person feeding, not the vet, not you. That is the real cost of it. Once the amount is unknown, everything else you try becomes guesswork.
Extra weight is not something we are qualified to write about medically, and we won't pretend otherwise. What we will say is that it is a large share of what vets deal with. The Merck Veterinary Manual puts it at more than half of the dogs and cats seen by vets in the US being overweight or obese. And it is much easier not to put the weight on than to take it off: in an international study of more than 1,500 overweight dogs placed on supervised weight-loss programmes, over a third did not finish the three months, and of those still being assessed at the end, 7% had reached their target weight and an ideal body condition. Anything beyond that belongs in a conversation with your vet.
What the right amount actually looks like
Here is our own chart for a healthy adult dog on Chicken and Rice, per day, split across two meals.
- 2 kg: 145 g
- 5 kg: 285 g
- 10 kg: 475 g
- 20 kg: 805 g
- 30 kg: 1090 g
- 40 kg: 1350 g
Two things are worth noticing.
The first is that the numbers are not proportional, and that is not a quirk of our chart. A dog's energy requirement tracks metabolic body weight rather than body weight itself. The standard veterinary formula raises body weight in kilograms to the power of 0.75, and the Merck Veterinary Manual states plainly that energy requirements for dogs and cats are not a linear function of body weight. So a 20 kg dog is twice the dog of a 10 kg one, but he does not eat twice the food. 475 g becomes 805 g, not 950 g. The consequence is simple arithmetic: scale a portion by eye from a mid-sized dog and you will overshoot at the big end and undershoot at the small end.
The second is that these are a starting point, not a rule. They assume a healthy adult at a stable weight and ordinary activity. A growing puppy eats a good deal more for his size, close to double while he is very young, and the gap narrows as he matures. The standard multipliers are three times resting energy requirement under about four months and twice it after that, against roughly 1.6 times for a neutered adult. A working dog, a senior dog, a dog recovering from something, a dog who has been spayed recently, all sit off the chart. Weigh your dog regularly, keep a record, put a hand on his ribs, and adjust from what you find rather than from what the table says.
The part measurement doesn't fix
You could take that chart, buy a kitchen scale, and still end up wrong by the weekend. Measuring is not the hard part. Measuring every single time is.
Fresh food is wet, and its density shifts with the recipe and with how it settles, so a cup of it is not a reliable amount. Two people in the same house feed the dog and neither knows the other already did. The scale ends up in a cupboard behind the mixer. Someone travels and the person covering guesses. On a busy Tuesday you tip the container and think, close enough.
None of that is carelessness. It is what happens when a task that needs precision has to survive a normal week.
Mia
Mia's family came to us the way a lot of families do, worn down by a dog who wouldn't eat. They had tried brands, flavours, gravies, toppers. Something worked for four days and then didn't. Meals had become a negotiation.
What they described to us afterwards was that once the food arrived already measured, the negotiating stopped. She settled into her meals, her weight steadied, and mealtimes stopped being a thing the household braced for.
That is one dog and one family's account of her, not evidence, and we would rather tell you that plainly than dress it up. A dog who suddenly stops eating, or who eats and still loses condition, needs a vet before he needs a new food. Fussiness is sometimes fussiness and sometimes it is a symptom, and a blog post cannot tell you which one you have.
What we did about it
We pack single meals. Each pouch holds one meal for one dog, portioned off that dog's weight, so the decision is made in our kitchen rather than in yours at 7am.
Pouches run from 150 g to 500 g, with 200 g the standard, and we price by the gram, ₹0.40 for Chicken and Rice, GST included. That last bit cuts against us and we will say so: a bigger dog costs more to feed, and there is no version of this where we benefit from telling you to feed less. We publish the chart anyway, because a dog who is fed correctly stays a customer for years and a dog who is quietly overfed does not.
An opened pouch should be eaten within 12 to 24 hours, and food shouldn't sit in a bowl for more than two hours. That last figure is not one we invented to sell more pouches. Two hours is the standard food safety limit for any perishable food left at room temperature, and one hour once it is above 32°C. There are no preservatives in ours, so nothing is holding that line for you.
What a pouch cannot do is know that your dog ran for an hour this morning, or that he has put on two kilos since summer, or that your vet has asked you to change something. It removes the daily arithmetic. It does not remove you.
If you want help working out what the right amount is for your dog, tell us his weight, age and how much he moves, and we will do the maths with you. WhatsApp us to start, or visit pawsitivelife.in.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I feed my dog?
Start from weight. A healthy adult on our Chicken and Rice eats roughly 285 g a day at 5 kg, 475 g at 10 kg and 805 g at 20 kg, split across two meals. A very young puppy eats close to double an adult of the same weight, and that gap closes as he grows. Treat all of it as an opening position and adjust to the dog in front of you.
Should I measure by cups or by weight?
By weight. Cups measure volume, and volume is a poor stand-in for what actually goes in the bowl. When researchers tested owners and staff portioning food with household measuring cups, accuracy ranged from an 18% underestimate to an 80% overestimate in one study, and from a 48% underestimate to a 152% overestimate in a later one, with the error worst on the smallest portions. Those studies used dry kibble, where at least the pieces stay the same size. Fresh food is wet and its density shifts with the recipe and with how it settles, so a cup of it is less reliable still. A kitchen scale is the cheapest useful thing you can buy for your dog.
My dog acts hungry all the time. Am I underfeeding him?
Often not. Appetite is a poor guide to need, and some of it is hard-wired. Cambridge researchers found that around a quarter of Labradors carry a mutation in the POMC gene that leaves them hungrier between meals and using around 25% less energy at rest than dogs without it. Judge by body condition rather than by enthusiasm: you should be able to feel the ribs under a thin layer of fat, and see a waist behind the ribs when you look down at him. If he is at a good weight and still frantic about food, that is worth mentioning to your vet.
Do treats count?
Yes, and they are usually where the extra creeps in. The usual veterinary guidance is to keep treats under about 10% of what your dog eats in a day, because most treats are not complete and balanced and start diluting the rest of the diet past that point. Count them inside the daily total rather than on top of it, which in practice means taking that amount off his meals.
How long does a pouch keep?
Unopened and refrigerated, 3 to 5 days. In the freezer, a month. Thaw it overnight in the fridge and never on the counter: the USDA's guidance is explicit that food should never be thawed or stored on the counter, because the outside of the package sits in the 4°C to 60°C range where bacteria multiply fast while the middle is still frozen. Once opened, eat within 12 to 24 hours. Get it into the fridge within two hours of delivery, which is the standard limit for any perishable food at room temperature.
Can correct portioning fix a health problem?
No, and we won't suggest it can. Feeding the right amount is basic good care, not treatment. If your dog has a diagnosed condition, that goes through your vet, and on our side through our canine nutritionist, who formulates the therapeutic recipes alongside a vet's plan rather than instead of one.
Sources
Sources
The feeding chart, pouch sizes, prices and storage windows above are our own, taken from our kitchen and our pouch label. The general veterinary and food safety points are drawn from the following.
Nutritional Requirements of Small Animals, Merck Veterinary Manual. Resting energy requirement as 70 × body weight in kg to the power 0.75; energy requirements are not a linear function of body weight; growth and adult multipliers. (read it)
Nutrition in Disease Management in Small Animals, Merck Veterinary Manual. More than half of dogs and cats seen by vets in the US are overweight or obese; treats restricted to under 10% of total caloric intake. (read it)
Gille S et al., Dog Owners' Perceptions of Canine Body Composition and Effect of Standardized Education for Dog Owners on Body Condition Assessment of Their Own Dogs, Veterinary Sciences, 2023. A third of owners misjudged their own dog's body composition, mainly underestimating dogs carrying excess fat. (read it)
Miller KA, Dolan ED, Cussen VA, Reid PJ, Are Underweight Shelter Dogs More Likely to Display Food Aggression toward Humans?, Animals, 2019. 900 dogs from cruelty cases; underweight dogs were not more likely to show food aggression, and it was no more severe when they did. (read it)
Flanagan J et al., Success of a weight loss plan for overweight dogs: the results of an international weight loss study, PLoS ONE, 2017. 1,565 dogs enrolled, 63.1% completed the three months, and 7.0% of those assessed reached target weight in ideal body condition. (read it)
National Pet Obesity Awareness Day: Ban the Cup, Pet Nutrition at the Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph. Summarises the measuring cup accuracy figures reported by German and colleagues and by Coe and colleagues, and the recommendation to measure by weight. (read it)
Genetic mutation in a quarter of all Labradors hard-wires them for obesity, University of Cambridge, reporting research published in Science Advances, 2024. POMC mutation prevalence, increased hunger between meals, around 25% lower resting energy use. (read it)
Body Condition Scores, VCA Animal Hospitals. Ideal body condition described as ribs palpable under a thin layer of fat with an obvious waistline and tummy tuck, and the advice to weigh at each assessment and keep a record. (read it)
The Big Thaw: Safe Defrosting Methods for Consumers, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. Food should never be thawed or stored on the counter; refrigerator thawing keeps food at 4°C or below; the danger zone is roughly 4°C to 60°C. (read it)
Fight BAC! Fight Foodborne Bacteria, Four Simple Steps to Food Safety, Penn State Extension. Never let perishable food sit at room temperature more than two hours before refrigerating, or one hour above 32°C. (read it)
