If you need to lose weight, more than likely you are thinking in terms of diet and exercise plans, not pets. There are, however, several reasons why getting a dog may be the best thing you ever do, in terms of weight loss. Having a dog can lead to several small but significant lifestyle changes that all add up, over time!

For one thing, a dog requires a minimum of one hour a day of walking ? and that's every day, not just sunny days, and not just when you feel like it. Of course, you can just take the dog into the yard and throw the ball for it, but why not take advantage of your canine companion and go for real walks every day? It's better for you, and better for the dog. Over time, it gets to be very enjoyable.

Some people feel that just the act of getting a new puppy is weight loss measure in and of itself. Until it's trained, it's more than likely to keep you on your toes ? you'll be lucky to get a chance to sit down and eat, let alone cook! That initial crazy period usually ends pretty quickly, though. Besides walking, here are some other tips for easy weight loss with dogs.

Here's a great trick ? feed any bits of food you don't want or think you shouldn't eat to the dog. For example, I haven't eaten a toast crust in over two years. I used to eat them just to be rid of them. It just seems wrong to throw them in the garbage, somehow. But feeding them to the dog is nothing more or less than symbiotic. You may not think this is a great weight loss measure, by the way, but I'm sure that all those crusts add up!

I must admit (and veterinary dog food purists, close your ears!) that it goes a bit further than that. What if you have made a yummy pasta dish, and there's just a little left, not really enough to be worth putting in a plastic container and saving? If it's not so good, I'd throw it out, but if it is good, that puts me in a spot. I'll probably either eat it outright despite being full, or pick away at it over the course of a few hours until it's gone. This can be avoided if you just simply and automatically give it to the dog. After all, dogs evolved alongside humans for millennia in exactly this way. They ate the leftovers of whatever their human companions were eating. Nowadays, the pet food industry cautions us against doing so, but if the food you're eating is reasonably healthy, who's to say that feeding small bits of it to the dog will do the dog any harm at all?

Personally, I have, on occasion, sunk even lower than that in canine gastrointestinal abuse. There is a brand of white cheddar popcorn, marketed as ?Smartfood? and sold in huge bags, with about a day and a half worth of calories in each. I love it. I love it so much I have been known to eat a whole bag over the course of a few hours. It's delicious. It's the kind of thing I should never buy a bag of. But if I do, and I've ripped into it, and it's disappearing, I can do damage control by periodically pausing in my binging to tip large amounts of the popcorn into a bowl on the floor, where it is just as quickly eaten up by the dog.

It helps to have a big dog. I don't know that any of these measures would work so well with a little one that can't eat quickly. It helps, also, if the dog is at least half black lab. They are purported to have iron cast stomachs, rather like goats, and this has proven to be true in the case of my dog ? as proven when, at the age of eleven months, she ate four tubes of oil paint, metal and all. She ate all the reds, yellows and oranges, strangely enough ignoring the cool side of the color wheel completely ? and, amazingly, suffered no ill consequences at all!