New dog. Sagging belly. *pics* Questions.

[ChrissyBz]

So yes, I just picked up two new dogs from the Belmopan Humane Society.

They've been here about a month now and have settled in with the other 4 great.

One was a street dog picked up with a litter.(Her name is Honey) All the puppies found homes and she was spayed but she looks like she's had a few litters. Both are guessed at around two years of age.

She's fine, it's the other one.

Gypsy was confiscated from a home also nursing a litter in July 2009. She was very ill, had pyometra, hadn't been fed properly in a long time(perhaps ever) and was chained 24/7.

She was weaned, spayed, and nursed back to health and socialized.Other than being slightly fearful she doesn't have any issues.(she'll snap at other dogs if they posture and she tried to bite me when I met her, which is fine she's over it)

It's her belly. Not worried about it per se, but curious, her nipples look to me like she only had one, maybe two litters but she has NO tone to her abdomen.

Could that be from the extreme starvation she endured? Muscle Atrophy?



She's in no way over weight.



She's going on daily walks, and despite what my pictures say, she's outside in a 350' x175' yard most of the day and all night.(along with 3 others)

Do you think she'll ever regain tone to her belly? Both dogs had a baseline pulled within two days of coming home and all labs were normal except BOTH were slightly anemic.

Thoughts?

[ChrissyBz]

Gratuitous cute face pics.







She's also quite agile and smart as evidenced by her climbing over my upstairs porch gate numerous times, digging under my fence to come find me, figuring out how to open my LR window to climb into the house, and most recently spearheading a jailbreak with the other three dogs to go on our nightly rehab walk with the horses. (she figured out how to bounce the main gate open)

[kna]

She could just be a little overweight but (not to scare you), my dog who died in March exhibited a sagging belly like that. We thought it was just him getting fat but then we found out he had hemangiosarcoma, which is a cancer that basically caused big tumors to grow over his spleen/abdomen area. I would look into it even though your dog may not be exhibiting any weird symptoms. Most don't until the tumors rupture.

[ChrissyBz]

I had a dog die from one once.(his spleen ruptured) I'm familiar with them. I thought they usually occurred in older dogs though.

[melgrj7]

Try to teach her how to "roll over" it will improve muscle in her belly area. Teach her to do it both ways (to the left and the right) and do them a few times a day. Also teaching her to "sit up" or "Sit pretty" will improve the muscle tone in her belly.

[ChrissyBz]

Got some better pics of her belly this morning.





it's blurry, but you can see the shadow of her ribs



and one of Honey's boobs.