Hi there,
I am on the fence about adopting a three year old Maltese that is severely overweight. He is about 13 pounds when an average Maltese should be around 8 pounds. The background information about this dog is that the former owner was poor and fed the dog people food such as pizza and ravioli.
The shelter is telling me the dog will be able to loose the weight and become average size. Has anyone had an experience like this? Im worried the dog will live a short life and not be able to lose weight. They said it should take about 5 months if I feed and walk regularly.

Thank you.

Of course the dog will lose weight, he is only three years old. You will have to be diligent about feeding him the proper food and exercise on a regular basis. He is only five pounds over an ideal weight for a maltese which is not what I would call 'extreme'.

5 pounds overweight for a Maltese is over 50% of the ideal body weight. That's like a human being over 75 pounds overweight. So yes, it's "extreme".

If you adopt this dog, you will want to work with a vet so that the weight comes off in a healthy manner. The bigger concern I can see is behavioral. If he got that way just because of too much food and not enough exercise, he may be fine. If, on the other hand, he's a major scrounger, you may have to work with him to keep him from raiding the trash, etc. It's still workable, but just something that may take some more time and training.

I definitely wouldn't let his weight stop you from adopting him. He's still young, it's not a permanent feature, and a healthy future will set him right back into a perfectly normal life-span. He wasn't the one choosing to eat improper foods - it was his former owner's fault for not giving him a balanced diet with proper exercise. It sounds like this pooch could really use a good home! Just get him on an appropriate plan and everything will be fine. :)

I don't believe he is a scrounger. I tried to feed him some dog food when I met him and he didn't want it.

His length is small for a Maltese. He literally looks like a little pig. Another thing is his face is stained. If anyone has ever had a white dog before... what have you used to get the eye stains and food stains.

A young dog that's probably already suffering from malnutrition - it's your call on adopting him but the outlook is bright. Just with a good quality dog food in reasonable portions for his ideal body wieght and maybe split up into several meals through out the day this dog will loose weight sitting around doing nothing - because the food will have fewer calories. It's really that simple, if the calorie intake equals or is less than the calorie output of your body, and we all burn calories even while resting, then there is nothing to store as fat and you loose weight! You'll just have to be strict with treats and only give small portions of things like special low-cal dog treats or ice cubes or veggies.

I don't envy you if you take him on because one of the main problems I had with our little fat dog who we got from a shelter in 2000 was that being so overweight and lazy when we did start to excersize even gently she would pull muscles and her joints would swell, when we got her she was supposed to be 2-3 years old but when we took her for her first exam she was closer to 13 so that was a factor of course... she was nearly always on anti-inflammatory/ pain meds but that gets better. It really does! Another thing I would worry about with such a crappy diet before is diabetes, which is why I suggest you break his meal into smaller meals so he doesn't go more than 6-8 hours without eating just in case, and also if he looses the weight too quickly it could put strain on his kidneys and liver, so monitoring by a vet and closely watching his weightloss would be good. If I remember right anything above 1% of bodyweight lost per month is considered extreme and too fast.

Good luck in whatever you choose, just educate yourself first and don't hesitate to call a vet, which is what we did before we adopted Sadie because we wanted to make sure we were making the right choice it was really invaluable information.

And for eye stains - a little peroxide on a cotton ball every few weeks and wipe them carefully so peroxide doesn't get in their eyes, too much and it'll break the hair but water works fine for in between and helps keep the staining down. Found out accidentally that this also bleaches out dark colored fur as well when one of our dogs had a cut on her ear, she was a black dog gone bleach blonde.