Hiya
I was wondering if anyone can tell me roughly how much our male puppy who is 18 weeks tomorrow should weigh. our pup is quite tall & slender we feed him on royal canin 4 times a day of 132 grams in each feed totalling of 528 grams per day which is the guide linE for his age.
We have been walking him twice a day but we feel maybe this is too much for his age & that he is burning too much energy & not gaining enough weight.Can anyone tell us wether this is right or wrong as he is our first DDB & we dont want to get it wrong !!!!
Thanks :)

The rule of thumb for exercising puppies is to walk them for 5 minutes for every month of their age - especially important for large dogs to help try to prevent damage to their young joints. So for a 5 month old puppy that would be 5 x 5minutes = 25 minutes per day. You continue to increase the amount of exercise by 5 minutes for every month of their age until they have fully matured.

You may well get some good breed specific advice on here but this is an area where your breeder should help.  The best breeders will want to help with any of your questions and can give exact comparisons with your pup and others in the litter.

I have a different breed but my breeder and the other owners in my pups litter regularly swap information about development and weight.  Interestingly I kept all my records about weights from a previous pup of the same breed but my current pup has more bone, is taller and more developed so the comparisons haven't really been relevant.

Don't worry too much about manufacturers feeding guides either.  They make interesting reading but can be wide of the mark in either direction for most dogs.  At his age you ought to be able to feed by eye (how does he look?), by feel (where are his ribs?), and by output (firm pooh?).  If you are feeding kibble you can make minor adjustments of 5g or so each meal and you'll notice a difference within a few days.

Regarding exercise:  2 socialisation outings per day might be ok but he won't need exercise per se at this stage.  A short pootle with lots of new experiences will do much more good.

I wouldn't be particuarly bothered if a pup is looking leggy at this age, you don't want to be bulking them up at this age either. By slender, do you mean that he lacks width or doesn't have much bone? it's normal for them to look narrow, but if he's light on bone then he probably always will be. A DDB can take a good 3 years to fully mature. My current eldest looked like a gazelle as a puppy, but has matured and got better each year. She won and placed in a lot of classes and got three RBB last year. She will be 5 this year. Do you know how tall he is and what he weighs?

Hi
We had our DDB weighed last wednesday which made him 17 weeks & he weighed 21.1 kg.He is quite slender but he has chunky legs & huge paws.The length of his back legs are 20.5" the length of him from the base of his neck to the start of his tail is 24" but his front legs seem to be a lot shorter!! We are just worried that we are over exercising him & not giving the chance for his body to form properly , so now we have just decided to walk him once a day now instead of two . He is gaining a couple of kilo's a week so we must be doing something right :) Many Thanks Kind regards Leigh.

I don't think you're over exercising him. 2 kilos per week weight gain seems normal at that age. The difference in his front and rear height may simply be down to the manner in which he is growing or it just might be the way he is.