I'm a Big Boy Now!

Look at that beautiful corgi! I tell him how handsome he is every day. But look how skinny his torso is! See his little hips and ribs with a teeny tummy! He is probably the most interesting corgi in the world. He doesn't eat every gulp of food. Seriously! Sammy has been known to skip meals. AND, he has food stashes. Sammy gets usual treats: for being a good dog outside (started with potty treats, and now just gets them for being a good walker), getting the mail (and NOT running away), baths/ears cleaned, etc; he gets treats for being extra sweet, cuddly during a movie, or something else sweet; and some training rewards treats: right now we are working on "no bark" when other dogs walk by. He finds all these treats very yummy, but he just isn't always hungry. Weird, right? He stashes these treats, sometimes, other times he just sets them down and comes back to them later when he is hungry. Sammy is very good at stashing bones. He loves rawhides, and gets quite a variety (love the petco treat bar!). Sammy is always very excited about his bones, happy to take them. One day after just giving him one, I started cleaning. I pulled out the couch and chairs, etc, and he had like 4 bones back there. As well as the 2 in his toybox, 1 under the bed, 1 on the bed, 2 in the car AND one in fron of the window! Can you believe that! Since then I have watched him. If he gets a peanut butter filled treat (I got one of the hollow bones out of the petco bone aisle and fill it with peanut butter. Then I freeze it for our long days away. Like a peanut butter popsicle.), he takes it and hides it for a later time when he is more hungry. One day he hadn't eaten his breakfast until 5 pm, so I didn't give him his 7'oclock dinner. At 830, he pulled out a bone, finished it off, then out came the peanut butter popsicle from behind the couch! So he got his dinner! Haha.
My point is, that isn't normal for a corgi, but it's normal for him. Sammy always has food. I have stuff on how much he is supposed to eat a day, so I try to follow it. We have the ScienceDiet Small Bites for Sammy. He is supposed to get just more than 2 cups per day. With his extra intake of treats, bones and some table scraps (yes we are working on that) plus 2 tablespoons of canned food at dinner time, he gets 1 cup of kibble every breakfast and every dinner (plus canned food). Sammy often sees his breakfast, but comes back to it, or just skips it. I make sure he can have that much food (sometimes a little more on active days if he hasn't been eating as much on previous days) every day, but not pressure him into eating that much. Dogs know their own stomachs, so I trust that he is ok. I don't want him to eat more than he should since we have his joint/hip problems.
So the other day, I borrowed my grandparents scale (we don't own one) to find out just how much he weighs. Due to his eating tendencies and our walks and dogpark trips, I thought he would be 26 or 27 lbs. Sammy is stocky compared to other corgis at the dogpark, but way more muscular. The books I have say that corgis are around 23-28 lbs so that's how I arrived at my conclusion. But no, Sammy weighs 31 POUNDS!! I can't believe it! I was completely shocked! How did he get so big? Does he have more growing to do? Wowzers!! I keep telling him he is a big boy now, and singing him that song from the pull-ups commercial! One thing is for sure though, he has helped me gain some arm definition. We hafta pick him up alot, onto the bed, in the car, to catch him at the dogpark, and he wants to be held right when I come home everyday! So his 31 lbs have definately made a difference in my arms! Lol.