are you concerned about your pet being overweight or obese are you wondering
how to go about introducing a diet optimizing a weight-loss program for
your cat or dog well in this video series we'll address the rising problem
of overweight pets discuss why we should be concerned about how we get our dogs
and cats back to their healthy weight so they can live a happy healthy life to
their full potential Hi I'm Dr. Alex Avery from OurPetsHealth.com
helping you and your pet to live a healthier happier life
obesity is a rapidly developing problem so much so that it is seen by many vets
and pet owners was one of the biggest issues facing our pet population with
the majority of people recognizing that an overweight or obese pet will have a
compromised quality of life and a reduced lifespan it's great that people
are recognizing the weight issues have significant consequences what isn't so
great though is the fact that these same people are not recognizing the problem
of their own pets being overweight we can see this clearly in a US study which
determined that in a whopping 54% of dogs and 59% of cats are either
overweight or obese 80% of pet owners classified their own pests as being
normal or healthy now this is clearly impossible put simply if I lined up five
overweight pets three of their owners would tell me their pet was a healthy
weight Pet Obesity is clearly by no means limited to the United States it's
a global problem with 36 percent of dogs 29 percent of cats considered overweight
in the UK and this rises to 40 percent of dogs and 30 percent of cats in
Australia and New Zealand now many owners will claim that they're
obese pets actually hardly eats anything and then will often make excuses as to
why their pets are overweight saying they're just big-boned naturally stocky
or they have a medical condition causing them to be the way they are well if you
are really concerned about the latter then you must consult your vet but in
reality the vast majority of our overweight pets suffer neither
underactive thyroid problems or other hormonal abnormalities that cause
obesity and being spayed or castrated is not an excuse either as our neutered pet
population has every potential to be a more healthy weight we just need to
recognize that after neutering our pet needs change we need to feed them around
25 percent less after neutering and maintain exercise levels to ensure
muscle maintenance so hopefully we can all accept that there is a problem in
general and recognize that despite what we may think our own pets may actually
be suffering from being overweight but why should we care what harm is there in
our dogs and cats being a little tubby well fact is not just a substance that
sits around doing nothing although this is something that we used to believe for
a long time instead fats presence in the body
affects many different functions and so causes detrimental effects to an
individual for a number of different reasons fat actually produces messenger
chemicals in the form of hormones as well as a number of inflammatory
proteins and these molecules either result in direct impairment of normal
body functions or result in an overweight individual being in a state
of persistent low-grade inflammation now this is not healthy
both of these play a role in the development of chronic diseases such as
arthritis heart disease and diabetes and other diseases that overweight animals
are more likely to experience also include urinary tract disease urinary
incontinence airway disease fatty liver disease cruciate ligament
damage and even some cancers an amazing example of this study done in Labradors
that clearly demonstrated the fact that overweight not obese but only
overweight Labradors suffered from arthritis on average three years before
and died two years earlier than their healthy weight counterparts but another
way this means that healthy weight dogs can potentially live pain-free for three
years longer than those that are overweight as well as living for an
extra two years in total now just think as well that this study
did not even look at obese dogs it was just overweight dogs cats are clearly
not immune from the effects of being overweight either it's been reported
that an obese cat is four times more likely to develop diabetes they're also
over twice as likely to suffer from skin disease and five times more likely to
suffer from lameness now let's remove specific diseases from
the equation and instead focus on a study that assess the quality of life as
perceived by each pet owner there was unsurprisingly a clear
difference healthy weight dogs appear to be much more energetic and enthusiastic
as well as being more active and comfortable than their overweight
counterparts obese animals performed even worse than the overweight ones so
clearly as weights increases quality of life deteriorates this is especially
notable because it was information as reported by normal owners remember a lot
of us don't even realize that our pets are in fact overweight or obese now a
final problem with being overweight or obese comes about should our pets
require investigations and surgery for other conditions being overweight can
increase anesthetic risk and also increase the potential for surgical
complications to take place as many surgeries will take a little bit longer
and be that little bit more challenging as a result of the increased body fat so
how can we tell if a cat or dog is overweight well thankfully the answer to
this is quite simple we have a great tool to use and that's known as the body
condition score using this tool we can determine an individual's body shape and
mark them on a scale of 1 to 9 with 4 or 5 being normal healthy weight a score of
6 or 7 would make a cat or dog overweight by around 10 to 20 percent an
8 or 9 means obesity with a body weight of at least 30 or 40% greater than is
healthy body condition scoring is something anybody can do although
experience does help to allow breed variations to be considered now to learn
more about body condition scoring how to score your own pet take a look at a
separate body condition scoring linked here and also found on OurPetsHealth.com you
may have seen breed weight charts where specific breeds are giving their normal
healthy weight range now I'm personally not much of a fan of these because the
weight range is typically pretty big and that reflects the range of sizes within
each breed and they understandably do not take into account cross breeds body
condition scoring is far superior reflecting the true condition of each
individual pet ok so now we know how big a problem obesity is in our cats and dog
population we know what problems being overweight can cause and how you can
score our own pets to determine if they are overweight or not so what comes next
well if your pet is a healthy weight congratulations it's important however
not to now just ignore weight obesity is a dynamic disease weight changes with
time and we need to ensure that our pets healthy weight is maintained now if your
pet is overweight or obese don't worry and in a way
congratulations as well because this disease can only be addressed if we
accept that it is a problem in the first place
denial gets us nowhere now you've recognized the problem and accepted the
need to act there's always a benefit of losing weight and even in those
individuals who are already arthritic and painful a loss of as little as six
percent of body weight can result in a significant reduction in lameness an
improvement in pain as for how we can go about getting a cat or dogs weight down
to a healthy level watch our following video Pet Obesity diets and weight loss
programs for dogs and cats I really hope that this video helps our overweight
pets get started on the road to achieve their healthy weight and for those
healthy weight pets it helps prevent them from ever becoming overweight if
you have any questions if you have any weight loss tips or motivational stories
you'd like to share then I'd love to hear them in the comments down below
also consider subscribing so that you don't miss out on future content and
allow me to continue to help you and your pets live a healthier happier life
so until next time i'm Dr. Alex from OurPetsHealth,com because they're family