The Danger of Pet Obesity for Dogs and Cats: are fat pets unhealthy?

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 happie

r 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 ov

erweight 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 ov

erweight 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 overw

eight 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 recog

nize 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 che

micals 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 in

continence 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 asse

ss 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 thi

s 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 variation

s 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 b

reeds 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 ens

ure 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 signifi

cant 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 yo

u'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