Is your dog or cat fat? Does a relationship exist in the thick of how fat your pet is and how fat you are? The nation is experiencing an epidemic of overweight and obesity due to lack of exercise and excessive processed foods. The health problems run across the age spectrum. Health professionals concur that the current generation of children may see a shorter life expectancy than any generation before. It makes sense; our best friends, our pets, share our lives right down to the pounds.
Fat dog? I know what I speak of. This is me and mine from my personal photos.
It seems society is more accepting of love handles and aprons these days. That’s not to say folks are happy about it, but living with it. Plus size clothing stores exist where men and women happily shop. Health facilities have adapted to plus size patients. Waiting rooms of all kinds are furnished with plus size chairs. The diet industry is booming with the likes of Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, and Weight Watchers, among others, standing ready to solve our problems.
But what about our pets? The positive news is our pets are on the radar for concern about overweight and obesity. According to Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP), 53 percent of dogs and 55 percent of cats are obese. The APOP web site has an interesting weight calculator, so you can determine approximately how much you and your pooch really do have in common.
The bottom line is we, humans, need to read the labels on foods and use our best judgment to consume or not to consume. We have the same responsibility to our pets. If artificial ingredients lead on your pet food label, do yourselves a favor and choose a more natural product. If you are reading this, I know you know sugar, by any other name, is still sugar. You are not fooled by dextrose and certainly not anything to do with corn syrup.
The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention is on Facebook. I hope you will join me in Liking their page, and visit the website. It’s sad that our pets don’t live as long as we would like them to. We have a responsibility to them, as we do to ourselves and our children when it comes to prevention of chronic and deadly conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease.
This is not a paid promotion. I just feel the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention has an honorable mission of prevention of chronic and deadly ailments that threaten the lives of our best buds. In my world, pets are people and part of the family unit. How about you? Please feel free to contact me with your overweight pet story at Karen@karenjulius.com.
Karen Julius is a health and wellness communicator, writing about health issues and policy decisions that affect health.
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Karen Julius is a health and wellness communicator, writing about health issues and policy decisions that affect health.
Love this! I learned the very hard way that what I was feeding our cats mattered. At age 12, my cat I’d found as a tiny abandoned kitten was diagnosed with diabetes. Changed his (and our other cat’s) diet completely (hint: cats should really not eat dry food), and gave him insulin shots daily until we got his blood sugars stabilized. We were able to diet control his diabetes for about 4 more years. At age 16, he was failing and I was lucky to have him euthanized at home, with me by his side. Our second elderly kitty passed away in November. Now our new kittens are getting canned high protein food. We do put out some dry when we are away and can’t be putting out fresh food as often as they need.
Hi Tasha, thanks for your comments. I’m glad your kittens are doing well. I was hoping to get more responses to my request for fat pet stories to emphasize the importance of good health habits for our pets as well as ourselves. Good health should not be taken for granted.
Thanks again.
Karen