OMG... it's a hippo in a dog pelt.

This was on this CNN story.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/03/living/overweight-pets/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Bandit is at his winter weight right now and I am trying to melt it off.


Sadly the picture of that cat is what 99% of the house cats I know look like. Fat dogs are common but fat cats seem to be way too normal.

I see obese dogs at the grooming shop fairly often. Actually this past week was especially bad! We had a 70lb Sheltie come in that is about Savvy's height. Plus a Golden who was so obese she needed groomed on the floor and a few others. Working on dogs like that is hard on the dog, the bathers and the groomer. Way harder than working on a fit dog of the same weight, since most of these dogs can't stand very long and are extremely difficult to maneuver. They also have rather gross, weight related issues such as irritation from constant poop stuck to their butts (because they can't lift their tails) and obese spayed girl dogs seem extremely prone to be very leaky. It's very sad to see dogs in such preventable bad condition

I shadowed a vet who showed me a picture from their surgery book. This dog was so overweight, apparently he had gotten trapped under a porch for 3 days, and after he was finally rescued they weren't able to save him.

It's weird, people have a very distorted idea of a dog's ideal weight. People think that if the dog has a tuck, it's underweight! I hear this all the time, it's incredible!

My fat cat is losing weight, slowly but surely!

Yoshi has a REALLY noticeable tuck and people always tell me that she is starving. Her constant puppy eyes when someone has food probably doesn't help. But I pay attention to it really closely because when she got bloat the tuck getting smaller was one of the only signs I got that something was wrong.

I have seen dogs and cats like in those pics and I'm always horrified when I see it. I know the people love their pets and I know I suck at not being blunt to the point of people thinking I'm mean so it takes a while before I speak up. But I will speak up because those pets are suffering

My mother is convinced that Lady Chesh is too fat. She isn't. She's just a Persian in show coat, which makes her look HUGE! But she only weighs 10lbs and is perfect.

She thinks that Argon is starving to death, even though he is overweight. We've never had a sighthound type before, and it's very hard to convince her that he does not need more food. Luckily, his diet is so restricted that she's afraid to feed him anything but what I leave for him.

Still trying to put weight on Gambit...

Rocky is underweight and Daisy is a decent weight for an old lab (although she could stand to lose a few lbs). Petey the cat is getting really fat though. He's an active cat and he's not fed that much. I think it would help, though, if my mom would stop feeding him that stupid canned fancy feast and feed him something better quality!

If only being able to find out if a dog is underweight, overweight, or just fine was as easy as with a human-just plug your weight and height into a bmi calculator online. Having something like that for all the different breeds of dogs (if that were possible) would make it so much easier, and people probably wouldn't mistakenly overfeed their dogs.

Jeez, that poor dog.

Except that doesn't work all that well for people either. You are super fit? the BMI takes no indication of that. So a fit person could end up seemingly overweight..

It is fairly easy with dogs. Feel the back of your hand, then feel your dog. Your dog should NOT feel squishy (unless they are a wrinkly breed.. then try squishing a non wrinkly part)