Today is National Pet Obesity Awareness Day. Trust me, I couldn't make it up. On this holiday, created by the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP), participating veterinary clinics across the nation (about 1,000) provide APOP with data to makes its case.
Essentially APOP is conducting an ongoing study of pet obesity in the United States and the holiday updates their data. The ongoing study suggests that this trend is absolutely nothing to scoff at.
According to APOP, last year's study revealed that 45% of dogs and 58% of cats were classified as obese. This translates into an astonishing 90 million pets who are at risk for developing a bevy of diseases, and possible joint and limb injures. Trust me, I am a convert.
Along with her physical therapy program, Miss Phoebe is currently on a veterinary supervised diet, which actually has increased the amount of protein in her diet and truly made her less of a chow hound. Impossible, you say? Well, so far, so good.
Just to emphasize the need for serious weight loss among pets, VPI, the insurance company, says its pays out over $14 million in weigh-related claims each year, and these include the ACL injuries that Phoebe sustained.
For the record, the day after her underwater treadmill adventure found Miss Phoebe putting an astonishing amount of weight on her injured leg. We went for a careful, slow 6 minute leash walk, did our stretches (me stretching her leg, she reclining and giving me a disdainful look), and kept to our diet.
If you want more information on the topic, click here. And remember that you can never be too rich or too thin!
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