WHILE most people know that an obesity epidemic is impacting humans, not many know it is also impacting pets.
Camvet veterinarian Gavin Rippon said 75 per cent of animals he saw were overweight and of those 50 per cent were obese.
The heaviest cat he had encountered was 16 kilograms. Gavin said it should have weighed seven kilograms.
A labrador which weighed 63 kilograms was the fattest dog that he saw as a patient. Labradors should weigh about 35 kilograms.
Dr Rippon said people probably were not aware that an obesity epidemic was occurring in animals, because there were so many overweight or obese pets around.
“Their idea of normal is skewed,” he said.
Dr Rippon said there were people who came into the clinic with a pet who was a healthy weight, but they were told by others that their dog was too thin.
A lot of people showed their pets love through feeding them.
“People think to love your animals you need to feed them,” he said.
Dr Rippon said there tended to be a lot of overweight animals in overweight households.
“The people aren’t doing the exercise and therefore their pets aren’t either,” he said.
“Once animals put on weight, it’s so hard to get it off them.”
He said overweight and obesity in pets could lead to diabetes, osteoarthritis, thyroid problems and other diseases.
Overweight snakes and other reptiles are also animals which he attended to.
“There is a little bit of a fixation on getting your snake to be as big as it can be,” he said.
“They (the owners) pump the food into them and they grow too fast.
“There are a lot of snakes which develop fatty liver disease and other diseases associated with obesity.”
Dr Rippon said the onus was on the pet’s carer to take responsibility.
If people left a bowl of food out for their pet during the day, then they did not need dinner too.
Owners thought that because they were constantly eating through the day, then their animal should too.
“They put their hunger on to their animals,” he said.
Dr Rippon said a lot of people applied a human thought process into caring for their pet.
Animals did not care if they ate the same thing everyday and would not get bored if they did.
