Obesity Season: Not Just for People

Oh yeah. I so want my pets to crap in every shoe I have. I can't wait until they approve it for cats.

Bad enough we torture ourselves - now we have to torture our pets, too? A friend of mine has 4 dogs. One, they aquired when she was obviously in bad shape. She weighed about 18 pounds, was very thin for her size, her fur was course and unhealthy, etc. After they had her for a while, she gained weight, her fur became soft, her entire attitude changed. But, the vet and others thought she was gaining too much weight - she had gained about 10-12 pounds, if I remember correctly. So my friend put her on low-fat dog food. She wasn't loosing weight, so the vet had some tests done and there was a possibility of an underactive thyroid. They had more tests done to verify and the vet prescribed thyroid meds - just in case. For the next while, the dog did indeed loose weight. She also went absolutely nuts. Her behaviour became erratic and bizarre. Her fur became course and wirey again, her eyes became glassy, and she looked quite horrible. My friend decided it wasn't worth it - she took the dog off the meds and began feeding her regular, full fat dogfood. The dog regained the weight, as well as her healthy look, and normal behaviour. As for the tests - they came back normal. There was never anything wrong with her thyroid. The thing that really got me about this is that no one really knows what mix of breeds this dog is - in other words, no one know what her normal size should've been. It was just arbitrarily decided that she was too big.

Here's the thing. As with humans, the increase in the average weight of domestic animals has coincided with two things: 1) A vast improvement in the quality of the food fed to the average animal (i.e. much grocery store pet food is much better quality than it was even 15 years ago, and much pet store pet food is just off the charts in goodness now), and 2) An increase in average pet lifespans. Probably more animals are fatter because they are kept indoors (cats) or crated (dogs) more often, and are also getting spayed and neutered more often and younger (which needed to happen in order to reduce the number of unwanted animals getting destroyed by shelters and spreading disease as ferals), in addition to the food being richer and better quality. I give my cats a super premium indoor formula food even though they do go out sometimes, and that's as far as I go. When they get older, and/or develop medical conditions that require further tweaks in their diets I'll make whatever adjustments need to be made, but I ain't putting them on no stinking weight-loss diets, even if my neighbor does refer to one of my cats as "that big black bowling ball." (He's a very nice big black bowling ball!)

My cats are on eternal diets. :-( It sucks big time. The reason? One of them gets really bad asthma or breathing problems when she gets heavier than her body appears to be comfortable at. It's very noticeable, unfortunately, and it's very scary. (Rushing a cat to the Emergency Vet at 2am on a Sunday morning while 9 months pregnant? Not fun) The other one has shoulder problems when he gets "too heavy". Aesthetics? I could care less... but when one cat is pretty much immobilised and the other can't breathe, we do take action and keep their food intake lower than they'd like and "diet them." I may hate myself for it, but it's the best I've been able to come up with so far. I agree with Meower: I think their "weight issues" have alot to do with their being "fixed" at an early age and being indoor only. I'd like to work on the "exercise" part but it's really hard to get cats who don't want to move moving. FWIW, I still wouldn't use a drug on them. And who would put a dog on a drug that would give them loose stools and vomitting? Or is Nature's Miracle sponsoring this drug? :-) My third kitty died this week of kidney failure. I'm very sad. Yeah, I know, OT, sorry.

Awww, NWHiker, I'm sorry to hear that. Please accept my condolences. It doesn't seem to have adversely affected your quip-making ability though: "Or is Nature's Miracle sponsoring this drug?" Spit-take of the week!

Meowzer, I totally agree with you re: how things have changed for pets (and it wasn't that long ago that pet food simply didn't exist). Especially about being indoors. We "inherited" a purebred, cross-eyed, de-clawed, fixed Siamese cat. He was about 10 when we got him. For the first 9 yrs of his life, he was absolutely babied by his original owner. He'd also never stepped outdoors a day in his life. That's about all we know about his history. When we suddenly found him in our possession, I swear, I'd never seen such a fat cat in my life. He couldn't lick himself for rolling over backwards (funniest thing ever) and couldn't even jump up onto a chair. After he became used to us and his new home, we began to let him outside. Because of his eyes and claws, we had some concerns about doing it, but after his initial shock at the experience of grass under his paws, he revelled in the outdoors, and even became a hunter. By the end of a year, he was absulutely buff, and the Number Two cat in the heirarchy (out of the 10 we had at the time, all but 1 being rescues like him). We didn't do anything different from our other cats in regards to food, treatment, etc. We certainly couldn't afford the expensive foods he'd been used to. Unfortunately, a year later, he started to loose weight again - drastically. He had developed a cancer and we had to put him down. We still miss him dearly, and our biggest consolation is that he was such a happy cat for the two years we had him.

I never fail to feel sad and angry when I hear such nonsense as this news. Leave animals the heck alone, is my line of thought. And, on a different note: "after his initial shock at the experience of grass under his paws" - I can so relate to this! My cat (now dead) was an indoor cat (no garden where to send her) for the first few years of her life, and when we moved to a house with a garden, at the beginning she would not walk on grass. It was so funny in a way to see her walk on the little concrete border that was set on part of the lawn... I'd see her doing that and I'd call out to her "Come on, Peppa, be an animal!" - meaning she should walk on the grass. Needless to say, she got used to it in time and she became quite confident in the garden, climbing trees and all!

NWhiker - I am sorry for your loss. I found a tomcat once (Bob) who I adopted and neutered. Since he was emaciated when we found him, he grew quite fat when he got regular meals. He lived a nice long life with my exhusband and died of skin cancer. He loved to be outside and had a little pink nose. Apparently pink nosed kitties are more vulnerable to skin cancer. It is beyond amazing that our society is facing massive environmental destruction that may jeopardize the future of human kind and we are worried about pudgy pooches! "Weight obsession is a social disease. If we cared more about CO2 than BMI there would still be time." p.s. You know there are going to be idiots who try this on themselves. Then when they get sick, more illness to attribute to obesity!

p.p.s - I wouldn't be surprised if it was getting all this media attention because they secretly want people to take it and this is one way of getting around FDA regulations. Their bottom line is profit period. If people do get sick they can't get sued if it says not for human consumption. I couldn't help but notice the little tag on joke at the end of the newcast segment, "And don't you take it now!" (Giggle giggle!) Was that an admonishment or a suggestion?

Nwhiker & Kunoichi - I'm so sorry to hear of the loss of your friends. I lost a cat to CRF in 2003 and one to cancer in June 06 so we're part of the same "club." Hugs your way. It's so hard to watch these guys get thinner and thinner while feeding them any- and everything in the world to entice them - then I would go to work (I work with dogs) and see loving, otherwise healthy pets being dieted down to having highly visible ribs (never a sign of health, according to vet standards) in the name of aethestics, basically. Pani113 said, "It is beyond amazing that our society is facing massive environmental destruction that may jeopardize the future of human kind and we are worried about pudgy pooches!" Amen. Sigh.

Kunoichi - I am sorry for your loss too. Sorry, I missed your post somehow!

I can tell you, I've had three cats at once and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for their weights. The smallest ate like a horse and never gained a pound, the fat kitty ate a regular amount and spent his days running around like his tail was on fire, and the oldest ate a little bit whenever he felt like it, slept all day, and always looked like a miniature panther. Now I've just got the oldest, who's entering middle age for cats, and he's getting a little bit of a droopy belly, but he still hasn't gained much weight. Frankly, I'm just not going to worry about what my cats' weigh anymore, the only time it's ever an issue is when they want to sit in my lap and they don't tell me they're coming up. (Ouch) I'm much more worried about losing them to feline leukemia, which took the tiny cat and the fat cat from me.

If you thought the CBC article was bad, you should've seen the story CNN's Headline News aired on it yesterday. Gag me! The reporter did ask how much the drug cost and about side effects, but happily accepted the answers of his veterinarian interview subject as if they were not evasive. For the cost question, the vet danced around an actual figure, just saying it was worth the investment in Fido's health. The side effects were just an info graphic, presented as if we shouldn't be alarmed by diarrhea and vomiting. I don't know enough about animal health to say whether an animal's weight plays a role, but I do know I'd have liked to have seen more journalism--example, the good DVM stating, for the record, whether he had any financial ties to the drug company--and less of an ad for "this wonderful product!" I am very sorry about everyone's cats. I worry to death about my own, who has asthma.

Ugh... going through the "health" tab at googlenews, and sure enough - someone found a photo of an extremely huge dog, just like they do for all the obesity articles on humans. Have article about weight? Must find photo of largest, preferably disgustined, person (now dog) possible. Thanks. pani113, for your condolances.

Personally, if it were a choice between having pets who are slightly fat and thin pets who are subject to side effects like "loose stools, diarrhea, vomiting, lethargy and loss of appetite", I know what I'd choose. To do this to animals in the name of slimming them down seems to be cruelty worthy of an investigation by the local Humane Society. Between the vomiting, diarrhea and loss of appetite which can be caused by this drug, the poor animal is likely starving—certainly a way to reduce weight, but not at all kind. You know, they say that one of the warning signs that a person may become abusive towards other people is the abusive treatment of animals under their care. It occurs to me that in this case, it's sort of gone the other way around—first an unhealthy obsession with how much people weigh, now the same sort of thing for pets. And how utterly convenient it is, of course, that more attention is being drawn to it now that there's a drug that's commercially available to do something about it.

Why on earth would they have something about this on CNN? I have to agree that they're -hoping- people will try to use this. I won't be surprised when something gets out on the internet in the next little bit about "it works on people too!"

i find it seriously upsetting and not funny at all :(

It's not enough for big pharma to make scads of money from dubious drugs for people anymore, I guess.

On a related note, here's this article, about a Finnish study finding (or so they say) that people who own pets may be fatter and hence, unhealthy. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16565297/wid/11915773?GT1=8921 Can someone please tell me what this study even *means*? Based on the article, it contradicts itself on findings and none of the findings are terribly significant. Yet, here it is all over the news. The prevalance of anti-fat article used to simply outrage me. Now they outrage me, but now I also wonder how desperate our detractors must be. This piece is really grasping at straws.

"that people who own pets may be fatter and hence, unhealthy." Oh dear me. What are they going to blame fat on next?

Without going too far off topic, I would like to point out that there are many studies in the U.S. that have found pet owners are healthier than non pet owners: http://www.bestfriendspetcare.com/bf_feature_14.cfm Finnish society is very different from the U.S. and I doubt the results apply too much here. For one thing, this study found pet owners smoke more than non pet owners, but smoking is viewed quite differently there.

This is nonsense.