PDSA shares tips to maintain pets weight

Make sure your pet maintains a healthy weight (photo: Adobe)

The festive season was a time of joy and celebration and it is often paired with lots of scrumptious snacks. Pet-lovers tend to want to share the indulgence of tasty treats, especially when pooches give the ‘puppy dog eyes’, and will often give in to four-legged friends and offer extra food.

On the back of National Obesity Awareness Week, which has just past, PDSA vet Nurse, Nina Downing, shares top tips for recognising whether your pet is the correct weight.

Nina said: “While it can be hard to resist the gaze of our four-legged friends, it’s important to ensure we don’t overfeed our pets. Being a healthy weight and shape will improve your pet’s quality of life as they can enjoy walks and activity which, in turn, improves their mental health and it can delay the onset of long-term diseases, helping them to live longer. If your pets have had a treat-filled festive season, it’s important to recognise if they have gained some extra weight around the edges.”

How to recognise if your pet is a healthy shape

Ensure your pet is not obese (photo: Adobe)

Your pet’s body shape will give you an idea of whether they’re carrying too much weight. You can find this out by doing a simple check at home, called a ’body condition score’.

Take a good look and feel of your dog, cat, or rabbit’s body – the following will help you tell if they are a healthy weight:

The skin should move freely over the ribs, which you should be able to feel with a light touch.

Run your hands along your pet’s back. You should be able to feel the spine and hipbones under the skin without being able to see them - they shouldn’t be sticking out.

Feel under your pet’s tummy, it should go in, not bulge out.

Look at your pet from the side and from above. You should be able to see a waist. If not, your dog, cat, or rabbit may be overweight.

Knowing your pet’s body condition score helps you to identify if they need to lose some weight, put some on, or if they’re the perfect weight, but it’s also important to know your pet’s current weight. Together with their body condition score, you can then work out what their ideal weight should be for their breed, build, and size. Once you know the weight that they should be, you have something to aim for and, by making sure you weigh them regularly, you can quickly spot if their weight changes, and then tweak their diet and exercise to correct it. You can visit your vet and ask them if you can use their scales to weigh larger dogs, but small dogs, cats, and rabbits can be weighed at home quite easily using bathroom scales.