Pet Obesity – 5 Tips for Keeping Your Pet Healthy and Happy | AnimalTalk Blog, Val Heart & Friends, Animal Communication Tips & Animal Care

Pet Obesity – 5 Tips for Keeping Your Pet Healthy and Happy

Just as it is dangerous for humans to be obese, pets share the same risks as well.

The rate of having a cardiac arrest greatly increases and, so are their chances of having high blood pressure, orthopedic injuries (such as cruciate ligament rupture or patellar luxation), osteoarthritis, respiratory disorders and various forms of cancer.

By acting on this problem, we choose to make our pets stronger, happier and most importantly, live longer. The first step to solving it is by doing some basic assessment on your own.

Running your hands over your pet’s ribcage and feeling for the layer of fats is one good way to find out if your pet is overweight. Inability to feel the ribs is a sign of an overweight Bull terrier or any pet.

Looking at your pet from the side and trying to see the tuck on the abdomen is also a good indicator. An obese Bull terrier will have very little or no tuck.

By viewing your Bull terrier from above, you can see if there is a difference of width at the waist, just above the ribcage. A straight or noticeable bulging area from the ribcage to the hips indicates an overweight pet.

If you see the need of an intervention, there are some tips you can try.

1. Exercise. Animals are meant to run and burn off calories every day. With frequent physical activity, your pet gets rid of extra calories.

2. Try playing more energetic games with your Bull terrier or any other dog. Animals used to staying indoors will be less likely lose weight and become lazier. By encouraging your pet to run around in more strenous games, you also stimulate the muscles that are not often used.

3. Feed them the amount of food that is appropriate for their size. Small dogs get smaller portions than that of bigger dogs. Their size indicates how fast their metabolism is and will be a great factor in losing and gaining weight.

4. Good quality food without a lot of fillers. Fillers are food substances in pet food that offer LITTLE nutrition to simply trick your pet’s brain into thinking that they’re already stuffed.

5. No feeding your dogs while YOU eat. They can be getting more food than you think. While they may be getting their bowl of kibble, receiving table scraps from you during meal time won’t do them good.