Animals and "that Christmas waistline"

Many legal jurisdictions have laws prohibiting cruelty to animals, and those with contemporary animal welfare law place legal obligations on owners to provide them with "proper and sufficient food."

Consider the use of the word "proper". Veterinarians have noticed a rise in the number of overweight animals due pet owners overfeeding their pets. In addition to feeding too much food, there are also owners feeding substantial amounts of junk food including scones, chocolate, pizza, burgers, ice-cream, cake, and sweets.

Some pets are very adept at ensuring that they get fed by several different members of the family, and some people simply underestimate how big a "small" treat should be for their smaller-than-human animal friend.

It can be difficult for owners when dogs roll those big brown eyes at them, or the cat is incessantly around their legs and meowing when owners come within 20 feet of the fridge, but owners who are overfeeding their furry friends are potentially (as the old saying goes) "killing them with kindness".

In addition to health risks for the pet, overfeeding can have legal consequences for the owner as well. A pet labrador in England called Rusty became famous when his owners were prosecuted and convicted for causing unnecessary suffering as a result of overfeeding. When the RSPCA took Rusty away he was 74.2 kg - Rusty was subsequently put on a diet that resulted in him losing 30 kg.

In another case RSPCA inspectors found a dog so grossly fat that it could not move out of its own urine. The owner, a pensioner, was banned from keeping pets for life after admitting cruelty for overfeeding his dog with a diet that included cooked English breakfasts. Then there was a 10-year-old cat called Ginger that was so fat she could not get through a cat-flap.

The Guinness Book of Records has dropped listings of heaviest animals because of fears that owners were deliberately overfeeding pets to qualify.

How to tell if your pet is putting on a little too much weight

You should be able to feel the last three ribs by "gentle pressure" over the area of the last 3 ribs, and clearly neither the ribs are nor the spinal processes should be overly prominent.
Check for an obvious fat pad at the base of the tail where it meets the body -if you can feel a broad amount of fat in that location, and your pet is getting progressively wider in the rump area, then that's not a good sign.
A 'waist' should be visible and the abdomen should taper gently towards the pelvis (rather than sag).

Director of International Animal Law Ian Robertson recalls:

"When I was working as a veterinarian in veterinary practice (before adding a law degree and becoming an animal welfare lawyer), I found that I had to be gentle with owners when suggesting that that their pet was overweight. So rather than saying that their pet was fat, I'd frame the advice in a "diplomatic" way and say that he or she was carrying "a little too much of a Christmas waistline". Every veterinarian has their own list of "James Herriot stories" and one of mine was doing a house call where I saw a labrador who was very overweight. Instead of having an abdomen that "tapered nicely towards the pelvis", his waistline tapered heavily towards the ground. When I suggested that he was carrying "too much of a Christmas waistline" his owner got a very worried look on her face and said "No Dr Robertson, he's not fat, he's just got short legs”!

A trim waistline doesn't mean that your pet has to be doing sit-ups in front of the television, but "proper and sufficient food" means that you feed the right food in the right amounts.