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Fat cats: Losing one ounce at a time
By Gina Spadafori
November 27, 2006
I had this idea a couple years ago to follow the fattest Labrador I’d ever seen through a reduction program. The dog was so obese she looked like a sausage roll on four toothpicks, and your didn’t need a veterinarian to tell that she was unhealthy and unhappy.
Her owner, though, couldn’t see it. Well, she admitted that the dog was “a little” overweight, but said that the dog’s obvious pleasure in eating more than made up for whatever potential problems those “few extra pounds” — try 50 to 75, at least — gave the dog.
The owner, by the way, is one of the most beautiful women you’ll ever see, with not an ounce of extra weight on her own willowy frame.
I tried to talk the owner into making the dog a Pet Connection project, following the dog’s diet and exercise regimen for a year or so. At first, the owner agreed, taking dog to the veterinarian for a pre-program physical. But then a funny thing happened: At the first weigh-in, the dog had gained weight.
Eventually, I came to suspect the dog was sort of a psychic stand-in for the woman’s own appetite. She nibbled a tiny portion of anything she picked up, and handed the remainder to her dog. And even though the dog was a skilled counter-cruiser, the owner left food on the counter, often near the edge. That way, she could buy a pie, and be certain most of it would end up in the dog’s mouth, not her own.
I soon realized I was in over my head with this one. I deal with pet problems, after all, not the mental-health issues of my fellow humans. So I dropped the idea.
But the folks at the Chicago Sun-Times have found some people who truly seem interested in helping their pets get healthy. Leslie Baldacci is following cats Monster and Milo through the process:
Yes, there was crying. There was a nip or two to the ankle. And there was even some sneaking of morsels from the dog’s dish. But both of the Sun-Times’ “Fat Cats” lost weight in the first month of their diet.
Milo, who started out at 20 pounds, 1 ounce, lost 7 ounces. Monster, who started out at 18 pounds, 1 ounce, lost 3 ounces.
It may not sound like much, but on a cat’s frame, that’s the equivalent of two sticks of butter off Milo and one stick off Monster. Too-rapid weight loss can send a cat into liver failure.
“We said no more than a pound a month,” said the veterinarian, Dr. Colleen Currigan of Cat Hospital of Chicago, after examining Milo, who was sporting a snazzy new blue collar with white fish on it. “He’s on track. I think he could do better.”
Follow the program here. And if you have a pet like that Labrador, I highly recommend Dr. Marty’s “Fitness Unleashed: A Dog and Owner’s Guide to Losing Weight and Gaining Health Together.” It’ll get you both in better shape.
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Gina - check out the fattest Dobe we ever had come into our rescue - and check her out when she was adopted! We tracked her progress here:
http://tinyurl.com/gypq7
Comment by Judi — November 27, 2006 @ 4:19 pm
That’s amazing! She sure looks good now. :)
Comment by Gina Spadafori — November 27, 2006 @ 5:04 pm
Sassy went to Fat Camp for a year. (a friend also had a fat cat, and agreed to take my cat for a while and feed them diet food that I provided, and I paid for regular vet checks and maintained visiting rights). She went from 17.5 pounds to 10 pounds in a year. Unfortunately, moving back into our free-feeding household, she’s gone back up to 12. A year later, she’s been diagnosed with diabetes and it makes managing her weight even more critical. She’s now at 13. Her food allergies are complicating things, but she’s almost 15, and doing well otherwise.
Comment by Georg — November 27, 2006 @ 6:24 pm
My brother and SIL once had the fattest labrador retriever I’d ever seen. He was pear-shaped from every angle. You know things are bad when you are planning to visit them and your SIL says, “Just so you know, Puppy is a little overweight right now. He weighs about a hundred pounds.” Then my brother got on the phone to say, “She’s crazy. The dog’s 125 if he’s an ounce.” He was a yellow lab, which made his pear shape even more ironic. You would often see him half-sitting on his bed instead of lying down. I think it’s because if he tried lying down, his humongous belly pushed his diaphragm so far up there was no room for his lungs to expand while breathing. They live in the northern Midwest, and the dog was not well leash-trained. In the summer, he didn’t get walked for fear of heatstroke. In the winter he didn’t get walked because my SIL would’ve been dragged on her face down icy sidewalks and my brother is not really a dog person. The dog ended up with diabetes and died at the age of 9. They’ve got a young lab now, and I hope they learned from the last one.
Comment by kabbage — November 29, 2006 @ 9:28 am