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“Pets don’t open the fridge by themselves,” so stressed owners may stress-feed their pets, Dr. Linder says. “The concept of food and love are tightly interconnected, and we need to address it.”
Some veterinarians cite the pet food industry’s push to include better labeling on foods, including calories per serving, as an advance in helping with weight control. But others describe the print as too small and the calorie information unhelpful because calorie needs vary widely by breed, genetics and current weight.
Many dogs and cats that are overweight will need their calories reduced by at least a third, according to the University of Florida’s Dr. Schmalberg. An average-size indoor cat needs between 150 to 200 calories per day to maintain weight, while dogs’ ideal weights are trickier to assess. But the most important factor, Dr. Schmalberg says, is that owners adjust food to reach an “ideal body condition,” such as the dog and cat weight charts suggested by the pet food company Purina.
Experts also disagree on which type of food promotes better weight loss, wet or dry. Some data suggests wet food’s higher water and protein content carries more benefit because it reduces appetite, says Dr. Jonathan Stockman, who runs the clinical nutrition service at Colorado State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, in Ft. Collins, Colo. But dry food has a higher fiber content, he says, so a similar argument can be made for that.
“One really is no better than the other,” Dr. Stockman says. “We usually go with prescription diets because the nutrient density can be controlled and you can cut calories without causing a nutritional deficiency.”
Other options, such as fat-blocking drugs or stomach-shrinking surgeries available to people, seldom play a part in veterinary medicine. Most veterinarians feel that weight loss can best be managed through diet.
The goal is to get to a healthy weight before health issues take hold, veterinarians agree. Even though diabetes in cats, for example, can be reversed by aggressive dietary measures, says Dr. Lori Teller, a veterinarian at the Meyerland Animal Clinic in Houston, they work only with early diagnosis. Diabetes in dogs, rarely related to obesity, is considered irreversible, she and others say, because insulin production shuts down completely.
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