Prevention
The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention reported in 2018 that nearly 60% of pet dogs and cats in the US were overweight or obese 1. Weight loss plans can be tough! Owners may take some convincing before they are even ready to broach the topic of weight loss, and helping a pet achieve an ideal body condition score when they have maybe 15 or 20% (or even more) excess body fat can take time. Veterinary healthcare teams need to be comfortable having these difficult conversations and initiating a weight loss plan, but another approach to the obesity epidemic is to focus on prevention. What better time to prevent obesity than when the pet is still young and healthy? If the team can talk about the risks of obesity at this stage, and provide eager owners with tools to prevent their new pets from getting too heavy, it may be possible to reduce the number of animals that become overweight or obese. If pet parents are trained on matters such as ideal weight gain, body condition scoring, portion control and “smart” treats, they will be more receptive to early recommendations if their pet starts to put on too much weight.
Expert advice
Owners want to talk about nutrition with their pet’s veterinary healthcare team, and having these conversations early on in a pet’s life demonstrates a proactive approach and conveys the message that the veterinary clinic is the best source of good information when it comes to nutrition. In this way, when pet parents get dietary recommendations from their breeder, friend, pet store employee, or other well-meaning person, they will hopefully bring that recommendation back to the clinic to double check before following it.
Owner interest and readiness to learn
There is a reason why everyone loves puppy or kitten appointments – aside from the chance to cuddle a healthy and adorable patient. New pet parents are just as excited as the veterinary healthcare team and often look forward to showing off their cute new family member. These owners are also likely to be more determined to do everything they can to keep their pet healthy and are often motivated to listen to advice on how to provide the best nutrition. Suggestions like weighing food with a gram scale or avoiding high calorie treats may seem daunting to owners of sick pets, as they may be overwhelmed with many other treatment recommendations, and nutrition gets bumped to the bottom. New pet parents can be more eager and receptive to these types of suggestions, and if they learn that behavior early on, it can be much easier to keep it up for the duration of the pet’s life. Furthermore, research investigating communication with clients in a veterinary setting has found that pet owners want to be in a partnership with the veterinarian 2. By having nutrition conversations earlier on, we can establish this partnership with our clients and have a stronger veterinary-client relationship.
With all of that in mind, it is time to look at an exciting tool that every veterinary healthcare team should have in their nutrition toolkit – Growth Charts.
What are growth charts?
Growth charts may be more familiar to any pet owners that also have children, as they are a tool used by pediatricians and nurses to track the growth of infants and youngsters. They consist of percentile curves using a series of measurements (height, weight, body mass index (BMI) and age) 3, and have been used in human medicine since 1977 as a tool to assess whether a child’s growth is adequate. In a similar way, growth charts for dogs have now been developed by the Waltham Centre, an institute for science and research owned by Mars Petcare 4. These charts were developed based on data from tens of thousands of healthy dogs and they now provide a tool for veterinary healthcare teams to help assess whether a puppy’s growth is on track for its age.
However, one additional factor that had to be considered during the development of the Puppy Growth Charts is that there is a huge variety in dog breeds – so one size does not fit all for a growth curve. There are therefore currently ten growth charts available for dogs – organized by sex (male vs. female) and by estimated adult size (<6.5 kg, 6.5-9 kg, 9-15 kg, 15-30 kg, and 30-40 kg) 5.
What information is needed?
In order to use a growth chart for a puppy, the following information is required:
- Sex of the puppy – there are separate charts available for males and females
- Estimated adult weight of the puppy; this can be determined either by using the weight of the parents (note that this assumes the parents are in ideal body condition) or via the breed standard
- Age of the puppy in weeks
- Weight of the puppy in kilograms
Once these details are to hand, the correct growth chart can be printed off, and the puppy’s weight and age plotted. For downloadable PDFs of all 10 growth curves available, visit: https://www.waltham.com/resources/puppy-growth-charts.