Why our dogs and cats need to cut back on the treats
We often think giving them treats is kind, but Flic Everett finds that obesity means shorter, sadder lives for our dogs and cats
Lockdown has affected everyone – but it’s not just humans suffering the unintended consequences. The nation’s pets are piling on the pounds as owners staying at home provide a drip-feed of treats, while for many dogs, the restrictions have meant less exercise.
Even before lockdown, UK cats and dogs were expanding, a fact celebrated by online groups that encouraged their thousands of members to post “cute” photos of overweight pets. But while rotund pugs and spherical cats are undeniably adorable, they’re also likely to have a shortened lifespan and suffer a raft of avoidable health issues.
In a recent study from the PDSA charity, 74 per cent of vets said pet obesity had increased over the past five years, with more than half of dogs and 44 per cent of cats now overweight. Almost three quarters agreed it was among the most prevalent issues at their practice.
These findings are not surprising, given that just a third of owners walk their dogs daily, 45 per cent of dogs get less than 30 minutes’ exercise per day, and 65 per cent of cat owners don’t know what their cats weigh.
Sadly, while we might enjoy bingeing on Pringles in front of Netflix, there is no benefit to an animal in being heavier. The PDSA says “overweight animals are less energetic, less willing to play and generally get less enjoyment out of life”. They are also likely to die earlier – a recent study by the University of Liverpool found that overweight dogs could lose about two years of their projected lifespan.
British Veterinary Association research found that 43 per cent of owners didn’t take their cats for regular check-ups, where weight issues would be noted.
The chief problem, according to vets, is simply that we don’t realise when our animals are becoming overweight – another study found that only a third of owners recognise the signs.
Research by the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association in 2019 found that 68 per cent of owners believed their pets were the right size and only 8 per cent thought their beloved needed to lose weight – perhaps because more than half judged weight by looking.
Clearly, when it comes to our furry loved ones, we’re in denial. But some are doing their best to combat the problem.
Tess Eagle Swan, from Newmarket, is the owner of Paqo, an eight-year-old rescue dog (on Instagram with his pal Kratu, @kratutherescuedog). As Paqo has aged, Eagle Swan explains, “he’s slowed down physically, and in the past two years he has slowly gained weight”.
“He gets about 45 minutes of walking a day – he can’t do more because of his arthritis,” she adds. “Sometimes I break it down to two short walks.”
She also takes care of his diet. “He now has special raw food and he has lost 1kg [2lb 3oz] this month,” she says, “he’s only allowed one, low-fat treat a day – I am very strict! It’s hard work, I have to be strong when he wants a treat. But determination, a strict diet and exercise has paid off – I want him to live the healthiest, most pain-free life possible.”
Eagle Swan worked with her vet’s recommendations for Paqo, and Dr Jessica May, lead vet at video service FirstVet, agrees that the surgery should be the first stop for assessing weight.
Then, she says: “The best way to prevent obesity is by keeping a close eye on their waistline. Ribs should be felt with a light touch without sticking out, and the waist should be clearly visible from above. A fat pad should not be present under the abdomen for either cats or dogs and, when you look from the side, a dog’s stomach should be higher than its chest.”
Keeping a close eye is vital, she says, as “while weight gain may simply be due to overfeeding or a lack of exercise, it can also be caused by hormonal diseases such as hypothyroidism, or Cushing’s disease.”
While many owners may feel mean depriving their pet of treats, overfeeding can be life-threatening. In dogs, fat tissue can lead to organs producing several different hormones that
cause chronic, low-grade inflammation throughout the body, explains Dr May. “Obesity can lead to issues such as osteoarthritis, diabetes, and high blood pressure.”
In cats, obesity can cause diabetes, urinary tract problems, osteoarthritis, skin diseases and fatty liver disease. “Overweight cats and dogs are also more inclined to be sedentary, as well as having weaker immune systems,” says Dr May.
She advises owners to consult a vet before putting pets on a fitness regime. “Dogs should be walked twice daily, for around half an hour each time, although the amount and intensity of exercise varies with the breed,” she adds.
Lockdown, of course, makes keeping fit harder, as Afsaneh Parvizi-Wayne, founder of tech start-up Freda (myfreda. com) and owner of Honey the cockapoo, can testify. “During lockdown, my two grown-up children came home, Honey’s treats quadrupled and she just looked chunky and lethargic,” she says. “She was getting cheese, dry liver, chicken sausages, and I suspect a lot of feeding under the table!”
After the vet suggested a raw, protein-only diet, “within 10 days, Honey lost two thirds of the 2kg [4lb 6oz] she’d gained,” says Afsaneh. “The poor dog was starving, but after her weigh-in we gave her more. She’s still much trimmer, and we walk 10,000 steps every morning together.”
If lockdown rules out long walks, “let animals roam in the garden, or encourage active play inside,” says Dr May. “Try placing small amounts of food around the house for them to find. For dogs, put food in a Kong toy, which encourages them to eat more slowly.”
A protein and fibre-rich, low-fat diet offers energy, and most dogs will happily crunch a carrot rather than a biscuit. Cats are harder – many prefer to “graze” or will steal another pet’s food or go to a neighbour’s house to beg.
Dr May suggests small meals several times a day. Most vets suggest a complete cat food, tailored to breed, weight and health issues, which will always have weight/feeding ratios on the pack.
The main step that owners can take to reduce their pet’s weight, however, is to ban the treats. The PDSA found that 27 per cent regularly fed the dog leftovers, but unsuitable foods can lead to weight gain and even pancreatitis, which can kill.
It can be hard to refuse those lovely, pleading eyes – but the message from every vet remains the same: Look after the pounds, and the pets will look after themselves.
‘Obesity can lead to issues such as arthritis, diabetes and high blood pressure’
Say what you like but the collar was big business in 2019 and in 2020 and it will be even bigger this year. Why? First, it’s not going to break the bank. Just what we need to hear right now. Second, a statement collar reincarnates that old item you’ve been staring at for seasons, wondering whether to keep or not. Thirdly, they fit absolutely anyone. We can’t write a fashion column these days without referencing that beloved impostor in our lives, Zoom. If you missed the main fashion tips of last year, I’ll refresh you on the top three: Birkenstocks, loungewear and Zoom details. We’re talking eyebrow mascara, earrings, hairbands, and a good collar. (I now have visions of my father reading this looking very confused – stick to your check shirt!)
Hannah Gilmour started 46 Stitch, yes you guessed it, slap bang in the middle of Covid-struck 2020. No big teams, no marketing budget; “Just me! I work from my kitchen table and at one end of my living room is my storage.” Formerly a senior buyer at White Stuff, Gilmour had noticed the fashion zeitgeist shifting in favour of a folksy, whimsical tone; a bygone era that we all came to embrace in those hazy days of Lockdown 1. Liberty prints, Jane Austenesque dresses, we even started to learn embroidery. Then came the collar obsession. “Last spring I noticed designers and the high street awash with amazing and oversized collars but all of them were attached to dresses and tops – what if you didn’t want all the excess bulk and wanted to switch up your outfits more easily?”
And with that, 46 Stitch was born. It’s moments and styles like this when fashion is not, as many would think, frivolous or “on another planet”. Using end of line fabric that would otherwise go in the incinerator, to landfill or be made into yet another shopping bag (you have 10, you don’t need any more), Gilmour transforms it into a statement look that is both uplifting and economical. “The idea is simple; get more mileage out of your current wardrobe without going on an unnecessary shopping spree. Old clothes, new tricks.” she says.
Whilst Gilmour remains a one-man band (and has also taken on the beast that is homeschooling) it is the local talent she has sourced in London that remains key to her recent success. “I started looking for local seamstresses out of work from the theatre industry, knowing that those were one of the worst affected by the pandemic.”
Again, a practical, clever move that keeps the nucleus of the brand as close to head office (or kitchen table) as possible. Of course this is easy right now; small supply chain, no middlemen. Being able to upscale a business in the UK, while meeting customers’ demand and maintaining the company’s ethics, is the challenge for any modern business but one I believe Gilmour will absolutely achieve.
Ultimately, this wardrobe addition is for anyone who has ever wondered, “Can I wear the colour red/orange/ green…?” (yes), “Am I too old for denim” (no), or “Will I look like Angelina Ballerina if I wear Liberty print?” (not if you get the colour right!). That’s the joy. It’s a generous sprinkling of lace, polka dot, denim or florals – it’s not the whole
shirt, dress or jumper. A strong neckline draws the eye upwards, and with or without Zoom dominating our lives, this is the natural swoop-like trajectory we want to create for that all-important eye contact. Oh, how I miss proper eye contact. To sum it up, the statement collar is to our wardrobes what Trinny Woodall is to any woman over 50 who ever doubted themselves later in life. A total game-changer.
‘Telephone me when you get home.” “Yes mama.” “Telephone me when you get home.” “Yes mama.”
“Telephone me when you get home.” “Yes mama.”
“Telephone me when you get home.” I close the door and breathe. My lungs expand with relief; my shoulders lift from the release of walking away from my mother’s house, from being able to leave the weight of her dementia and the drudgery and stress it causes on her doorstep. Another day of the same. Another week of the same. Another month of the same. Telephone me when you get home.
My mother’s dementia is not so bad as to have stolen her from me, but bad enough to have stolen me from me. Thank goodness she is still sufficiently present to ask questions that demand answers, but they are the same question. The same answer. The same day.
It’s now same day number I cannot remember. Under normal circumstances, I’d have missed – no, definitely not missed – I’d have skipped, that’s more like it, a day.
I would have skipped going to her house, and my spirit would have skipped too. It might have skipped down the street, into the park, into a book or coffee shop. It might have skipped with joy at the mere fact it had skipped a visit and the emotional labour entailed. Time off. Yes, please. When? When? When?
But these are not normal circumstances. First, the team of four excellent carers who looked after my mother dwindled to one then none as those women decided the risks of going from one house to the next outweighed the benefits. Then there was her dying cat, a beautiful boy who was being kept alive by my love and dedication, and by medication and food that only I had the patience to administer over very long hours. Next, my immensely supportive brother and I decided that it would be best if he stayed away, on account of him having a job that puts him into
Bubbles are made of air. They are light, reflective and playful. Our bubble was none of these
daily contact with dozens upon dozens of people.
This was followed by various family members and friends self-isolating or finding their own lives burdened with too many additional responsibilities to visit. All this, when added to the shifting rules and regulations, trapped the two of us in a bubble. Only, bubbles are made of air. They are light and reflective and playful. Our bubble was none of these. It was claustrophobic, introspective and suffocating. Now that two of her carers are back, my mother and I are locked in habitual mutual dependency. We both expect my visit.
I am there for the best part of each day, yet when I reach home – a sevenminute drive away – the phone is already ringing by the time I put the key in the door. “Are you home?” “Yes mama.” “Will you come tomorrow?” “Yes mama.”
I climb the one flight of stairs to my flat, but before I’ve had time to pull off my shoes and wash my hands, the phone rings again. Not answering is not an option as no response leads to immediate hysteria. I grab my mobile with still-wet hands. “Are you home?” “Yes mama.” “Will you come tomorrow?” “Yes mama.”
My mother’s dementia occludes my vision. Looking through it and my tears I see her soft-edged and blurry, already part ghost. The fragile body she inhabits has a great many needs that I have to meet. When I arrive at her house, I start. Even with her thrice-daily care resumed, there are things that only love can provide.
Normally, she’s up and dressed when I arrive, but I’ve learnt that the conveyor belt of bodily functions only accelerates when the mind falters.
I’m there to do what her dementia prevents her from doing, and to undo the daily chaos her mental incapacity causes: soiled items in a drawer of laundered clothes; a week’s worth of shopping taken out of the freezer and dumped in the bin; 240 cups of tea made but never drunk; the new cat locked in a room overnight with no litter tray; and then something that constricts my windpipe so tightly that I cannot breathe, far less cry – the blackand-white photographs of her breathtakingly beautiful self ripped out of albums and replaced with out-of-focus, family holiday rejects that she’d found in a dusty cupboard.
While I’m busy chording, my mother implores me to do the one thing she wants more than anything else in the world. “Come and sit down. I haven’t seen you. Come and sit down.” She would gladly forfeit cleanliness and comfort for compassion and camaraderie. Of course, she needs a cleaner, a cook, a carer, but what she wants above all else is company.
I do my best to be present, to exist only there, only then. I put my mobile (my work) away, quieten the task master
The oncesoft hands that held me tenderly are now as delicate as sparrow bones
telling me I need to get on, silence my what-about-me voice reminding me of the things I should do to maintain my own life and health, put a scratchy 35-year-old cassette tape of 100-yearold songs in my museum-worthy ghetto blaster and shuffle-waltz-sway with her on a tiny square of the aptly named sitting room.
Mother and daughter. Who’s the parent? Who’s the child? The once-soft hands that held me tenderly are now as delicate as sparrow bones and the skin that covers them as thin as tengujo. Yet there is a strength in them that I hadn’t anticipated. Her fingers grip hard, pressing into my flesh. I hold her tight. We move to the songs of her childhood and youth – the melodies that accompanied her first dance may well accompany her last.
At other times, I read to her. I try much-loved books and poems but the words leave my mouth and vaporise, adding to the fog of her mind. Yet she can pull her own poems – painful chronicles of extinguished hope – out of the abyss. As I start to read from her notebooks, she resurrects them from her memory in perfectly cadenced, word-perfect recitations.
Mostly though, we talk about the young woman she once was. I used to know the story behind the one she has chosen to tell so well that I could correct her when a new retro-glazed anecdote slipped in to make her narrative more palatable. I could have corrected her, but I didn’t. And now the embellishments have been so much repeated that they have become woven into the fabric of her life and I can’t unstitch them. Were I to try, I’m terrified the whole would fall apart, and then what would I do with the fragments?
And so I once again follow her to school and watch the part-fiction-parttruth of her story unfold. I see the beginnings of her eating disorder, while seeing the reality of it in front of me. My 90-year-old mother views the food on her plate as an adversary that must be overcome through stealth.
She pushes it to the sides, hoping that displacement might be mistaken for consumption. Or she asks me for something from the kitchen so she can throw morsels beneath the table, or spit them into tissues I will later find behind the sofa.
I see the nine-year-old doing the same thing. Putting bits of meat and potato into her pocket and school bag and going into panicked dismay when the meal of the day is wet and impossible to contain in cloth. Then comes her cunning plan – a trade-off, a deal.
Her eyes still glint with mischievousness when she tells me how she offered to do the homework of anyone who could eat two bowls of soup. I feel for the young girl who gave so much and who had yet more taken from her. Her dreams of going to Paris to study languages on a scholarship sacrificed to become the breadwinner, to pay the debts accrued by an unemployed father, to subsidise the living of a brother and the lessons of a sister; to ensure her mother had dental treatment and the youngest of the family, an adored baby brother – younger by 15 years – grew up with wants met.
I know that part of her history so well yet it never stops hurting my heart even as she pretends it doesn’t hurt hers.
Now she’s 19, cycling down Nicosia’s cobbled streets to work. I witness her chaste encounters with shy young men. A surreptitious coffee here, a glance there. A promise that temporarily flits and floats right past her before she finds the courage to stretch out her hand to take it. Her precious life going down roads that loop to and from nowhere.
So many could-haves swallowed up by the insatiable appetite of harsh reality and circumstance. The biggest part of her life – the 57 years she spent not loving my father – is sealed in a box we neither of us dare open.
I cannot ask why that generous, good man, with a malleable and expansive heart that sadly didn’t know how to woo or court, became the voodoo doll on to which she pinned all her disappointment; why he became the repository of all that had not happened, all that had not been achieved, all that had not been enjoyed.
In time, he hardened and shrunk that big heart of his towards her, ending once and for all any chance for the intimacy they both sought. The pity of it.
Instead, she turned to her children for the love she craved: “You are my only source of happiness.” That’s a lot of responsibility for a baby, a child, a teenager, an adult to carry. A child – even a grown-up one – can only give the contents of its own heart. It cannot substitute for a lover, a career, for opportunities snatched or not offered.
The gaping hole of all my mother believed she lacked was always going to be impossible to fill, yet each day my brother and I try.
“You are my only source of happiness” has been replaced by: “You are my gravity. Where would I be without you? In some old aged people’s home.”
I reply that this would never have happened. I am bound and want to care for her, regardless of how much more exhausting that might become.
There are days when I would sooner not visit, days when I have to dig deep for what Thomas Hardy calls “that high compassion which can overbear reluctance for pure loving kindness’ sake”. But I never fail to find it. “Will you come tomorrow?” “Yes mama.”
What have I learnt from my five and a half decades of being a daughter to this mother? I have learnt what she as a daughter learnt long before me.
I have learnt patience. I have learnt duty. I have learnt responsibility. I have learnt unconditionality. I have learnt sacrifice. I have learnt that they are the more complex names and manifestations of love.