Wait a Minute --Maybe Dogs aren't People

Right after publishing my last post, I realized that I hadn't put up any pictures, so I went looking for one.  Aargh!  You would not believe how many REALLY DISTURBING pictures and videos of extremely overweight animals are on the web.  And it's disturbing on more than one level, too.  Can you say "animal exploitation"?  I think it's entirely possible that some of the people who are uploading these (especially the videos) let their dogs get this way on purpose.  But maybe I'm just being overly cynical and suspicious.  Maybe not. 

However, the thing that I found most ironic was the title of my last posting -- hence the title of this one.  Unlike excess weight in people, a pet parent can usually prevent or treat this ailment without a lot of problems.  This isn't true for people, for a wide variety of reasons that I can't get into here, and I know this from personal experience as well as from keeping up with the research in this area.
 
Now, if your dog has his or her own line of credit at the grocery store, yeah, you're going to have trouble controlling intake, but otherwise, you are the human,  you are in charge of the food and exercise, and you need to make the effort.  Talk to your vet.  If you do make a sincere and serious effort and the weight does not come down in a reasonable amount of time, see your vet again.  Also see your vet if you aren't trying to slim your dog down and he or she suddenly does it anyway:  this is one of the classic symptoms of diabetes!

And no, I'm not going to post any of those disturbing images.  If you can stand it, just go to your favorite search engine and search "fat dogs" --and prepare to be appalled.