Good evening, everybody, and welcome to another Thursday night members webinar. My name is Bruce Stevenson, and I have the honour and privilege of chairing tonight's webinar. Don't think we have any new members in, so usual rules apply.

If you've got any questions, click on that Q&A box and get those into us and, we will have a chance to chat those through at the end with our incredibly special guest tonight. Georgia Woods Lee qualified as a veterinary nurse in 2004 from Meyers Coe College in Preston. After working in mixed practise, a multidisciplinary referral centre, as well as a busy out of hours ECC hospital.

In 2010, Georgia was appointed as head nurse and clinical coach of a small animal practise in Cheshire. In June of 2015, Georgia took the position of Royal College Weight Management clinic nurse at the University of Liverpool, Small Animal Teaching Hospital, where she is now dealing with exclusively with pet obesity care and nutrition. In addition to running the clinic, Georgia assists with the research that the clinic undertakes and has provided education to vets and nurses throughout many countries around the world.

Georgia gained her certificate in canine and feline veterinary health nutrition in 2017. In 2019, she became only one of five people to hold the American veterinary technician specialist in nutrition certificate. And then in 2022, she obtained her BSC honours veterinary nursing top-up degree.

Well qualified. Very much so. Georgia, welcome to the webinar, vet and it's over to you.

Hello, good evening. Thank you very much. Thank you for the introduction and for joining me this evening.

I always enjoy so much coming and speaking to you, so I hope everyone's going to enjoy this session too. So tonight we're talking obesity prevention, how to get growth right and how to maintain a healthy weight for adult cats and dogs. So I wanted to start off by sort of a recap, thinking, why should we be worried about pet obesity?

We're then going to think about how does obesity occur, because if we're going to try and prevent it occurring, we should understand how it occurs in the first place. And then we're going to think about some strategies for preventing obesity in adult cats and dogs. And then lastly, we're going to think about preventing obesity, starting right at the beginning with puppies and kittens.

So why should we worry about obesity in pets? Well, obesity in pets is a highly prevalent disease. For anyone who has heard me speak, you may have seen some of this information before, but I think it's always worth recapping because these figures are quite shocking.

So currently here in the UK we have the unenviable title of having the worst pet obesity rates in the world, or certainly one of the worst, with 65% of our dogs having overweight or obesity. And if that isn't bad enough, 37% of those are juvenile. So our growing puppies are already having overweight or obesity.

So if we think it's bad now, the future is not looking good at all. In a similar way, we know our cats equally have a problem. 39% of cats, this study found, however, this study is now 12 years old, and we suspect that the number in cats is probably a lot higher.

The evidence that we have for this is that in 2018, the Association of Pet Obesity Prevention did their annual survey. This is an American survey, and they found that 60% of cats in America have overweight or obesity, and so of course we highly suspect that our figures are going to be similar. Either way, this is a very prevalent disease that we will all be having to deal with.

Now I've talked about obesity being a disease a number of times already. I'm going to say it again because it is not just a lifestyle issue and no owner means for this to happen. It is considered a chronic and incurable disease.

It is the commonest disease you will find in small animal practise, and it is the commonest form of malnutrition. And in previous years, there has been some dispute as to whether obesity should be classified as a disease, but it is certainly classified as a disease in humans, and we now have abundant evidence to suggest that it is also a disease that we find in pets. And many of the large veterinary organisations do recognise obesity as a disease.

If we think about the word disease alone. And we think about its definition, it's described as a disorder of structure or function, especially one that produces specific symptoms, or that affects a specific location, and is not the result of a physical injury. So we can see why in it's kind of simplest terms, obesity fits very well into that definition.

Adding to that though, we now know a lot more about body fat or adipose tissue than we maybe did 20 years ago. So yes, we know that excess adipose tissue does add weight and bulk to the pets. But what we also now know is that it's not an inert storage substance.

It is an active endocrine tissue in its own right. It releases hormones and known as adipokines, and many adipokines have been, identified both in people and in pets. Now the problem with adipokines is that they are detrimental to our pets and to ourselves also as humans.

So adipokines cause inflammation. They cause immune impairments and they also are responsible for insulin resistance. So it's the fat cells themselves that are causing an issue.

It's not just the fact that these guys have to carry around a weight in a bulk that their skeleton is not designed to. As a result, we have many associated diseases and probably osteoarthritis comes top of any list that you may read. And if we think about that arthritic joint just for a moment, it already is inflamed and painful for that, for that patient.

Then we add a weight that that joint is not designed to carry, and then we add those inflammatory adipokines, making that joint even more inflamed. You can see why these individuals do struggle quite so much. Other problems that we see associated on our list, airway disease, I think we're seeing more and more of this with the popularity of brachycephalic breeds, pugs, French bulldogs, bulldogs, you know, many with Boas syndrome, we add obesity to that too, they really are in trouble.

Metabolic disorders, we've talked about for a very long time and specifically diabetes in cats is the association is well defined with the insulin resistance, but we do also see diabetes in dogs due to insulin resistance also from be it from the overweight. Urinary disease, are larger male cats in particular, our FLUTD syndrome is, certainly exacerbated, by obesity, and we frequently will see poor skin and poor coat for these individuals. We think about this cat here, Molly is a very good example of this.

So, at this stature, she isn't able to care. For herself properly. She can't clean her bottom.

She can't groom all the way down her back, and this is something that pet owners will come to us quite often with, with all their coats sort of dry and a bit scurfy. And it's simply because they cannot reach to care for themselves. And of course, self-care, especially to an animal like a cat, is incredibly important.

We also see increased risks, so we have increased risks of anaesthetic complications. We have increased risk of surgical complications, and we also see higher risks of certain cancers. So it really is not a great list.

What is even worse is that we know obesity reduces quality of life and it reduces lifespan. And you don't have to have a figure like these two in the pictures for it to affect lifespan. When the study was done, the lifelong study looking at, lifespan of those who had obesity and those who didn't, the ones who did have obesity were only around 20% above their ideal weight, and they lived 2 years less than the ones that were at ideal weight.

So, obesity to any degree can affect lifespan. So there's not good news for our pets with obesity sadly. So how does obesity occur?

Well, in its very, very most basic form, obesity occurs due to an energy imbalance. It's that energy utilisation, so what's used is outweighed by that energy intake, and that excess energy is then stored in the body fat. Now, the moment we start talking about the causes of obesity, it is really easy to start pointing the finger at these, the pet owners.

And so often I hear, well, it must be the pet owner's fault. They provide the food after all. They must be just simply be giving too much or they must be giving too many treats.

How could they let this happen in front of their eyes? Don't they know they're killing their pets? And I have to hold my hand up and say that I have certainly had these thoughts, and it is very difficult to get away from thinking of these thoughts to what else might be causing obesity.

What we also know is that both in, human medicine and in veterinary medicine, weight stigma really affects the outcomes for these patients. And weight stigma exists both in humans and in. And in the veterinary world, studies have shown the sort of negative thoughts that we have associated, with, with those individuals with this disease.

So what I'd really like if you have one of these thoughts is to be a little bit more curious and think, OK, what is the bigger picture here? Because, hang on a minute, how come their sibling, which the owner owns is of normal weight? And what about the other pets in their house?

How come they've got one cat with obesity, but the other 3 don't? It would be very unusual for an owner to be overfeeding just one of the 4 cats. It is likely that there are other things going on.

So what are on those lists of causes of obesity? Well, I'm going to give you a fairly simple list. You'll see in a moment why I'm calling it a simple list.

So we think about things sort of outside influences, the things that we see, the things that we're told. It may be that the pet owner is feeding this pet as they fed their last pets, rather than the rather than treating them as an individual. We as humans, we know we show love with food.

Who has a birthday without a birthday cake? You know, we, we, this is how we culturally exist with each other and so of course we're going to pass that on to our pets that we live with also. It could be the family attitudes to food, and there's quite a lot of good research looking at how the weight of parents affects the weight of children, and we suspect that it also has a wider effect to how it affects the weight of their pets.

It's known as the family food environment, so we know certainly what those attitudes are can affect what's going on. We also have genetics playing a part here, so certainly in people we have identified genes for a number of years now that we think are associated with obesity, and we do also have genes identified in dogs, in particular, Labradors and flat coat retrievers that we also know. May play a part, but genetics are not the full story and any other environmental impact is probably going to have a bigger impact than the genetics, but it's really interesting work and we're going to be seeing a lot more on this in the future, I've absolutely no doubt.

So yes, we have those out those environmental considerations. We've got things like illnesses and medication playing a part, increasing appetite potentially. We've got the pet's own behaviour and motivations, and that's why I've put Simon's cat here.

And hopefully, everyone is familiar with Simon's cat, and he is absolutely wonderful. But his motivation pretty much in his life is to get food from, from his owner. And he is also displayed as a cat that would be overweight, or certainly, in my, opinion, he is.

We also see lack of knowledge and lack of education playing into this. People, pet owners, they simply don't know, and that's fine, you don't know what you don't know, but hopefully we'll be there to educate them. Finally, obesity, both in pets and in people is becoming more normalised.

And back to thinking about Simon's cat for a moment, we've been feeling that Simon's cat is a very normal cat, probably as we did Garfield also. But these both these cats would be essentially what they would have obesity. And we've been laughing at those with obesity for a very long time.

If we think of Laurel and Hardy or Homer Simpson, it has become very normal for obesity to be part of what we see and what we find humorous. Now I said that this list was a simple list of the causes of obesity. In humans, they try to map it a bit more specifically and this.

Is what the causes of obesity probably actually look like. Look at all those interconnecting elements, and apparently this is quite a simplified version of it as well. So when I say that there is nothing simple about obesity, there really is nothing simple about obesity, which is why it's such a hard disease, to manage.

If that wasn't bad enough, there is no cure for obesity. Now, you may have joined me this evening thinking, well, actually, yes, we can cure obesity. We can get them to lose weight.

Job done, they're cured. However, that isn't sadly the case, and I want to show you this small diagram that kind of illustrates the point. So when we think about the energy intake for these pets and what has happened when they have obesity, they will all start at a maintenance energy requirements.

This is an amount of energy that's going to keep them, at their weight and to allow them to perform all their daily activities. Our patients with obesity have been pushed into a positive energy state. So they've taken in too much energy, and they've stored that excess energy in their body fat, in their adipose tissue.

What we want, of course, is weight loss for them. So we need to send them into a negative state to achieve weight loss, literally flipping that balance. And typically, we need to reduce their intake, their calorie intake by 30 to 50%.

And at the point where we have this weight loss, we all go, Great, this is excellent. Job done. Sadly not.

We've got to maintain this weight loss for this individual. And so the maintenance energy requirement now is much lower. What that means is it is lower than it would have been had that individual never had overweight or obesity in their life.

They all, they will always have a lower calorie requirement. They will always be prone to having obesity again later in their life, and they will need continual monitoring to prevent that happening. And it's this metabolic change that occurs that which is why this happens and it's why we describe obesity being a very treatable disease, but we do consider it incurable because of this lasting effect.

Now, if you're like me, faced with this information, I mean, this is pretty dire, you know, this is terrible. What are we actually going to do? We know that, losing weight is very difficult.

We know lots of them don't even start on a weight loss programme, never mind reach the end of it. So as you may have guessed by the title of this evening's talk, Prevention. Prevention is how we're going to make a real difference to our obesity incidents.

So that's what we're going to cover now. So firstly, I wanted to talk about preventing obesity in adults. And this is very much about getting all the basics right.

What can we do really, really easily that's going to hopefully prevent obesity, at some point in their life? Well, the first thing we need to do is choose the correct diet. So we need a diet that's suitable for their species.

It sounds almost too simple to mention. However, how many chihuahuas do we know that eat cat food? I certainly know some.

So we want a diet that is suitable for the species. Next, we want a diet that is suitable for their life stage. So are they in a growth phase?

Do we want adult maintenance or do we have a senior pet? Now seniors are really interesting and I could probably do a whole evening on this alone. So senior requirements are really different depending on the individual, and animals age in very, very different and diverse ways.

The next thing we want to consider is a diet that is suitable for the pet's lifestyle and their activity level. Is it an indoor cat? Is it an outdoor cat?

Do we have a working dog, or do we have a lapdog or a dog that's just used as a companion with elderly owners who aren't able to go out very much? We may also need to consider whether we need a diet that is used for a specific illness, and we are so lucky to have so many amazing therapeutic diets. But some of those therapeutic diets that are gonna help us manage one or solve one problem are very high in calories, and so we must always be considering the impact of a diet change to a therapeutic diet and making adjustments where we need to.

The next thing, once we've chosen our diet, of course, we've got to get the feeding quantity right, and feeding guidelines are great as a place to start. However, I do feel quite strongly that as vets and vet nurses, we should be calculating the daily, the maintenance energy. Requirements, for our patients.

These are the figures, sorry, these are the calculations that I would typically use, with SAA, World Small Animal Veterinary Association, they use these calculations, and so that's good enough for me. And I really do think that if we're making a dietary recommendation, we should also make a feeding quantity recommendation, for, for every patient that we do that with. If calorie calculations are difficult, then there is some online calculators, and this one on the PFMA website is a particularly easy one to use, just to take the pain out of doing some of these calculations.

So we need to make sure that those amounts are controlled because there's no point working out how much they're meant to eat if we're then just going to fill up the bowl. So making sure we calculated that amount and then making sure we're weighing that portion out nice and carefully. Anyone who's heard me talk before will know how much I despise measuring cups.

So if you have them in your practise, throw them out, use them as pen pots, do not give them with the bag of food. I'm pretty sure everyone is all signed up for this and really encourage the use of digital scales. Have some in your practise that you can sell to pet owners if they don't have them in their house.

The next thing we need to think about is regularly weighing the pets, and I cannot stress the importance of this enough. If you do nothing else, weighing them regularly will help keep good visualisation of what's going on with their weight, and I'll talk more about that in a moment. We should also think about the feeding patterns that the owners are using because this can have an influence.

So we do have a good proportion of pets that are only fed once a day. And this for me is not ideal. I would always advise at least 2 meals a day.

I personally would be furious if somebody is expecting me to go 24 hours without food or to have to wait until my next meal. 12 hours is bad enough, I have to say. I, I personally would like to eat more often than that, and we know that some of our pets do too.

So they are opportunistic, both cats and dogs, and maybe their feeding pattern that would be ideal for them would look more like this. So cats and dogs, cats in particular can fall into two categories. We describe them as binges or grazers.

So some of them will consume all food immediately and certainly couldn't eat ad lib. Some, especially cats will eat up to 16 times a day. And my own cat, actually, I was lucky enough to have one of these microchip activated bowls that linked up to an app, and this was her feeding pattern.

So she absolutely visited her bowl 30 to 16 times a day. And interestingly, you can see where she was cluster feeding at certain times of day and then having a good snooze in between. And this certainly for a cat is very natural behaviour, and if we think about if they had to catch mice or small birds to eat, then again they would be having to spend a lot of their day catching enough food for them to eat.

We also know that for dogs, we have those that just don't have an off switch. Those poor Labradors, it seems to be fairly genetic for them not to have an off switch, and they're going to be happy to eat any time of day. So it, it might be worth giving them more than 1 or 2 meals just to try and keep them happy.

The other thing that I think we should encourage much more with pet owners of any weight actually is getting their pet to work for food. Now I talk about this a lot with obesity management, but I really think that all pets could do a lot more to obtain their food. So dogs in particular, we know they like to work for their food.

In fact, they're called contra freeloaders because they prefer to work for their food, which is really cool, and that means that we can definitely use that to our advantage. Working for food slows down food consumption that allows for feelings of fullness, making sure everyone comes away from their meal nice and full and not looking for too much more food. It also increases general activity, and all pets, of course, need to be nicely active.

It can increase bonding with the owner. If we think about that toilet roll tube tower just at the top there, you know, making it is fun, playing with the cat with it is fun. So these are a nice thing that the owner can do with them.

It combats boredom, it can reduce frustration and stress and anxiety, and that of course, improves welfare for that pet, which is what we would all want for them. And lastly, we know they find it fun. Dogs in particular.

Are very well equipped to be using these types of bowls. So dogs are scavengers by nature. If we think about how they ended up being domesticated in the first place, it's because they could survive by eating human scraps.

So their scavenging instincts and skills, are very well defined, and so we can use those to our advantage, and we know they do like to work for their food, and they certainly like having fun. I've got a short video clip for you here and I want you to decide whether this fella is having fun. I mean, OK, this is not how this bowl was designed to be used, but I'm pretty sure he's still getting the fun out of it and he's also having a good time taking a long time to eat all that kibble.

Awesome. What about cats though, because cats aren't scavengers by nature, they are, of course, predators. And so getting them to use slow feeders isn't really encouraging their natural feeding behaviours, and cats, if I'm honest, like this.

They want their food literally handed to them on a nice big velvet cushion. So I feel with cats that we should try as best we can to do something like Harvest has here. So this is displaying much more natural behaviours, using a toy that is much more natural to them.

And yeah, there we go. We can see hopefully he's worked it out and he's gonna get that biscuit. Now, when we're thinking about getting the basics right, we must have a conversation with our pet owners about treats.

Really, what we'd ideally want to do is minimise the treats and extra foods to around 10% of their daily allowance, but we know that that can be very difficult and a lot of treats can be very high in calories. So let's take a look at some examples. So I've got some dog treats here and some cat treats.

So looking at our dog treats, first of all, we've got these different calorie categories, and there may be some surprises in there actually. Down at the bottom we've got things like courgette and ham. And certainly for giving medication, I'm in quite a big, I'm, I'm quite a big fan of using ham because it is actually pretty low calorie.

You don't need too much of it. Then as we move up the categories, we start to see. Things that might surprise us so we can see treats that are marketed to be used as healthy weight treats or weight loss treats.

I want to just draw your attention though to the unit size. So if we think about some of those weight loss treats or treats that are very low in calories, yes, they are, but it's per unit. Whereas that jumbone, well, no one's gonna chop that up, the dog is getting the whole one.

So unit size does definitely matter. And then unsurprisingly in our top category we've got things like cheese and bacon, very, very high in calories because of that high fat content there. What about cats?

Well, in our low category, we've got again things like ham and tuna that probably aren't too bad of an option, but again as we move up, we see some functional treats getting in there. And of course, in our highest category, dreamy, cheese, we know how much cats like these things. And very shockingly, for me, when I put this together, was how high in calories that cat milk treat is.

600 calories per 100 grammes. That's probably AA cat's daily intake just in one or two little pods. So we definitely need to look out for these things if owners are giving them.

And maybe come up with some low calorie alternatives. So for dogs, they will eat all of these things pictured here. Green, watery vegetables are very, very well accepted and watermelon is also a great option.

It's essentially just pink water. For cats, we know cats will eat courgette too, as Oliver is gonna demonstrate. So Oliver clearly is one of our patients with obesity, and he loves his courgette.

But courgette doesn't need to be used just for those with obesity. Cats can have it, of course, at any time, and we know if it's cooked, they they are pretty happy to accept it. It's very high in water, which specifically for cats can be quite a good thing, and it's extremely low in calories, so hopefully preventing any excess weight gain.

We also could talk to our owners that treats don't have to be food related. So there's lots of other sorts of rewards, so things just hugs and tickles, maybe grooming, playing, learning a new trick, giving them something to chew on, and then doing things. So going out, doing agility, or swimming or hydrotherapy.

These are all really, really good treat options. Then, especially if we have a multi-cat householder or a multi-dog household or multi pet, we should talk to our owners about preventing stealing between their pets. So making sure any food is picked up if it's uneaten by one of the pets, maybe separating.

Pets into separate rooms. We've seen boxes and things like this being used, so some can enter the box and get the food, and some can't because they're too big. And then we can use technology to our advantage, and more and more this is becoming, accessible to people.

So we could use a microchip activated cat flap to, control access to different rooms or under the stairs, for instance, or to control areas. Where food is available, and of course the microchip activated food bowls are excellent for cats and small dogs for doing exactly the same, controlling who can eat from from where. And these bowls actually they used to be very, very expensive.

They are coming down in price, which I'm so, so pleased to see so that it is going to be much more accessible for many more pet owners. A cheap option though, you might be wondering why I've got my washing basket down in the right hand corner there, and this is because I was told about this wonderful novel solution. By a lady when I was in Canada, and she has 8 cats and 8 washing baskets.

And so she would put each cat's bowl on the floor. As the cat went to eat, the washing basket went on top so everybody in the room could eat their food. No one could steal, and they were all very happy.

So quite a novel solution. I'm not sure what the behaviourists would think of that, but certainly it worked for her. And sometimes we do have to think outside the box just a little bit to come up with a good solution to stop stealing.

The other thing that we should be considering, with our adults is recognise when obesity is happening early. And we can only do that through regular weighing. And I said I would come back to this.

So I, as, as I said, I cannot stress the importance of regular weighing, enough. We want to make sure that they're weighed on calibrated scales, and to calibrate scales, we can use some weights if you've got some fancy set of weights like the. Like we're lucky enough to have in our clinic.

A bag of pet food will do just as well, though, allowing a little bit for packaging, or if you've got an old gym weight lying about, you're happy that it's weighing correctly, then you could use that to calibrate the scales. What's probably even more important is that if you weigh them, you must record that weight so that we can track changes over time. It's no good trying to remember.

Pet owners won't remember either, so making sure we're making a note of it. We should also remember that when we do weigh, our patients, what we get is a number, and it is just that. It's just a number.

It's only meaningful when it's compared to other numbers. And it's also more meaningful if we, allocate a body condition score also. It then tells us whether that number is appropriate for that individual or not.

I'm sure you're all very familiar. With these body condition score charts, these are a 9 point system. Again, weava recommends a 9 point system over the others that are available.

These are validated charts against real patients, which does give them an advantage, and we want our patients to be a 4 or 5 on these charts. And every point above that represents an additional 10% of weight. And then we can calculate ideal weights if we need to.

So if we have a patient at a score of 6 or above, we can use these calculations to determine their ideal weight and hopefully get them back down to their healthy weight nice and quickly. So it is important when we see patients with early obesity that we do get in there really quickly. Firstly, we know that 6 to 10% gives noticeable physical benefits, particularly to mobility.

And if we do that and we get in there early, we can preserve or improve health, we can improve quality of life, we can certainly improve or preserve mobility in the long term, and we can potentially reduce some anaesthetic and surgical risks. The other reason for getting in there early is if we can do it early, we'll be much more successful, and that's what this graph here represents. In those early phases, we are much more likely to succeed because we've got fewer changes that are required, and we're going to be at this weight loss business for a much shorter duration.

The more weight that we have to lose, the longer it's going to take, the harder it is for owners to sustain. And so the further you go, the the harder it is, and it's known as diminishing returns. So if you have a patient that that has very severe obesity, they're going to be at weight loss for a very long time, and that's gonna take a lot of effort.

So they are much less likely to succeed. So get in there quickly and get weight loss as quick as you can. So I promised you we would talk about prevention and how we may be really going to affect those obesity incidence numbers and it's starting right back at the beginning with puppies and kittens and thinking about their growth.

Now the old adage of prevention is better than cure would follow, except there is no cure for obesity. So what else are we going to do? Well, if we can use evidence-based gross charts, we know we can make a significant difference.

So what these charts allow us to do is to monitor growth of these puppies and kittens, and it allows us to then spot those that are at risk of obesity later in life and act before the obesity even occurs. If you want to download these. These charts you can do so at Waltham.com or if you have Royal Canon vet portal access, you can also access them there, and I strongly recommend that you do.

They're free to everybody and go on, you can go and download and print off all those PDFs. So to get going, I'm using it with your kitten, you will need your kitten's weight in kilogrammes. And that should be done on calibrated scales with no collar, and in a similar way with dogs, you wouldn't want collars and leads on while you're weighing the individual.

And you also need to work out the date of birth for both your puppies and kittens and know the age in weeks. Now, I'm really quite rubbish at doing this, so I use this app. This is an Apple app, but I'm pretty sure it's available on Android also, and it takes all that pain out of trying to work out how many weeks old puppies and kittens are.

Then for kittens we have 2, we have just one choice to make between a male or a female chart. Much simpler than for dogs. For dogs we've got a couple more choices to make because we have different chart sizes based on the adult weight of that puppy.

So you can see some of the breed categories here down in our smallest chart, Chihuahua, Yorkshire Terrier, and they're moving up the sizes in our largest chart, we have breeds such as German Shepherds, Labrador retrievers, and you will note that there are no charts that go over 40 kg, really. Sadly, at the moment, we don't have, giant breed charts, and this is because giant breeds are really diverse. And so creating one chart that fits all is extremely difficult.

So they need their own charts, which hopefully in the future will be coming along, shortly. So then of course we have a male and female chart for each of those individuals too. So I wanted to take a bit of a closer look at these charts, if you're not familiar and give you a little bit of a background on how these charts were created.

So these charts were created using tens of thousands of puppies and kittens who grew normally and that's really vital. It was normal growth that we looked at. And so literally millions of body weights went into the very fancy statistical analysis, which I absolutely do not understand, but those very clever people then created these charts.

Now what the charts show. Is what ideal growth should look like, and each one of these lines represents ideal growth and therefore there is no right or wrong line for the puppy or kitten to be following. So let's look at those charts in a little bit more detail.

You can see along the bottom here, we have the age in weeks, and at the side, we have the weight in kilogrammes. So if we take, our little example, here in just one moment, you will notice when you start to plot on these charts, you've got a bit of a gap and between 0 weeks and 12 weeks. And this is because growth within that time.

In puppies and kittens, there's all kinds of crazy things. It bubbles about and doesn't really settle into a nice consistent growth pattern until 12 weeks. Doesn't mean you can't stop, start, plotting though, you absolutely can, but don't expect to know which centile line that puppy or kitten is following until after about 12 weeks.

So here is our example. So we've got a 15 week old puppy, and she weighs 10 kg. This is my dog when she was a puppy.

So we look along the bottom and we find 15 kg, and then we look up the side and find 10 kg and where those two points intersect, that's where we place our plot. Now one plot on its own doesn't tell us a whole lot, so doing lots of different measurements of body weight as they grow is going to be how we determine if they're going growing correctly or not. The advice is, is that we should weigh the puppy and kitten once a month until they're 6 months and then every 3 months after that.

However, as I'm going to show you nearer the end, this could actually just be a minimum, and actually weighing them more often does have its advantages. Currently, without the growth charts, the weight regime will look something like this. So the pet owner acquires their puppy or kitten and shortly after, hopefully, they come to you for their first vaccination.

Shortly after that, they will come at their 2nd vaccination and they would ideally be weighed at both of these appointments. Then unless you have maybe a flea or worming scheme, we may not see these individuals until neutering. And again after neutering if they stay well and they've picked up enough flea and wormer, we may not see them until their annual booster is due.

Now at this point it's important to note that not necessarily for cats, but certainly for some dogs, at that first vaccination they still haven't reached skeletal maturity. If we think about how large and giant breeds they are going to be. 18 months and over before they reach skeletal maturity.

And what you get here is these three really big vacuums of time where all sorts of things can go on. And so if we use the growth charts to encourage much more regular weighing, we get a a weight regime that looks a little bit like this. And so we can find out much more information.

We can see what's going on a lot, lot better. I would actually like to add in one more little weight check, and that's a couple of weeks after neutering. So at neutering, we should be giving the advice to reduce food.

Maybe switch to a neutered product or a life light product, and certainly we'd want to know if there's been significant weight increase after that two weeks. If we leave it until the booster vaccination, that weight could have skyrocketed in that time. So really making sure they're coming back in for those weight checks a few weeks after, after neutering.

Then once they do reach adulthood, we set that weight. Provided their weight is healthy and ideal for them, that is their adult weight for the rest of their life. We allow 5% increase or decrease, but predominantly it should stay at that level for life, and that's something you can put on the records.

This cat, this dog should weigh this, this is their ideal weight. So, regularly weighing cats, at home isn't too difficult. You can buy a set of scales like you can see here and hopefully everyone, of course, has got a set of appropriately sized scales, in their practise.

Or if you want pet owners to do the weighing at home and they've only got bathroom scales, they can do that also, they Step on the scales, weigh themselves, then pick up the cat and take those two numbers away from each other, and they get a good estimate of what that cat's weight is. However, you could do something like this. I'm going to show you another video that Ollie's owners have sent me.

They really are wonderful. And this is how they weigh Ollie. Isn't he fabulous?

He's literally my favourite patient. I know I shouldn't have favourites, but he is wonderful and they did so, so well during lockdown to weigh him consistently so we knew what his weight was. For dogs weighing dogs is a little bit harder, particularly large dogs, but again, hopefully everyone has got access to large dog scales, but making sure they are calibrated, that they're not getting moved about the floor too much and becoming inaccurate.

And during, during lockdown, we were really challenged as far as monitoring weight cases because weighing large dogs at home isn't that easy. However, we had an ex-retired engineer that was well up for the challenge, and he rigged this up in his garage, which was Just fantastic. Now, I appreciate that these dogs aren't looking too happy about being in their harnesses, but he assured me they were only ever there for a couple of minutes just so that he could get their weight.

So a really great way of making sure, that he kept track of what their weight was all through lockdown. So what does normal growth look like? Well, this is certainly what normal growth could look like.

So this is following one centile here, you can see a little bit of bubbling about, but that's absolutely fine. And this one is tracking in between two centiles, again, absolutely fine and absolutely normal. Remember, there is no right or wrong lines to be following.

All are correct for that individual. What about the effects of neutering? We know that neutering does affect weight, certainly if adjustments aren't made, and this is where actually cats and dogs differ.

So dogs, the, the effects of neutering should be nothing. Ideal growth is ideal growth, whether they've been neutered or not. So it's only if we use the growth charts will we know if their growth is continued normally or not.

For cats, the effect of neutering is a little bit more pronounced on their growth. So if you watch what happens just here. Our kitten is neutered, and they jump, typically by one centile.

Now this is more pronounced in female kittens, and we also know that the earlier kittens are neutered, the higher risk they are of obesity later in life, so definitely a red flag and one to watch. So what are our other red flags? Well, this is certainly a pattern that would concern me.

So this is an individual that's grown right at the top of their charts. It means they are very, very big for their age. And being large for your age might be normal, but it predisposes for obesity later in life.

So one to keep a very close eye on, make sure owners aren't giving too many treats, etc. This is the big red flag. This is where the the growth jumps by 2 centiles, and this upward crossing of centiles has been shown to be a risk of obesity later in life.

So definitely you want to keep an eye on this one and having a close look at what they're being fed. This is also a red flag, so this one has dropped down to centiles, and here we actually have a growth problem. So we'd be asking what on earth has gone on here?

Is it poor nutrition? Potentially, is this kitten being fed a vegetarian or vegan diet, so, you know, just putting it out there, it's becoming very popular these days. What is going on?

Was that kitten ill? Did it have cat flu? You would want to be finding out, exactly what had gone on there.

And then finally, this is our final red flag. So this is what's known as rapid catch up growth. Firstly, this individual has crossed two centiles.

We know that that's a problem for obesity later in life. But what this individual has also done is rapidly, caught up. Now, this is probably a very, very small individual, possibly the runt of the litter.

And the the owner has thought, oh my goodness, I need to feed this one up. It needs to catch up with its brothers and sisters. However, this rapid catch up growth is a predisposing factor for obesity later in life, so it shouldn't be artificially increased in this way.

The growth should continue along the centile that that kitten was originally following. So being very careful about rapid catch up growth. So in the last couple of minutes, I wanted to just share with you very quickly, a little case example.

Now this is the case of Hagrid. So Hagrid is my kitten. I, fostered 3 kittens during lockdown and of course kept one.

He is a little black and white one with his two sisters, Spice and Bella, just here. And knowing that I had a kitten and was going to use the growth charts, I immediately went out and bought these scales. They were about 20 pounds from Amazon, not too bad at all.

And this is where, I wanted to highlight how weekly weighing or more frequent weighing can be very, very useful. So you can see the start of his chart just here. And I thought we were doing very, very nicely.

He was tracking that 50th centile perfectly. We knew though that Hagrid was at risk. One, he's male, 2, he's a larger kitten.

He was much, much larger than his sisters, which was why we called him Hagrid, actually. He was also neutered young. He really liked his food, and he was destined to be an indoor cat.

So these are all little red flags that went, oh goodness, he is going to be at risk of obesity later in life. So looking at the chart, it does allow us to predict the adult weight. If you follow the centile line, you can see that Hagrid, if he continued in this way, we should end up a 4.5 to 5 kg cat.

However, things didn't quite go to plan. And when we went on holiday and asked a lovely neighbour to come and feed him, he kind of jumped up. And I was like, Oh, what's going on?

OK, it's not crossed two centiles, but as you can see, at 25 weeks, we had another jump, and now I'm really getting worried because he is heading for a 2 centile cross. So, So I made, some big changes. We switched to some wet and some dry.

I reduced his allocation by around 10 to 15%, and I managed to flatten off that, increasing growth, and he ended up at 4.5 kg at a year old. And I can say, hand on heart, a year later, he is still 4.5 kg, thank goodness.

And I have been able to prevent obesity occurring. But it was going to. And if we, in, you know, in another, owner's hands, this is what may have happened.

He may well have easily ended up as a 6 to 7 kg cat, and that would have occurred very, very quickly before the age of 1. Now, interestingly, I did this using growth diets and, whilst in growth, so up to 1 year, particularly for a cat, 1.5 to 2 years for some dogs, they will require growth diets and they are not balanced for weight loss.

So you can restrict them by 10%, but I wouldn't do so anymore. When they get. Adulthood, then you can get weight loss going if you need to.

So, growth charts allowed me to control the growth. It allowed me to prevent, build up of adiposal fat tissue. I, I, if you need to, then you need to wait until skeletal maturity, for weight loss.

So, in summary, we know obesity is a really prevalent disease. And so we can definitely talk to all pet owners about getting every single one of those basics right. And because there is no cure for obesity, if we're really going to make a difference, we've got to start preventing it from happening and we can do that with evidence-based growth charts.

It has been a huge pleasure to speak to you this evening. Thank you very much for listening. Georgia, that was absolutely fascinating.

And it's, it's just so lovely to see, all these aids and charts and everything else done by Walthams and Royal Cannon. It's just, it's incredible how they are leading the way, and, doing the research and using all these millions of bodies to, to get those growth curves for us and everything else. It's, it's fabulous.

And then you get to work with it. How lucky is that? I am incredibly lucky and actually, yes, this is one of the most exciting things we've been part of for for many years because we really do hope that it is going to make a significant difference.

Well, certainly based on all the, the, the, the stuff that you've shown us tonight and, and that I personally know is out there as well, they are already making a difference. It's just a question of how big a difference is it gonna end up being. So that's fabulous.

Thank you so much for sharing that with us. It was it was quite interesting to see some of those statistics right in the beginning. And I couldn't help wondering whether those were, ever going to catch up with humans.

Cause I'm sure the humans figures are worse than that. But it's, it's quite shocking to see that the pets are doing the same thing. Yeah, it is.

And, and sadly as human obesity has, has grown, so has pet obesity in a very, very similar way. Will they catch up? Probably.

And the problem is, is that we think that those figures that I gave you are probably an underestimate still. You, you know, you need big, big studies, big numbers to get more accurate figures. The, the point is, we know it's a, pardon the pun, a big problem.

. But I think one of the, the, the nice things, if there is such a thing about this now, is it, with the work that, that Wolfens and that is doing now, is the realisation that, you know, obesity is, is a disease process. And, and as you were talking about the activity of the adipose cells and that sort of thing, it's actually just not, oh, well, they eat too much. You know, there's so much more to it.

And, and, you know, the insulin resistance and everything and in, in humans and in animals, it's, it's quite something. Absolutely, and I think unfortunately that's going to take quite a long time to philtre through to many pet owners, you know, you get the oh he's fat and happy, he looks healthy, and you're like, yes, but on a cellular level we know that there's other things going on and. Yeah, those messages are going to take time to get through.

And it's why we're here really is to provide that education, and to let pet owners know that unfortunately, it's not just as simple, as carrying a bit of extra chub, you know, it, it is much more serious than that potentially. Yeah. And it's, it's not an easy discussion to have when, you know, the owners themselves are, are, how did you so politely put it, carrying a little extra chub.

And we to ourselves are. I love that. I'm gonna remember that.

And we too, ourselves are. So you're standing there feeling like your clothes are a little bit too tight. You're looking at the owner thinking, oh my God, yours are definitely too tight.

And now you've got to talk about the animal. And it's, it's a little bit, pot and kettle. Which, which makes it awkward.

So people tend to steer away from it. And I think that's where all these, these, wonderful aids and charts and everything else that you've shown us now should be used. You know, I mean, those, those growth charts and that sort of thing.

And where you can feel the ribs and it, those should be up on the wall in the consult rooms. They should be, you know, in the waiting room for people to, to look at and and feel and think about and talk about and You know, just to open that discussion. Absolutely, I, I couldn't agree more and actually using growth charts means we can have this conversation way before it gets awkward.

You know, we're already talking about weight right from the start, but we're talking about healthy weight and ideal weight. You know, so then if things aren't going quite right on the chart, the owner can see what you're talking about and they they can see that, oh, maybe we're not a healthy weight now, or no, we're not growing ideally and that sort of thing. So it changes very much the approach to that conversation.

Which just makes it so much easier for everybody and much easier for the pet owner because they're familiar with it. They've had it with you before. You know, we don't need to sort of, come in going, oh, he's a bit fat.

You know, let's do something about that, because you immediately put the owner off, you know, probably, probably won't come back and see you if you say that, you know, there's got, there's got to be a better way, and there is better ways, but it takes sort of effort to, and time, of course, to have these conversations well. But you know, every time you get a cat in your consult room, you know, you, you take it out the carrier, you give it a cuddle and dump it on the scale. I mean, that should be a standard thing because that opens the door up to go, Oh, great.

Last time was 4.2 and today's 4.1, fantastic.

You know, hang on a second, what's going on here? 3.9 up to 4.7.

You know, let's talk about this. And the, the act of putting them on the scale opens the door without you having to come in and, and, you know, and tell them that they're carrying too much weight because the scale has done it for you. Absolutely, yeah, and they've seen it for themselves.

This is not you just making an observation. You know, it, the numbers are the numbers, but if the last person didn't record that weight, you're not gonna know what it was and all this sort of thing. So yeah, regular weighing, I, as I said, I can't stress it enough, and recording it makes such a difference.

Yeah. And I think that's also where the, this wonderful trend of Of, of pet health clubs or pet, whatever you want to call them, puppy clubs and things, kitten clubs. It's fantastic.

Because getting them back, socialising them, educating the clients, and then weighing them and talking about these charts and everything else. And again, thanks to Wolfens and the crowd there, and, for the research for, for giving us those tools, because they, they really are tools, and we should be using them. Definitely.

Fantastic. Georgia, we've got no questions that have come through. And I think that's because you covered everything in absolutely fantastic details.

So, it's just up to me to thank you once again, for your time and for sharing your knowledge with us. And, we're gonna be seeing you again in the not too distant future. So I look forward to that.

But thank you for your time tonight. Thank you very much. To everybody that attended tonight, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and, Let's, let's get talking about those, those charts and those wonderful, keys that are available to us and see if we can do better for our furry pets than what our human doctor counterparts are doing for us at this stage.

So that's it for tonight, folks. And as always, to my controller Dawn in the background, thank you for making everything run seamlessly. And from myself, Bruce Stevenson, it's good night.