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Welcome to the official podcast of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association, where we bring you conversations with leading veterinary experts from around the globe. Each season spotlights one WSAVA committee, sharing their knowledge, research, and insights through short, accessible interviews.
Every fortnight, we speak with two experts on a shared theme, offering concise, engaging discussions designed to spark curiosity and guide you toward WSAVA’s extensive library of educational resources, webinars, and events. Hosted by WSAVA President Jim Berry, the podcast delivers focused conversations that connect you with the latest thinking in small animal medicine worldwide.
You can find more educational resources from WSAVA here: https://wsava.org/education/
Jim Berry: Welcome to the WSAVA podcast. Today we look at obesity and the vital role of the wider veterinary team in managing weight loss. Consider this, how could a unified team strategy change the outcome for an overweight patient? Our interviewer Dr. Ernie Ward speaks first with Rachel Lumbis and later with Georgia Woods-Lee, let's listen in.
Ernie Ward: I am Dr. Ernie Ward. I'm the founder of the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention and the World Pet Obesity Association, and I am super excited to be talking to my dear friend and colleague, Rachel Lumbis. I'd like to start off Rachel, because this is something that I still have a hard time understanding, even as a veterinarian immersed in obesity and nutrition for most of my career, and I think you'll agree with me, but nutrition is arguably the foundation of health, right? We're talking about something that affects every single patient every single day, and yet in so many veterinary practices, it's almost an afterthought. I mean, why do you think nutrition still gets pushed to the back burner when it should be front and centre of every appointment?
Rachel Lumbis: I think there's a number of different reasons. We know that between over 50% and 90% of caretakers believe that a nutritional recommendation is important to have received that from the veterinary healthcare team, but only 15 to 23% perceive they've actually received one. So yeah, it's a massive disparity there and I think there's a number of different reasons. One of the main ones is insufficient education. I think practitioners, both vets and veterinary nurses, feel that they have insufficient knowledge and skills in nutrition. They don't have the confidence to discuss diets and nutrition with caretakers.
Rachel Lumbis: They feel behind when it comes to the range of diets. There's so many diets now, it's hard to keep abreast of all of them. I think one of the main ones as well is that pet feeding habits and diet choice for caregivers are really highly emotive and sensitive topics, potentially also really controversial.
Ernie Ward: How do we get the whole team feeling like they can walk into that exam room and own that nutrition conversation? How do we get them confidence when it comes to talking about a pet's diet?
Rachel Lumbis: It comes down to a creating a culture within the veterinary practice where nutrition is seen as important.
Rachel Lumbis: Confidence is going to grow when team members feel prepared, supported, and they've got opportunities to practise the things that they feel less confident in, or less knowledgeable in a low pressure environment and that's very hard in a veterinary practice. So first of all, it's about discussing with all the team members training needs, identify areas where there is training requirements and starting with targeted ongoing training and build familiarity that way. One of the strategies I've seen that has worked particularly well is focusing on common scenarios, so we know things like weight management, life stage feeding, clinical nutrition, so that the team members feel equipped for what they're seeing most often.
Rachel Lumbis: Also integrating nutrition into routine care, we need to remember that it is the fifth vital assessment and it should be discussed, our standard at every consult. We should be completing these nutritional assessments at every visit to make sure that we're determining an appropriate quantity and type of food, and that we're also ensuring that the most effective feeding method is being utilised as well.
Rachel Lumbis: I think some of the other areas where we can build confidence is thinking about the tools that we have available. We've got the WSAVA Nutritional Assessment Guidelines. We've got diet history sheets. We've got assessment of body and muscle condition, and other relevant tools that are there to help reduce uncertainty and help make conversations more manageable if you are feeling uncomfortable.
Rachel Lumbis: One of the, the ones that I hear a lot is muscle condition scoring. You know, not feeling confident about how to do that. By having those crib sheets and support resources available to you, you can go through those with clients, go through it together, explain it to them, work through it with the pet. The other good thing about having these resources available with the client is it demonstrates that we are using an evidence-based approach to care, and that these resources are available, they can be used at home.
Rachel Lumbis: So that again, is another way to sort of improve confidence. And I think having or allowing less confident or new colleagues to witness and practise nutrition conversations is really important. Repeating over time always tends to build confidence. Another useful strategy is to appoint a nutrition champion.
Rachel Lumbis: This could be a vet or a veterinary nurse who's got a passion for nutrition and they can act as a point of contact who can advise and support their colleagues. One of the key points to remember when having these conversations with clients is that we put the pet's health, welfare, and best interests at heart.
Rachel Lumbis: It's not about selling. It's about explaining the qualities of an appropriate diet and the reasons why we are recommending that diet. It's not necessarily about revenue generation. It's about making sure that we put the human animal bond at the centre of veterinary triangle between the veterinary team, the patient, and or the caregiver, and making sure that within the team that you celebrate any kind of small wins.
Rachel Lumbis: I think there's so many positive outcomes that we should be sharing. Things like when you have a patient that loses some weight or they transition successfully onto a different diet, one that's more appropriate perhaps, all of those celebrations and those positive outcomes should reinforce the value of nutritional advice and boost the confidence of team members.
Ernie Ward: What a great masterclass right there, guys. Rachel, I don't have anything to add other than to my veterinary colleagues, don't overcomplicate nutrition. I think too often we get down in the rabbit holes of the macros and the levels and the so forth. Approach this like you would chronic kidney disease or any, liver disease, teach your team that we need to do the diagnostic test, right? Sometimes the details are really important at the veterinarian level or the veterinarian nurse technician level, but let's just start the conversation by saying, let's do blood tests, and that's why the nutrition conversation should be front of mind for all of us.
Ernie Ward: I wanna get back to that internal clinic champion because I'm not a believer that nutrition is a one person job. It can't just be a veterinarian or a veterinary nurse technician rattling off a food recommendation at the end of the appointment. Walk me through this, Rachel, who are the key players on a small animal clinic veterinary nutrition dream team, and what does each person actually bring to the table?
Ernie Ward: What does each person on that veterinary team do when it comes to forwarding and enhancing the nutrition communication?
Rachel Lumbis: The quick and easy response to that is everyone is a key player and it's crucial to value and and respect the opinions, the expertise, the knowledge, the competence of all members of the practice team, irrespective of whether clinical, personnel, administrative, or any other role within the practice.
Rachel Lumbis: I wrote recently with my former colleague, Tierney Kinnison, a book all about inter professional practice and incorporating nutrition as part of that inter professional team and one of the things we tried to do was to outline roles and responsibilities that different members of the veterinary team can assume in relation to nutritional assessment, care and support in relation to the planning and the implementation of a nutritional support programme.
Rachel Lumbis: Everyone has a role. So just utilising all of those different members of the team. I think particularly the members of the team that the clients interact with, they have fundamental involvement in providing nutrition advice, care, and support and recommendations. Ultimately, no team is going to succeed where you've got a lack of communication and teamwork.
Ernie Ward: I wanna go a little further with this because here's a scenario that drives a lot of practice owners and veterinary managers nuts. So a client calls, they're in an appointment, they get a recommendation about something nutritionally from their veterinarian. Then they go and they see the vet nurse technician and they hear something different, and then on their way out, the receptionist, they give their opinion and it's all different stuff.
Ernie Ward: Suddenly, if I'm that client, I don't trust any of those recommendations. So how do we get everybody on this team, you mentioned they all have an important role, we've gotta give them knowledge and empower them, but how do we get everybody on the team to read from the same medical charts when it comes to giving this nutritional advice?
Rachel Lumbis: Creating a culture where nutrition is valued is really important, making sure that team members at all levels of patient care and administration accept the fact that improving nutrition will improve patient and client outcomes. You can do the most amazing surgery, groundbreaking new techniques, but without good hygiene and without appropriate nutrition, that patient may not have the recovery that you desire and we need to understand that nutrition is acknowledged as the fifth vital assessment, a dietary recommendation is given to all patients. Even if we are just reassuring caregivers that they are feeding an appropriate diet. Even if we are saying to those caregivers, this is great, what you're doing currently is fine. Crack on, keep going. We need to think about the recommendation and whether different members of the team, the impact that different members of the team can have on client compliance and also concordance and involving as much as possible the owners in making those recommendations. I think another thing is to make sure that team members have responsibility for promoting nutrition and accountability for identifying malnutrition.
Rachel Lumbis: And I think one of the main things in terms of consistency is making sure that we've got clear practice policies and written guidelines regarding the feeding philosophy and nutrition protocols within the practice. So standardising client communication using templates. There's so many available now just using WSAVA as an example, but so many different tools that you can use.
Rachel Lumbis: You don't have to reinvent wheel. There's feeding plans, there's creating discharge notes, handouts so that clients are receiving the same key messages regardless of who they're speaking to. I think another thing that we should exploit and do better with is leveraging electronic records to standardise nutrition documentation and including fields reporting nutritional status in patient records.
Rachel Lumbis: Again, that's something that we're still not seeing it. It's the little add-on has passed the patient form. There isn't a dedicated area within the form that you can go to put that information and also making sure that we're incorporating feeding plans into hospital charts and making that really clear exactly what that patient should be fed and how much and how often, so that when they're in the hospital, things like that don't get missed and they are being appropriately monitored.
Rachel Lumbis: I think we also need to determine appropriate sources of information to support the veterinary team in addressing nutrition at every patient visit, and in advancing the central role of the team as the expert source of nutrition information. With the nutrition toolkit, it's unbranded, it's freely available.
Rachel Lumbis: There's various practical aids to help make nutritional assessment more efficient for the veterinary team and to support pet owners in making appropriate and informed dietary decisions. Once those recommendations have made, we need to make sure that it's clearly documented so that if a client rings up or when they come into the practice next, any member of the team can reinforce that same advice when they're speaking to the caregiver and when they're seeing the owners at follow ups. Another strategy would be to ensure that nutrition is incorporated as part of team meetings, including conversations about patient care and discussing challenging scenarios. That would go back to sort of improving and increasing the confidence level.
Rachel Lumbis: We all learn from each other. Nobody knows everything. We always have things to learn. Every day is gonna be different. That's significant in practice where we're seeing different animals. Veterinary medicine is changing. We need to think about that and communicating about different scenarios, even when they've not gone according to plan.
Rachel Lumbis: Establishing standards of care that are actioned and audited and monitored.
Ernie Ward: Love that. The key to staying consistent is actually having training mechanisms in place, having a framework and architecture of what your feeding philosophy is, your recommendations. You don't have to overcomplicate it, but you do need to share and transfer that knowledge to your team.
Ernie Ward: What are the biggest challenges in implementing a team-based approach to nutrition and how can practices overcome these?
Rachel Lumbis: I think one of the main challenges is failing to understand or accept the importance of nutrition and the subsequent cost to patients, clients, and also the business if we don't prioritise it.
Rachel Lumbis: Another challenge is that we need to be seen as an expert and trusted source of nutrition advice for caregivers. We've also got the issue of time constraints. We've also got the issue of poor understanding of professional roles and making sure that we are delegating according to an individual's expertise and confidence and competence levels.
Rachel Lumbis: Having inappropriate hierarchical behaviour when seeking advice and other resources is a major barrier. Ultimately, we just need to create a workplace culture where not only nutrition is valued, but inter professional practice is valued, and where every member of the veterinary team is respected for what they can bring to their role and what they can contribute to the care of clients, patients, and the practice as a whole.
Rachel Lumbis: So I think in terms of resolutions, there's, there's several. I think making sure that we are leveraging the human animal bond when we're communicating about nutrition is important. Educating about appropriate feeding protocols and diet choice will help to preserve the bond between pets and caregivers.
Rachel Lumbis: Therefore, we need to focus on proper nutrition for every patient that is presenting to our practice. I think we also need to consider the competencies that we need to work effectively in an inter professional healthcare environment, and these include a range of factors such as a willingness to collaborate, being effective when it comes to communication, demonstrating mutual trust and respect, being able to resolve conflict, being able to contribute towards shared care plans and goal setting, demonstrating emotional intelligence, and also having an understanding and appreciation of professional role and responsibility. I think ultimately a truly inter professional team will involve different professions and groups, but we're working together for a common goal.
Rachel Lumbis: A team-based approach to veterinary can requires recognition of the full contribution of the veterinary team. Every individual needs to feel valued and trusted and supported and empowered to deliver high quality care and to feel that they can make a difference. That's really important. When you think about vets and veterinary nurses, we should be performing our roles in collaboration with one another, not in isolation. I think utilising veterinary and support staff to their full potential, certainly in the UK, veterinary nurses are reportedly not carrying out the full range of tasks that they're qualified to complete within our current legal framework.
Rachel Lumbis: So I think being able to empower veterinary nurses to undertake tasks that we are qualified, competent, and confident to complete will help to relieve the pressure on vets, free them up to complete the task they are qualified to do, it can also lead to greater job satisfaction and opportunities for career development.
Rachel Lumbis: I think it's about making sure as part of creating that culture, we explore the responsibilities that every member of the team has and identify where there is scope to integrate aspects of nutritional care. Whether that be assessment, obtaining a diet history, following up with clients and see how they're getting on, that I think is really important and we need to think about that across all different roles, not just the clinical roles.
Ernie Ward: Rachel Lumbis, thank you so much for sharing your experience, great advice and really practical tips that any veterinary team out there who is seeking to improve and elevate their nutrition game, I think they're gonna take it and benefit from it.
Jim Berry: After Rachel Lumbis, Dr. Ernie Ward and Georgia Woods-Lee discuss the differences between maintenance diets and clinical weight loss diets.
Ernie Ward: Georgia, I wanna start with the big picture question that I think a lot of people in our profession still haven't fully reckoned with, and that is we're looking at obesity rates in dogs and cats over 50% in many countries. We should be calling obesity a disease, because I still hear colleagues, Georgia, I'm sure you do too, that they say, oh, it's just a lifestyle thing.
Ernie Ward: It's just a matter of they don't walk their dog or cat, or if they don't play with them and they give them too many treats and goodies. I think that framing has real consequences for how seriously we address obesity in our clinics. So where do you come down on this as far as categorising it as a clinical state, a disease state, and then how does that framing help us when we're communicating with those clients?
Georgia Woods-Lee: I think this is a very important question because to call it a lifestyle issue is to just not recognise the severity of what we're actually dealing with here. The complexity of what we are dealing with here. We have now a vast amount of evidence, both in people and in pets that demonstrates obesity to be a disease in its own right and I think if we think about obesity in these terms, we will then be much more successful in both recognising it and ultimately treating it. So what the Lancet Commission informed us in the veterinary world is that we recognise that we have patients with degrees of overweight and obesity, and we would categorise it as obesity when it gets above 30% above their ideal weight. If your body condition scoring is an eight out of nine or above, and for many of the patients that I see, it's way beyond that as well. So it's essentially excess adiposity. So we have those individuals with this obese phenotype. Anything under 30% we would then recognise as having an overweight phenotype.
Georgia Woods-Lee: Now, what was really good about this report was it then differentiated those individuals, that excess adiposity, with the effect that it's having on individuals in terms of normal function and so it was looking at where do we have retained function and where do we have disruption to that normal function and how does that ultimately affect what we do with those individuals?
Georgia Woods-Lee: I think this is where we can learn a lot from that. It shows how multifactorial this really is, we know that there are vast arrays of causes and risks associated here, and we know that not everything is fully understood. What helps us here is the definition that the Lancet Commission suggested of having individuals classified in a preclinical obese state, or having clinical obesity.
Georgia Woods-Lee: In the preclinical state, they have this obese phenotype, but they are largely unaffected. They're still exercising without any problems. They're still performing all their natural behaviours without too much influence and so this means that we can really individualise the planning and our goal setting for those patients. The preclinical obesity patients, we are thinking about prevention. If we do nothing, it is going to lead to a clinical obesity. It is going to get worse. It is going to start affecting more and more bodily systems as time goes on. So it's about preventing ill health, improving things for the future, reducing risk. For those ones that we recognise then do have a clinical obesity, categorisation, allowing us to understand what improvements into which body systems are we hoping for. The big one here is gonna be mobility. It's often mobility that suffers most, but it could also be respiratory function. It's improving the dysfunction that we are already seeing and also preventing it from getting worse in the future, I think we can take these categorisations and use them to nuance our plans for these patients, so ultimately we do so much better for them.
Ernie Ward: Yes, we've gotta understand this is an individual disease state and we've gotta take it more seriously because if we just relegate it to, oh gosh, we'll just feed a little less or exercise a little more, we're not gonna get the outcomes and, and our patients are gonna continue to suffer.
Ernie Ward: Okay, so I don't want to spend too long on the definitions, although I think language is important, precise language for veterinary professionals is essential for patient care, not to bias and stigmatise and so forth. I do want to get back to the exam room. So Georgia, you're standing in that exam room across from a client.
Ernie Ward: They love their pet, they're a good client. Unfortunately, their pet has obesity. How do you start that conversation? I think a lot of vets and nurses avoid it because they say, I don't wanna upset anybody. Others say, Hey, I didn't get into this profession to make people feel bad, so I'm just gonna ignore it and i'm not gonna say anything. But avoidance doesn't help the animal. So what's that approach to help you start that conversation and mitigate inadvertently offending folks?
Georgia Woods-Lee: Nobody wants to upset anybody and we're in a caring profession. We are here to help. I think that asking permission shows respect and recognition that this could be a difficult topic, but it also positions you still in that place of I'm here to help.
Georgia Woods-Lee: I'm not here to judge. I'm not here to tell you off. Now, if an owner says no, that is their prerogative and we should let that be. We would make a note in our clinical notes and we'd revisit this topic another time. Hopefully though your owners will be receptive and will agree to having the conversation with you.
Georgia Woods-Lee: So at this point we are there to take them on a journey to help guide them to where we want them to be. You can suggest, look, would you like me to show you how to body condition score? Would you like to have a go? Hopefully they'll be coming along with you and they will be doing it and what you're doing is showing them how to physically feel their pet, different areas, looking at the body condition score chart, pointing out the relevant features, and then asking them, where do you think your pet sits on this chart? And note, at this point, I've not said my opinion. They're probably gonna guess that during the process, but I'm not hitting them in the face with this.
Georgia Woods-Lee: We are coming at this in a different direction and all I'm looking for from the pet owner's point of view is acknowledgement that their pet isn't at an ideal weight at that four or five. Now, sometimes they'll dig their fingers in and say, yes, I can feel his ribs and I might come back with, could you count them if you had to?
Georgia Woods-Lee: And often they'll go, maybe not. So it's walking them towards this process and the point where they say, I don't think it's ideal, wherever they point to on the chart, you can then say, I would agree with you. Let's see how I can help you. My role as a veterinary nurse, veterinary technicians, we're not able to make that diagnosis.
Georgia Woods-Lee: So the person that is going to be making a diagnosis is going to be the ones to be having these types of conversations. But even as a veterinary nurse and technician, we can still be having those conversations in terms of where do you think your pet is and how can we get you the help that you really want, and at this point, hopefully because you've got a nice relationship with your client, they may have talked about their dog struggling up the stairs, or they may have talked about their dog snoring more than normal, and you can now bring these things in and start linking them and say, I wonder if this is all linked.
Georgia Woods-Lee: I wonder if we can improve the weight, if we can get some weight loss, then that thing that you are concerned about will also improve. And so coming at it from an educational point of view, I hope that we can be much more successful in getting these patients to see the right people, to get the right plans, to have the right support, to ultimately be more successful with that weight loss for their cat or dog.
Ernie Ward: Georgia, this conversation is essential for our patient care and safety and really welfare. But I think for me, Georgia, one of the most dangerous oversimplifications in veterinary medicine. We can't just cut their food. So what's actually happening nutritionally, if you just cut back a maintenance diet, why do you recommend a therapeutic weight loss diet for these patients?
Georgia Woods-Lee: Yeah, you're absolutely right, that's one of the biggest mistakes we could make, for sure, and it's driven by the pet owner. The moment you bring up weight, they think, I can fix that. Let's reduce the food. Easy. Done. And I think it's difficult to explain to an owner why they can't do that. For me, it's about getting weight loss safely and that isn't very uncomfortable or unpleasant for them.
Georgia Woods-Lee: So this is where the therapeutic diets come in. When we feed a maintenance diet, maintenance diets are nutritionally designed to deliver all the nutrients for the calories that you have to feed to keep that weight stable. So when we then start to reduce the calories, inevitably we are going to start reducing the nutrients and at that point, that's when we start risking a deficiency in something that pet might need within their diet.
Georgia Woods-Lee: So that's why the therapeutic diets are the only safe way of doing this. If we think ethically, really the only ethical way of doing this safely, so we are not causing any harm to our patient. So the therapeutic diets are balanced differently. They are very nutrient dense, so they've got many more nutrients, but their calorie dilute.
Georgia Woods-Lee: So the calorie reduction is already done for you within there. You don't need to worry about it. It's already been all worked out so that when the pet is fed a calorie amount for weight loss, it is still delivering all the nutrients that we need. The other thing that will happen if a pet owner just tries to cut down the current food is that the dog or cat is gonna be majorly hungry because suddenly their portion is halved.
Georgia Woods-Lee: The therapeutic diets up there to help manage hunger, whether that's something to make the food feel bulkier, to prolong chewing, maybe its elements such as increased fibre and increased protein because our studies have shown that is the best combination for keeping our pets fuller during this weight loss process, and ultimately would help everybody stay on track because nothing derails these plans quicker than an owner who perceives that their dog or cat is unhappy with what they're eating.
Georgia Woods-Lee: Food seeking behaviours are very high or have intensified, anything negative isn't going to be beneficial to us. So the therapeutic diets really are the way that we have to go.
Ernie Ward: I'll tell you too, if you're a practitioner, a vet nurse or technician listening, these diets are so much more sophisticated than they were a decade ago.
Ernie Ward: But Georgia, here's the problem. I hear this around the world for my colleagues. They say, Hey, Dr. Ernie Ward, that sounds fine, but my clients can't afford that expensive therapeutic diet, right? That's a real concern. Cost of living is up all over the world. Pet owners are stretched. So what do we do?
Georgia Woods-Lee: I think we all have to be aware of the cost of what we are suggesting and having that conversation with the owner about cost in a very open and upfront way because you will get some owners that will sit in your consulting room nodding and smiling and agreeing, knowing full well that there is no way they can afford what you're suggesting.
Georgia Woods-Lee: So the first thing that I do in this situation, particularly if the dog or cat is used to eating a lot of wet food, is think how can we immediately save cost? We can feed it dry food. Now we get pushed back here too because the owners will say they like fresh food, they like wet food, much better than they dry.
Georgia Woods-Lee: They don't want to eat a dry kibble. There are ways of making that dry food more appealing. Add low or no salt stock cubes. So chicken stock cube, a vegetable stock cube to make it into this lovely, warm aromatic liquid that we can then add to the dry food. By doing that, we add things that dogs would like in terms of what they find palatable.
Georgia Woods-Lee: They like things to be warm, moist, smell good. We're adding virtually no calories. The cubes are two or three calories per cube, but we're bringing in a flavour and moisture, which will make that dry food more acceptable. I suppose the last thing that I would think about if that is still too much and the food I'm suggesting is still too much for the owner, is to look at the wide variety of foods that we have available to choose.
Georgia Woods-Lee: We may have our favourite brands, we might have our go-to foods, but in certain situations where cost is a real pivotal point of whether this dog is going to get the right food. I would be looking for what is the cheapest option that would still be suitable for this patient? It's very much thinking pet and pet owner first in terms of getting them on the right food and making it affordable for them.
Ernie Ward: Yep. I love all of that. Be creative. Think outside the box. Look for alternative solutions. Don't forget, there are many pet parents out there that simply can't afford, legitimately, and it's not just a I, I don't want to, but I can't. And in those situations, do look at the calories, the macros of the existing diet.
Ernie Ward: See if there's an option within there to reduce some of that intake. It won't last, perhaps it won't be a sustainable solution, but it might be something to get you down the road a little bit. And what I've also found, Georgia, I'm sure you probably have had similar experiences in your career. Once a person starts to see some improvement, literally in anything, whether it's skin or OA or GI or obesity, when they start to see progress and improvement then they're much more willing to take that next step. So now suddenly they go, okay, I couldn't afford it earlier, but Buster's doing so much better. Tell me about that diet that might help more. I do wanna come back to this other thing that I really wish that our profession would take more seriously and that is prevention. I started the Association For Pet Obesity Prevention because I think that is really important because we talk a lot about weight loss programmes, right? By the time we're putting that pet on this therapeutic weight loss diet, we've already lost it. What does it look like to you?
Ernie Ward: Prevention starting from puppy, kitten hood, all the way up to senior pets. So if we really want to get serious and prevent this disease, what would Georgia recommend to the profession?
Georgia Woods-Lee: Think about the prevention right from the very start. With puppies and kittens, it doesn't get a better time than that because owners are often very receptive when they have a new puppy or a new kitten.
Georgia Woods-Lee: They want to do everything right. They will listen more than when they've maybe been feeding or doing things for the last 10 years with their dog, that they're much more receptive to what we might say. So you're right, yes, we can get pets to lose weight, but ultimately we know that some of those, even if they lose them, will put the weight back on.
Georgia Woods-Lee: But you know, wouldn't it be great if we could prevent it happening in the first place? So it is all about doing the little things, first of all. And for an adult cat and dog, it's making sure that they're on the right food for the right life stage, that they're on an appropriate amount, that we're not feeding too much, that we're not giving too many foods through treats and chews.
Georgia Woods-Lee: And then it's thinking about those puppies and kittens. What can we do with them? We've had puppy and kitten growth charts, evidence-based growth charts for around five years now. They are a free resource that you can access online waltham.com. I strongly recommend you go on and have a really good look at these because these are in a way of predicting the future or certainly preventing things for the future.
Georgia Woods-Lee: What the puppy and kitten growth charts do is they monitor growth and they allow you to track what normal growth should look like. Millions of body weights and dogs and cats that grew healthily went into these charts, so they're not just pretty bits of paper. There's so much evidence behind the lines on the chart and how we expect puppies and kittens to grow. By being aware of how they're growing, monitoring their weight at regular intervals once a month until they're six months, and then every three months after that is the bare minimum.
Georgia Woods-Lee: When I've had a kitten and used the growth chart, I weighed it weekly, and it was wonderful to watch him follow his growth chart, so that we can reassure owners that they're getting it right. Why is that important? Because there are specific patterns of growth that raise the risk of obesity later in life, even if it hasn't happened yet.
Georgia Woods-Lee: Growing too rapidly can be predictive that that pet might be at a higher risk in their adulthood. If we are seeing a puppy or kitten grow too quickly, we need to either intervene or monitor them more closely. I think monitoring as a preventative tool for life is where I would come down. If simply the pet owner weighs their pet more regularly than they would normally do, just that awareness of what that pet's weight is doing will help in terms of not letting those pounds creep on, because a year is a very long time, and a dog and a cat can gain a huge amount of weight without the owner really noticing because they're so acclimatised to how the pet looks. But the scales won't lie in terms of those increases.
Georgia Woods-Lee: So if they do nothing else, monitor them. Monitoring regularly is probably my tool for the full life.
Ernie Ward: Absolutely, and especially as you mentioned during that phase of rapid growth, puppyhood, kitten hood, till we reach skeletal maturity, watching those curves and inflexion points can make all the difference in the world.
Ernie Ward: Georgia, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. I've enjoyed our conversation so much today. Thank you.
Jim Berry: Thanks for joining us on the WSAVA podcast, where we are transforming care one episode at a time. We hope today's discussion was helpful, wherever you are in the world. You'll find further resources in the show notes and we look forward to sharing our next conversation with you soon.