Good Nutrition – a healthy food formulated for your pet’s life stage is the perfect place to start.  Our doctors may recommend special prescription diet food to help your pet lose weight more easily.

Measure, measure, measure – A marked measuring cup of appropriate size should be used to help you measure how much food you are giving at each meal.

Meal feeding – Feeding several small measured meals will keep your pet from snacking when he or she is bored.

Healthy treat choices – Offer vegetables instead of cookies to keep the extra calories to a minimum. You can reward your pet without putting on that extra weight.

Exercise – Burning calories is a great way to lose weight. Low impact activities are the best place to start: walking, behavioral training, or swimming. When your pet’s endurance increases try playing fetch, jogging, or agility classes. Start slowly to prevent injury. For an inactive patient a few exercise events of 10 minutes duration are a better start than 45 minutes of steady activity.

Monitor your Pets Weight- It is important to bring your pet in monthly for a weight check on approximately the same day every month and keep a chart of how much your pet loses. 

Be Careful!
**Sudden transitions to less fatty diet foods may cause your pet to go on food strike because of curb appeal or an upset tummy from a sudden diet change. Please use our food transition guidelines to ease that transition.

**Like everything there can be too much of a good thing. Weight loss of more than 2% per week for dogs and more than 1% per week for cats is not healthy and can cause problems that we want to avoid.
 
Chubby Critters Contest
 At the end of every month three of our Chubby Critters weight loss club members will be randomly selected to win a free one gift.   Monthly winners will be randomly chosen from the list of new enrollees and the pets that have completed their monthly weight check.