Dog obesity is now the most common nutritional disorder in companion animals. It causes significant welfare harm through reduced mobility, pain, and increased disease risk — and it is almost entirely preventable.
Dog obesity is a welfare crisis driven by love expressed through food. Owners who overfeed their dogs are expressing care, not neglect — but the welfare outcome is the same: chronic pain from joint disease, reduced mobility, shortened life, and diminished capacity for the activities that make a dog's life good. The insidious element is normalization: overweight dogs are so common that owners cannot recognize the problem by comparison. Body condition scoring — feeling for ribs and waist — provides an objective standard. Addressing obesity is one of the highest-impact welfare interventions available to companion animal owners, and it costs nothing.