Obesity is the most common preventable welfare problem in companion animals, causing pain, reduced lifespan and quality of life - effective prevention requires owner education and veterinary support.
Companion animal obesity is a welfare crisis that is normalised through its own prevalence. Overweight animals experience joint pain, reduced exercise tolerance, heat intolerance, difficulty breathing and metabolic disease - chronic suffering that owners often fail to connect to body weight. The welfare harms are directly proportional to degree of overweight, making even moderate weight reduction meaningful for quality of life. Treatment requires honest veterinary guidance, owner motivation and practical feeding management - including accurate calorie counting, resisting begging behaviour and coordinated feeding in multi-person households. Prevention is far easier than treatment: maintaining puppies and kittens at healthy weight throughout life avoids the entrenched feeding habits and metabolic changes that make adult obesity so difficult to reverse.