On a humid Sunday morning, Tammy runs briskly, panting, tongue dangling, on a 5km course, before rolling onto the cool grass.
The English Shepherd’s owner Marika Krausova said the dog was “a little chubby” at around 23kg but has shed 1.4kg since an starting exercise program, which included a “pack” of half a dozen dogs and their owners.
“We’ve been running so she has been slowly losing weight,” Krausova said after she and other dog owners sweated out the course through a local park.
These canines and their owners are on the front lines in the battle for improved dog fitness in the face of what some experts see as a growing problem of pet obesity and related problems.
Dog races, boot camps, fitness session and other programs are springing up across the US to help prevent and fight the epidemic, attributed to the same problems of weight control in humans — a sedentary lifestyle and poor diet.
“It upsets me when people have overweight dogs,” said Jeff Lutton, owner of a pet store in Alexandria, Virginia,
who runs the weekend program for dogs and their owners that includes runs of various distances.
A Centers for Disease Control study in 2006 concluded that between 23 and 41 percent of American dogs were overweight, but some who work with dogs contend the figure may be higher.
Dog fitness programs and “boot
camps” try to combat this by allowing canines and their owners to be their own workout partners.
Nina, a bulldog-pit bull mix on the Sunday run, “is one of the laziest dogs on Earth, but being with other dogs motivates her,” says owner J.P. Dhillon. “Running and long walks help keep her trim.”
Riley’s, a border collie-Labrador mix, has been running in the program to help cope with hip dysplasia, and in the process has pushed owner Shaunda Adams to become a better runner.
“It took us two months to complete the 3 miles [4.8km], but how he has inspired me,” she said. “Now I’m signed up to my first marathon.”
Jill Bowers, founder of the Thank Dog Boot Camp in Los Angeles, which gets dogs and their owners to work out together, said the animals need exercise every day and that exercising together helps both the canines and their two-legged friends
“If the dog gets on an exercise regime they have to stick with it too. It doesn’t seem as much of a chore.”
Many pet owners who are forced to leave their dogs at home during the day deprive the animals of needed exercise. But the owners are often tired after work, and will give the pets treats out of guilt.
“When I see an owner who is overweight you can guess the dog is overweight,” said Carol Brooks, co-owner of DogOnFitness, which offers exercise programs for dogs.
“People are working longer hours, they are away from home and they are feeling guilty,” she said.
Ernie Ward, a North Carolina veterinarian and personal trainer who wrote a book on dog obesity and founded the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention, said the problem requires an effort on several fronts.
“Pet obesity is now the biggest health threat to pets in the US,” Ward says.
Pet exercise is important but cannot solve the problem alone without diet changes, he said.
“The key really is diet. We are now feeding our dogs a diet similar to that we are feeding ourselves,” he said.
“The milk bones and dog bones people give their dogs are not the same as they were years ago. The manufacturers are loading up these treats with fat and
sugar. Dogs like the same things we do, so they are changing the brain chemistry of the dogs.”
Ward, who speaks on the subject around the world, said the problem is not confined to the US, with weight problems growing in Asia, Europe and Canada.
“Even in Paris and Nice you are starting to see heavier dogs and cats,” he said. “If you look at who makes the dog foods and treats, the US is exporting our obesity problem.”
Ward, who cites data showing 51.5 percent of US dogs and cats are overweight and 15 percent obese, said momentum to solve the problem must come from pet owners demanding healthier foods and working out more with their pets.
He says overweight and obese pets have a higher risk of developing other health problems including osteoarthritis, diabetes, heart disease and many forms of cancer.
“We think food is love, so we give the dogs treats,” he said. “But the last few years of the dog’s life is miserable. It’s needless and it’s avoidable.”
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist