IT'S a canine crisis. A feline fiasco. An animal avoirdupois epidemic, an explosion of pampered pooches and coddled cats . . . oh, all right. Our pets are too fat.
Just as Hong Kongers lavish lashings of food on their tubby 'little emperors', so they can't seem to resist shovelling all manner of goodies into the gaping maws of their greedy mutts and moggies.
'It's a big problem,' warns Happy Valley veterinarian Dr Derek Chow Wai-yee. He estimates more than a quarter of the pets he sees are seriously obese and almost half overweight to some degree. More and more people, he says, are killing their pets with kindness.
It's a matter of steeling oneself to those soft brown eyes and that furiously wagging tail when the refrigerator door creaks open, of hardening your heart when a table full of leftovers conjures plaintive meows and an orgy of leg-rubbing. 'Pet owners have to learn to say no,' says Chow, who has just returned from the Iams Pet Care and Nutrition Symposium in Chicago.
American pets, it transpires, are in even worse shape, with half of them waddling about with spare tyres and great wobbly jowls - which lends credence to the maxim about pets growing to resemble their owners. Of course, in the US no sooner is a new health problem diagnosed than a welter of self-help books appear. Pet obesity is no exception - vet Steve Duno, for example, has just penned Plump Pups And Fat Cats: A Seven-Point Weight Loss Programme For Your Overweight Pet.
Chow says you don't need to buy a book to get your pet to drop a few kilograms. 'It's common sense really. Try to get them to exercise more and control their diet better. If you let your pet get fat, you're not doing it any favours and you could be significantly shortening its life.
'Obesity in cats and dogs can lead to all sorts of serious health problems - diabetes, heart failure, pressure sores, hip problems, urinary tract infections, bladder stones, arthritis, pancreatitis,' he says.
