Obesity in Pets: More Than 50 Percent of American Pets Are Fat! How Can You Keep Your Dog or Cat Healthy?

America is obese, but not just the humans - the pets too!

Over half of U.S. pet dogs and cats are pudgeballs and one out of every five is considered obese, according to the Association for Pet Obesity and Prevention.

Overweight and obese pets are at increased risk of osteoarthritis, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, respiratory problems, cranial cruciate or anterior knee ligament injury (the dog version of a torn ACL), kidney disease and cancer. Obesity can take two-and-a-half years off of your pet's life - which is a big chunk of time for an animal.

And diabetes in dogs and cats is on the rise. In 2011, The Dog Channel wrote that there has been, "a 32 percent increase in the rate of canine diabetes mellitus and a 16 percent increase in feline diabetes mellitus since 2006.

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