Overweight Cat or Dog? |
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A study by from the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention found that 53% of dogs and 55% of cats are overweight or obese.
That's more than 88 million overweight cats and dogs in the United States. As with humans, overweight cats and dogs are at greater risk for various health problems.
A similar study by the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in the UK found that 65% overweight cats and dogs.
In today's busy world few people have time to measure out small portions during the day as recommended for optimum health.
Even if a pet's weight is normal, how do you keep it that way?
Automatic pet food dispenser have been around for a long time, but almost all of them are primitive; simply dumping food based on a timer,
often continuing until it overflows - oblivious to how much your pet is actually eating. If you have multiple pets, once the food is in the bowl,
who knows which pet actually eats it? This defeats the whole purpose of measuring food in the first place! It’s can be quite a task: separating/guarding food portions,
different food types and figuring out the right allowance for each pet is complicated and time consuming.
For many owners’ it is just too much and they are resign to serving their overweight cats and dogs as much as they demand, leading to an epidemic of overweight cats and dogs.
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How much to feed my cat or dog?
Many owners struggle to figure the right allowance for their normal or overweight cats or dogs. While pet foods have general guidelines on their packaging, the instructions usually suggest multiplying your pet’s weight by a certain number of cups, ounces or grams. This is a very rough estimate based on the entire population of such pets. It also gives you no indication about how much to feed when putting your cat or dog on a diet. It is like saying you should eat the same as your neighbor. Furthermore if you already have an overweight cat or dog, do you really want to multiply by its weight when determining how much to feed! The Cat Doctor freely admits that vets do not really know how much to feed your pet. They simply make a guess and weigh your pet every time it comes to the office. Then then revise their guess based on whether your pet’s weight went up or down.
Wireless Whiskers® AutoDiet™ Feeder
An innovative feeder from Wireless Whiskers® takes a different approach: it uses wireless tags attached to each pet’s collar to identify each pet individually. The feeder does not dispense food; instead it measures what is taken out of the bowl by a specific pet. There are never any leftovers (that can be eaten by an unintended or overweight cat and dog) as the bowl is covered by doors when an authorized pet is not eating.
Since the feeder recognizes each pet it is simple to lock out specific pets or set up separate feeding stations for different food types. Each feeder allows you to individually control the diet or up to 8 pets. So you can selectively and individually reduce the allowance of your overweight cat or dog while not affecting your normal weight pets. Wireless Whiskers® eliminates the guesswork of setting your pets’ allowances by doing it for you – automatically! It works by measuring how much your pet eats during a 1-3 (selectable) calibration period. The AutoDiet™ Wizard the takes the average and sets that as your pet’s habitually allowance. No fussing with measuring cups and portion sizes or calculating calories. If your pet needs to lose weight simply use the Adjust AutoDiet™ feature to reduce their allowance in 10% increments. How easy is that! The smart feeder also has a lot of other features that help manage your pet’s diet. For example the Portion Control feature has 5 programs that spread the allowance over the day in up to 24 portions to prevent gorging. Any time your pet eats too fast, the doors close and the feeder displays “Sorry! No More Until Later”. You can also prevent feeding during the night hours and the feeder even alerts you if a pet is underfeeding, a common early warning sign of illness. For cats and dogs that need special prescription diets the feeder can be used to selectively feed specific food types to specific pets. Wireless Whiskers® is undoubted the most advanced pet feeder available today and solve most of the most difficult pet management problems elegantly.
