bush’s fault
My dog smokes, drinks, chases females and goes out in the yard and barks for no reason. I don’t know who picked up these habits from who, but I never used to go out in the yard and bark. He’s a bad influence.
Over the past 14 months, I’ve been successful in getting my oldest American Bulldog’s weight down about 23 pounds, to about 63 lbs. She is just shy of 12 years old and is doing much better with her new figure.
Hmmm....my animals all are horny and have bad tempers.
I am doing my best to keep my puppy and kitty well fed but in good shape. Having lost 100 pounds myself, I understand what a struggle it can be. And I want to have them (and my two fish and two birds) around for a long time. Coming home to them each day is great, and is one of the more peaceful aspects of my life.
Even 150 years ago, almost the entire world, including America, fought varying degrees of malnutrition and poverty, and dealt with the associated health afflictions. A few hundred years before that, all but royalty lived their entire lives in an undernourished state, always under the specter of starvation. In every period in history save for the present, securing a source of food was challenge enough for people, and "pets" were almost universally kept just short of beasts of burden, or (at best) as companions on the condition of self-sufficiency.
Thanks to science, technology, individual ingenuity and smart work, most westerners - and the vast majority of Americans - instead deal with the ills borne of abundance, prosperity, and the greatest degree of absolute material wealth humanity has ever experienced. And there is so much room for improvement (on every front - political, technological) that it is frightening.
Today, such is the extent of our prosperity that even pets enjoy standards of living, nutrition, and comforts exceeding those not just of the overwhelming majority of our ancestors, but even of many people alive today in other parts of the world. Don't mistake my intent - this, the rise in our absolute measure of prosperity, should be a source of immense pride. The rest of the world (slowly in parts, stagnant in others for largely local political reasons) moves in our direction.
Just think about this again - the obesity epidemic (which rather than hitting just America, is broadly international in character, extending from the UK to China to South America) and its associated problems is almost something to celebrate. We (for the most part at least) have it so good, even our pets are fat!
Where we once fought the diseases of poverty, we now fight the diseases of wealth.
A fat pet mouse.
ping
