Skip the treats
hit the streets

As the finalists in this year’s PDSA Pet Fit Club start their diet and fitness programme, we’ve urged pet owners to ‘skip the treats and hit the streets’ to tackle a pet obesity time-bomb.

And while we won’t know the competition winner until the end of the year, it seems that our finalists are the lucky ones. Findings in the PDSA Animal Wellbeing (PAW) Report 2016 reveal that 5.7 million UK pets are fed treats every day. And that includes foods like crisps, cake, cheese, chips and takeaways.

A further 3.9 million pets are also fed high-calorie, fat-filled scraps or leftovers as their main meals. Bad diets aren’t the only problem: millions of pets are not getting enough daily exercise. We found that 1.6 million dogs aren’t walked daily and cats are missing out on exercise too. Sadly, we estimate that a third of dogs and a quarter of cats are now overweight or obese.

Pet Fit Club (which first started in 2005) selects up to 15 overweight dogs, cats and rabbits from across the UK to participate.

It’s already helped 78 dogs, 34 cats and 7 rabbits lose a total of 68 stone 9lb – the equivalent of a grand piano!

Pictured is last year's winner Oscar from Wolverhampton.

Top shops

Great teamwork and great team spirit has been recognised in our Retail Awards for Shop/Team of the Year. Nine of our shops have been recognised for really living our values every day and putting in some excellent all-round performances. The winners are Ayr, Bury, Kilburn, Long Eaton, Quinton Donation Centre, Basildon, Port Talbot, Street and Brighton.

Congratulations to them all.

Celebrating Volunteers’ Week

Volunteers’ Week (1-7 June) is a nationwide celebration of all those people who generously give their time and energy to charities all over the UK. This year's theme is ‘You make the difference’, so let’s take the opportunity to recognise the huge contribution our volunteers make, reward those who so generously give their support and recruit brilliant new volunteers to join us.

There’s a volunteer role to suit everyone, from those with a passion for fashion in one of our shops, helping pets and clients in one of our Pet Hospitals to well-organised fundraisers who arrange local events.

Some of our volunteers even go on to become paid colleagues so you never know where volunteering will take you. Find out more at pdsa.org.uk/get-involved

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