Wagbits Revolutionizes How Pets Feel About Their BMI!

Obesity is old news these days. But what about our pets? It’s now become the topic du jour. naturally they’re getting fatter, just like we humans. The scientists are getting in the act, coz pet obesity (hereafter PO) is now big business, and of course we need to work out its genetics. Now the race is on to find healthier lifestyles for them, like going vegan. I wonder if our pets can be more successful than we have been at shedding our own excess avoirdupois.

Around 80% of people are either obese or overweight. Our pets are weigh (sorry) behind us, with only 50% of them being either. But they’re they’re catching up. Is their real aim to surpass their human masters? To put us in our rightful, not-as-expansive place? To show us that they can be even more bountiful than we? That pets can get ahead of us on the evolutionary beer-belly scale?

As you well know, I have an evidence-averse quasi-faux-scientific bent. This has driven me to formulate the first law of Petnomics. That law states that your BMI and your pet’s BMI will gradually converge. It’s due to the high esteem you have for each other’s mass and the desire to experience the same existential wobblies as your extra-human weight-mate.

But there’s a problem. To determine how truly weighty we humans are, there exists the cunningly devised BMI. This reduces everyone to the same, demeaning lowest common denominator of bodily mass. Now I can easily compare me with the perfect human models out there. Not good. But at least I can check my progress in observing my hopefully declining BMI ratio.

But what about the BMI for my pet? You can now calculate a BMI for your pooch or pussycat. But how do you compare the BMI of a dachshund with a mastiff? These calculators claim to do it for your different breeds of dogs, but only after a fashion.

Presumably they’re now working on elephants, giraffes and crocodiles, so we can compare our girths with theirs, (sagging rights, maybe?). Clearly the first law of Petnomics requires that you also be able to calculate the BMI for your pet alligator. Such is true love.

It’s clear that PO is an entrepreneurial opportunity waiting to happen. Obviously there are at least several unicorns here. A universal pet BMI is the least of them. The following are rapidly appearing over the horizon (theirs, not ours). These exciting ventures include:

• PO apps not just for your smartphone, but theirs’ also
• Petbits (Fitbits for dogs and cats); this will include their daily step account, adjusted for their number of legs and tails
• Development of smart PO devices that account for their tricky fur-factor, so you don’t think your pet is disgustingly fat just because it has an extraordinary amount of facial and bodily fur
• Pet-ellipticals and treadmills slimmed down to petsize. To allow them to exercise without their owner being faced with the ignominy of having to exercise themselves.
• Exercise machines that allow them to exercise while you are still in bed, incorporating video-feeds and kinematic data such as their heart rate, breathing, and calories used. These are automatically converted into real units such as meat, kibble and candy equivalents that they will need to recover their lost energy
• Pet food trainers using AI and deep learning techniques to teach them how to resist the heady lure of human food
• A chain of eating disorder clinics for pets: they include aversion therapy to teach pets such as dogs to hate candy, chocolate and fresh red meat.
• Wagbit (fits on tail) to measure pet’s satisfaction, or otherwise.

I particularly feel that Wagbits are a breakthrough, right up there with fidget-spinners and pet hair gel. They provide a way for your pet to rate the PO treatment you are dishing out. You are rated on a scale of one to 5 tails. If you get 5, this is a reflection of your deep petmanity and your furry companion will slobber all over you all the more for it.

Dealing with pet obesity is gearing up to be an even bigger challenge than North Korea and Snapchat. But our pets will yet again be there to meet this daunting challenge head on, instead of us having to deal with it, which, given our record with our own dismal BMI’s, we wouldn’t do anyway.