Our new trophy is proudly displayed with our Customer Service Award (and Julia’s Lifetime Achievement Award) in Reception
Right now I could not be more proud of my team!
We agreed together back in July that we would attempt to become the first vets in the area to achieve ROYAL CANIN® Approved Weight Management Centre status. Last month we succeeded, and were presented with a trophy to celebrate!
It has been quite a long slog, and required tremendous commitment from every member of the team, but it is already bringing huge benefits to the patients under our care. We started by giving up a lovely hot Sunday to learn about obesity and why it harms pets’ health.
We thought we knew a lot about this already, but our trainer from ROYAL CANIN® really upgraded our knowledge and understanding of what is potentially a life threatening and debilitating disease. This deeper understanding made us even more determined to succeed in helping the pets of Sussex stay slim.
So now we teach as many pet owners as we can how to body condition score their own pets, using a system that allows for all body shapes, breeds and sizes. The scoring is from super-skinny underweight 1 to a horribly enormous 9, where scores of 4 to 5 are perfect.
Scoring is based on three simple criteria: the presence or absence of a visible waist line; how tucked up the belly is; and whether you can feel ribs under the skin (with no intervening fat) with a very light touch.
The first thing we discovered was that our team pet Jasmine – my own Labrador whose waistline I was rather proud of – was actually a 6, making her 10% overweight! She is now a fab 5, and looking wonderfully fit!
Many other pets have already benefitted from this extra service. We have also been observed and assessed by the adjudicators at ROYAL CANIN®, who have judged us worthy of their rarely achieved national recognition and awarded us Centre of Excellence status!
We now body condition score just about every dog or cat we see, which helps us to guide their owners about whether gaining or losing some weight would be valuable to their pet’s health, and to set a long term target weight to aim for.
If you think your pet might be a bit over or underweight, and you would like us to check them over and teach you how to tell for sure, give your new local Approved Weight Management Centre at the Mewes Vets a call on 01444 456886.
