Supplementing five-point body condition score with body fat percentage increases the sensitivity for assessing overweight status of small to medium sized dogs.

Background And Methods: Currently, five-point body condition scoring (BCS) is widely used by veterinarians and clinicians to assess adiposity in dogs in Japan. However, BCS score assignment is subjective in nature, and most clinicians do not score with half points, instead preferring to round off values, thereby rendering less accurate assessments. Therefore, we sought to determine whether assessing body fat percentage using simple morphometric measurements and supplementing this with five-point BCS can have increased sensitivity for detecting increasing adiposity in overweight small-medium sized dog breeds via plasma metabolite validation.