Register Your Clinic

• Registration is required each year. The stipend is open to licensed U.S. veterinary practices, with one payment per physical clinic location.
• Clinics must electronically record all consecutive eligible, skeletally mature dogs and cats during their chosen day, two days, or week within the October 1–December 31, 2026 collection period. Eligible visits are wellness, minor medical, and boarding intake.
• The $50 stipend requires at least 15 complete, eligible records submitted by December 31, 2026, and successful completion of APOP data review. Continue recording all eligible patients throughout your chosen collection period, even after reaching 15 records.
• Payment is issued to the practice by January 15, 2027. It is compensation for staff time and is not tied to the body condition results reported.
• At submission, clinics may receive the $50, direct it to an APOP-selected charity, or decline it. Clinics outside the U.S. may participate and receive recognition but are not eligible for payment.
• APOP may exclude incomplete, duplicate, unverifiable, or nonconsecutive submissions and may modify or end the stipend program with notice to registered clinics.

This is a cross-sectional, clinic-based survey of consecutive eligible dogs and cats seen during a designated day, two days, or week within the October 1–December 31, 2026 collection period. It is intended to reduce selective enrollment within participating clinics.

Veterinary professionals assess body condition with the 9-point Body Condition Score system: 4–5 ideal, 6–7 overweight, and 8–9 consistent with obesity. Owner weight perception is recorded before the formal assessment and analyzed separately from prevalence.

Emergency and urgent cases, critical illness, terminal conditions, hospitalized patients, and visits in which pain, positioning, or acute distress would interfere with accurate assessment are excluded.

Records undergo review for completeness, internal consistency, biologic plausibility, duplication, and patterns inconsistent with consecutive sampling. Prevalence calculations use eligible records with complete veterinary-assessed BCS data.

Findings are interpreted as clinic-based surveillance estimates, not nationally representative population estimates. They reflect dogs and cats presented for wellness, minor medical, or boarding intake at participating clinics.